Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast. Today we are looking toward the future and discussing preparing for the bar exam as a 3L. Your Law School Toolbox hosts are Alison Monahan and Lee Burgess, that's me. We're here to demystify the law school and early legal career experience, so you can be the best law student and lawyer you can be. We're the co creators of the Law School Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the career-related website CareerDicta.
Alison also runs The Girl's Guide to Law School. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review or rating on your favorite listening app. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can reach us via the contact form on LawSchoolToolbox.com, and we'd love to hear from you. And with that, let's get started.
Welcome back to the Law School Toolbox podcast. Today we're diving into essential tips for 3Ls who are gearing up for the bar exam. We'll cover everything from choosing a bar exam review provider to early study prep, accommodations, and getting life in order before the madness begins.
Oh yes, the madness.
The madness.
Well, before we jump in, though, we have a few disclaimers. Because this advice is geared towards the bar exams that are going to be given before the NextGen transition coming up in 2026, we still have a bunch of unanswered questions about what that will look like, and we will continue to address those in future episodes. We do have other episodes on the NextGen that we can link to in the show notes, but it's a little behind, because they haven't released everything they said they were going to.
Yeah, that was supposed to come out in the summer; it's now early December. We still don't have a full exam. So, I don't know, maybe they'll hit the second one because they were supposed to be doing two per year, as I
recall. Yeah, well. Anyway, so stay tuned for more about the NextGen bar. And if you are going to sit for the bar in California, you might also be wondering what's going on with the California bar. Well, glad you asked, because it's a mess over here as we're helping people prepare for the February bar.
If you're going to be studying for the California bar in 2025, we have linked to our YouTube playlist where we have been doing some periodic updates on what's been happening with the California bar. We'll link to them in our show notes, and we're going to continue releasing things to that playlist so you can get up-to- date information as soon as we know it. And sometimes we're funny. And sometimes we're funny.
Yeah. Now I was just talking to someone this morning about this. So yeah, as soon as we know something, we will post a video so you can know it too.
So, with those disclaimers, let's jump right into some common questions we get on the topic of how 3Ls are supposed to get ready for the bar exam. When should 3Ls start thinking about bar prep seriously?
Well, I would say if you're a 3L and you're listening to this and you haven't thought about it yet, probably now. What do you think?
I
think so.
I mean, like we said, this is December, but if you haven't already done so already, typically by the fall, you want to start exploring your bar prep providers and assessing your individual needs. You know a lot about how you study and how you take tests, and you want to start putting that information to use as you evaluate your bar prep options. Now, bar prep companies have probably been lining the halls of your law school for three years, but maybe you haven't signed up for one.
And if you want to learn about each one, compare pricing - because boy, can the pricing be very different, and also what their offerings are sometimes you can test out their free resources for the MPRE, so you can see how you like them, because they are a bit different, although a lot of them are also offering something very similar. So it's like a similar but different situation.
Yeah, definitely. And I think look at what your school's offering too. If your school has bar prep classes in your final semester, that can be a good option; if they have things for you in the summer, which some of them are doing now. You want to be sure you understand what those options are, so that you can understand what you might need to purchase.
In some cases, maybe the school is going to give you an option, you need to evaluate whether that's going to work for you or not work for you, whether you need to supplement that. There's no one-size-fits-all solution here. I think it's about finding the right
fit. Yeah. You also want to think about your own strengths and weaknesses, based on how you performed in law school. Are there areas in which you struggled? Was first year kind of a mess for you? Do you not remember anything from those 1L classes? So, you may have information that you want to really sit with to make thoughtful choices, especially based on your first-year performance.
If you struggled in your first year, that's a sign that you may need to be even more strategic about your bar prep.
Yeah, definitely. When we find people who failed and we're talking to them, I often ask them about that first year and they say, "Well, it was a bit of a struggle." That's the reality, that those courses were not necessarily learned and internalized and remembered. Maybe some of those writing skills were not really honed and you moved on to paper classes or something after that. So, a lot of the first-year stuff does kind of follow through and follow you onto the bar exam, unfortunately. Yeah.
The other thing that's important is, you've got to pick where you're going to take the test.
True.
And that can be easier said than done, because sometimes your job may be still up in the air. Even when you took the bar, you ended up taking Massachusetts because of your clerkship, and that I'm sure wasn't your original plan.
Yeah. Well, I couldn't decide whether I was going to work permanently in New York, where I was in school or in California, where I had come to school from. And I was just going back and forth and back and forth to the point that I talked myself out of taking the bar completely. And the judge I worked for just said, "No, you need to take the bar exam someplace." So he suggested Massachusetts, which at the time had an extremely high pass rate, so I did that.
And then later when I decided to come back to California, I took the California bar as well.
Yeah, so you definitely want to start thinking about those options and weighing what makes the most sense. Also look at reciprocity, which is whether or not a score from one jurisdiction could transfer over to another jurisdiction, especially if you're not 100% sure where you want to be. But it's great to look at that stuff not over the summer, while you're trying to study for the bar. You want to have those answers beforehand. Yeah.
I mean, at this point, the UBE makes everything a lot easier. I would have just taken the UBE and I could have used it in Massachusetts or New York. Maybe I would never even have moved back to California at that point, because I would have had the UBE score in New York and I would have just thought it seemed easier. Who knows? Life-changing decision, actually, where you take the bar.
Now, how do you choose the right bar prep course? We just talked about keeping in mind that there are different courses with different offerings, but what should you even consider when you're looking at a bar prep course?
I think with this, people have to go back to the old adage of, you have to know yourself. So, for me, I went kind of a non-traditional route, maybe I have a non-traditional brain. But I just knew when I was looking at these big courses, I wasn't going to be happy sitting through a bunch of lectures. That's not the most efficient way for me to learn. I'm really good at picking up an outline, reading it, understanding it, maybe making my own materials and using that.
So, for me, I just knew that wasn't going to work for me. But I think that's a hard call, because a lot of people are pushing sort of, "Oh, just do the course that every law professor did, and then you'll be fine." And the reality is, that may or may not work.
Yeah. I think, especially with the prevalence of all these learning differences we have, just outside the fact that some of us process information differently, there's a larger and larger percent of the law school community that is aware of learning differences or attention deficit issues or anxiety, or a lot of things that can really affect how you're able to study and process information and sit for long periods of time. And you hopefully know that about yourself.
And then you should look at these bar programs and say, "If my bar program expects me to listen to lectures for four hours a day, one, can I listen to lectures for four hours a day?" And listening to them on 2.5 speed, I hear this stuff all the time. It's like, you're not retaining anything when you're listening to it at 2.5 speed. So you have to say, "Is that going to be a way I'm going to retain information?
What are the other things outside of those lectures that these bar prep companies are offering, and do I learn that way?" And I think that those can be really hard, vulnerable questions to have to answer for yourself, but they're incredibly important. And remember, no one knows, unless you come on our podcast and talk about it, how you studied for the bar. They just know that you passed.
This is not something everybody sits around and discusses at happy hour at the firm after you've gotten a job. No. Everyone is just like,
"Oh, I passed. Thank goodness." The reality is, there is a lot of information you need for the exam, but all of that information can basically be encapsulated into a few hundred pages, because SmartBarPrep or someone like them will sell it to you.
So, I think you have to keep some perspective here of, "If that's really the information I need, what is the most efficient way of getting that into my head, and then applying it to the actual task that I have to do?" What I see a lot of people doing is they sign up for a big bar prep company's course, they get stuck watching tons of videos, they start falling behind, and then they don't really feel comfortable doing the practice because they don't feel like they know the law.
So then they start focusing on the law, and then they don't do the practice, and then they get to the end and they go into the exam with all this kind of jumbled up stuff in their head that they haven't really fully internalized or memorized, and then just bomb the exam. And I hate to see that
happen. Yeah. You also need to really understand some of the tools that the bar providers are giving you. Do you want to have a very structured study schedule, or do you want one that's adaptive and is going to change based on what you get done? You should also look at how many hours a week those study schedules assume that you're studying, because some of them can be incredibly intense and really impractical to even keep up with when it all comes down to it.
Right. I mean, particularly if you're getting any type of time accommodations. If they've already got you studying 10 hours a day for six or seven days a week, you can't study 15 hours a day. No
one can. No. And also, who's really that productive 10 hours a day, six to seven days a week? Nobody.
No, you've got basically three, four, maybe five hours of really intense work that any person can do focused in a day. That's just the reality of how brains
work. Yep, unfortunately. We wish it was different, but it's not.
We do. But there are other things you can do. It's not like you can't study and do something that's a little bit less mentally taxing. But for your really focused study time, you cannot do massive quantities in one day, because your brain isn't going to let you.
We also encourage you to look at the MBE question bank programs, such as UWorld and AdaptiBar. I do think that they are still the best way to prepare for the MBE. And if you're in California, for now, we do think that...
Oh my gosh. The quasi-MBE.
We do think that you should still prepare for the multiple-choice California exam using the same tools. And really another thing that I think is not often discussed enough is what is your budget, and what are some of these bar prep costs really going to cost you long-term? Nobody really likes to talk about money, except us. We love to talk about money on this podcast. But let's take an example.
If your bar prep program costs $5,000 and you put that on a credit card with a high APR, that can hang out there for a very long time and not be a great solution for you, that is going be exponentially more expensive. If you cannot pay off that bar prep program quickly, you're really signing up for some long-term financial hits.
So, I want you to really sit down with a budget, and we even have a podcast episode on this that will link to, with the founder of You Need a Budget, about how you budget for times like this, because no one really wants to talk about how much this stuff costs. It's an expensive space, and you need to be thoughtful about how much money you're throwing at this. And most people aren't going to have firm jobs that are just writing them checks to pay for bar prep programs.
Right. And even then you might have to pay for it and get paid back, which the firm doesn't really think about, but you're a student. People could take bar loans, there are lots of things. I think that's a great episode, the You Need a Budget one. Actually, I really thought it was very interesting and you guys really broke it down. So, if budget is a concern for people, I would definitely go listen to that, because I think that is a legitimate concern here.
Yeah. Something that a lot of people are talking to us about right now is trying to study early for the bar, using the spring semester as part of their bar prep. So, if you are considering doing this, what should somebody focus on?
Well, I think you have to look at your school schedule. Obviously, your highest priority is to finish your classes successfully, graduate. Those grades are going to follow you around, so I don't want people to completely blow off their classes. But I do think it's a good idea to at least start thinking about this. You know what's going to be on the bar, broadly speaking. You can start reviewing some materials from your first year.
I think the performance test is always a great option, because a lot of that is you need to see some of them and do some of them and work through it. And you don't have to memorize anything for that. So that's always one of my go-to's for the spring semester. What about you?
Yeah. A lot of students will end up taking some sort of bar prep class or bar prep kind of adjacent class in that spring semester. I taught some of those classes at some law schools. My advice is, especially if you're going to sign up for one of those, you should pay attention. It always blew my mind when students in my classes, because it was a pass/fail class, would kind of blow it off, or not do the assignments, or clearly not put any effort.
And I just wanted to stand up in the front and stomp my feet, which I didn't do, but I thought about it. It's not really free, because they're paying for law school, but this is additional prep time with someone who's giving you feedback and teaching you about the test, and you're going to have to sit for this test in just a few months. Like, please, please, please, pay attention. So I think that that's a great example of just utilizing what your school has, and getting the most out of it.
And that in and of itself is early prep. So I think that's really important.
Yeah, definitely. I do think people don't take things like that seriously because they just feel like, "Oh, it's one last thing I have to do", but this is really going to save you in the summer if you have already gotten some of these skills, if you maybe already have looked at some of this material. Even things like UWorld or AdaptiBar, you might get access just after the February bar. So you could actually start doing at least some MBE questions.
It doesn't have to be crazy; we're not telling you to do 20 hours a week here. But even just doing 10 questions every now and then is going to help you start to understand what these questions are like, how you might approach them, gaining you some familiarity with the material. We can link to podcasts on spaced repetition, which is the idea that you need to see the material repeatedly for it to be in your memory.
But you could start doing something like that in 10 minutes a day, and you would have a lot of this material in your head by the time you actually started bar prep, and it would probably be a lot less overwhelming.
Yeah. I think that's something that is really hard for just generally humans, but I think also Type A folks, including myself, is to realize that small investments in what I call the "study bank", day over day, really start to add up. If you memorize one or two rules every day for the entire spring semester, you would have most of your bar prep memorized by the time you get to the beginning of July. I mean, it's really wild when you start thinking about that.
I was just discussing this with my son. He didn't buy it either, even though I laid out the math for him. But we aren't really good at these small steps to lead us to a goal. But if you can be disciplined about it, if you can just invest 15 minutes every day, you might be amazed at what you can get done.
I think that's so true. I really do. And I know it's hard to even think that that might actually be effective, if you're probably listening to this saying like, "Oh, 10 minutes, that's not going to make any difference." It makes a really big difference. There's science. There's science behind it.
Such a difference. Yeah, so give
try.
it a try.
I would honestly say that's probably one of the most key things, is just go get the spaced repetition deck or make your own and start memorizing that
stuff. Yeah. 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day. Everyone's got 10 to 15 minutes.
We know that you can have a coffee at some point and take 10 minutes to do this. Make it a new habit.
I know, right? And you can stack the habits. There's a whole other episode on this habit-stacking. Something that people talk to us on the phone about a lot are accommodations, which I think is really becoming more and more of a concern for folks, this access to accommodations. So, if you are planning to apply for accommodations for the bar, what do you need to do in your 3L year to get ready for that?
Well, I think this is also one where you have to start this process early, because they take forever in a lot of states to give you an answer. We've had people who are prepping up until literally the week before, not knowing if they're going to have extra time. That's not a situation you want to be in. So, you need to understand everything that needs to be submitted, what you're going to need. And just go ahead and get that done, because you may have to appeal, there may be follow-ups.
You definitely do not want to wait for the last minute on
this. No. And I'd like to reiterate that appeal issue. Some states do allow you to appeal, and if you apply too late - and by "too late", I mean very close to the deadline - you will not get your answer back in time to appeal. And I know a lot of folks think that if you have to appeal, you will just get rejected again, and that is absolutely not true.
I have seen appeals overturn an accommodation decision, especially if they're looking for additional documentation, which sometimes that's what they want from an appeal. So, early gives you more options. And I know it can be hard because the documentation can be really intimidating. You should be able to go to your bar website, download the application, or write to them if you can't find it on the website. You need to find out what sort of documentation they need.
Some states have requirements about how long it has been since you've been diagnosed, whether or not you are consistently seeking medical attention on these issues. You sometimes have to get letters from medical providers. It can be a different standard than your law school's accommodation process. So, knowledge is power. Get the information so you don't leave this opportunity on the table because you didn't do it in time.
Right. And if you're taking the UBE, you can also think about where you might want to sit if you have accommodations. Some states are notoriously more difficult for accommodations than others. So, look around. And remember this doesn't just have to be an accommodation that you've had. If you had an accommodation your entire school career - yeah, it's going to be a lot easier to get it.
But maybe there are new things that have come up, whether a physical issue, or if you're a breastfeeding mom, whatever it might be. There could be things that you don't have a record for that you also might want to look at. Do you just need time to stretch occasionally because you have a bad back now? Something like that may be worth applying, but you need to kind of look into it, look at what the likelihood of getting them are, and what you need to do to do it.
If you are getting extended time, you should talk to your bar providers about how they may adjust your study schedule or timed exams and things like that for any extended time. So, it's a great question to ask your bar review providers when you're shopping around.
Right. And if you are getting extra time, I think you need to think seriously either about starting early, so you have extra time to prep, or maybe not sitting for the July exam and giving yourself time to be successful on the February test. It always surprises me when I see people who are getting time and a half, maybe even double time, and they think that they're going to study in the same eight to ten weeks that somebody who's getting the standard time.
I'm like, "How is that going to work exactly? You're getting this extra time for some reason, right? So it's probably going to take you longer to study as well, and I think you need to plan
for that." Yeah, I think that's really true. Another question we get asked a lot is how to balance your life and bar prep. Such a great time of life.
That's a great question. Really great question. Well, you have a story around this. Hadn't you recently started dating your now-husband?
I did. Yes, my husband and I met right before I started my 3L year. And then we were living together during the bar. And it was intense. He did not have lawyers in his family, he had never experienced it. He was not prepared. My parents sat him down, who are both lawyers, and told him he wasn't allowed to break up with me that summer, no matter what I did or what he felt that he needed to do. They said that he was just not allowed, that I got a free pass all summer.
I didn't know about that when it happens. I was told about that afterwards. And then even at our wedding a couple of years later, he did put in his wedding vows that he knew I was the one when he lived through bar prep with me. And I thought that was romantic. I think he might have called me a lunatic. I can't remember. There was some colorful phrasing. It's gotten fuzzy. We've been married a long time now.
Well, I think if you survived that, you could probably survive most
anything. It's true.
Because realistically, it is a very, very intense time for everyone. We are all probably pretty Type A, overachievers. People who are lawyers tend not to really love uncertainty, and this is a process that is very uncertain throughout. You never quite feel like you know enough. So I think you just have to make a plan in advance for it, and also get a support system in place. Do you know that you're prone to anxiety and things like that?
Well, you probably need a therapist who you're meeting with regularly. And as much as you can, I think it's good to treat this like a full-time job, but be realistic about your breaks, your personal time. You're going to probably need to be pretty structured, just to have time to fit in your exercise and your laundry and cooking and all of these things. You want to clear your schedule for the summer as much as you can, but sometimes I think that trips people up too.
I've talked to people recently who failed, who said, "I just went all in. I ignored my kids, I focused completely on this, and in the end, I don't think it was great for my mental well-being." And I can absolutely see that. I think you have to try to be as balanced as possible. Yeah,
I think life doesn't stop. You can put some parameters on it, but I think especially if you have significant others, children, friends, dogs. I mean, my cat didn't really care if I'm studying for the bar. But generally speaking, I think you need to still invest in what you have going on. Now, there's a limit to that, right? I don't recommend getting married during bar prep - we have heard that, or moving. Moving during bar prep is also really distracting. Or both. That's true, or both.
But I do think that you are wise to try and take care of what you can, and then save your free time for the things that are really meaningful. So, do you really need to get your eyes checked during bar prep? Could you take care of that before? That may not be the best way to use an afternoon. But going hiking with a friend on a Sunday morning to get some sunshine - maybe that is worth the break, because it's going to clear your head and you're going to get some social interaction.
And it's even better if that friend's not studying for the bar, because then they will talk to you about other things.
True. Yeah, when I was studying for the California bar, I got the unlimited yoga pass at the studio close to my house and I was going twice a day. And I think that was actually great because it got me out of the house, I got some exercise, it was very calming. At some point they asked me why I was there so frequently all of a sudden. I said I was studying for the bar and the woman says, "Oh, maybe you should come three times day in case."
Yeah. I do think though that one of the things that we oftentimes aren't really great about is saying how people can help us. So, if you have family and friends who are coming to you saying, "What can I do to help you prep for the bar?", you might want to kind of prepare some answers of things that could be helpful. Could they be making you freezer meals, and so you can just thaw a can of soup, or lasagna, or whatever out of your freezer so you don't have to cook? Or do you have a dog?
Could they walk your dog? Or could they come over and clean your house with you, so you have some social interaction, but you're not doing all of your chores alone? Or could they run some errands for you? I think that that's something you can do. And folks like to help if you can say, "This is what would help." Or a gift certificate to get a massage, or a yoga pass, or a new pair of running shoes so you can go run in the park. It doesn't really matter what it is.
But if you can tell people what you need, you are more likely to receive what you need. And I think that's a really powerful life lesson. And as I get older and wiser, I see it play out over and over again. And I think it just really helps everyone feel like they can both be supportive and be supported.
Right. And I think that makes so much more sense than people just guessing, because then they're getting you something that you don't want and don't need. And it's probably a stressor for you, versus, "You know what would be really helpful, is if you could give me a gift certificate to Instacart, so someone else could go grocery shop for me." That would be amazing. I'd be like, "Great. I will do that."
Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about this. Last week, I had to run to two different drugstores. I won't bore you with why; it was bad planning on my part. But it took me like an hour and a half to run that errand. There was traffic around one of them, and then the line in one of them was long, and then my phone died and I couldn't pull up the receipt that I needed to take care of the one thing.
And I just realized how you can get into these moments where you're not even doing anything that mission-critical. These were all just errands that needed to be run, but because of the time that I picked to run the errand, which probably wasn't my best choice, and the poor location that I was in, I ended up burning a good chunk of my afternoon. And that's where I think a little bit of pre-planning or asking for help can come into play, so you don't lose hours doing things that are of no value.
And it's not like going to CVS is really a happy outing for most people. No. This is where it might make sense to plan ahead and get the prescription
that you use every day mailed to you in advance, so you have extra.
So you don't lose 90 minutes of your life to the lines at CVS.
Yeah. Anytime I try to order something online now, I really try to order with extra time and not at the last minute. So then I'm like, "Oh, you know what? If it doesn't come for a week, that's fine." Because otherwise it's like, "Oh, I have to pay extra to get it here faster." And it's just like, "Oh no." I know. So,
these little things of planning ahead in the spring can just lighten your mental load, and as much as you can automate or get things set up, it just gives you less stuff to stress about. Because life will happen and something will still happen during bar prep - your car is going to break down, or a friend's going to need something, or a family member will need something, because that is life. So, plan for what you can.
Exactly.
Thanks for listening! Join us next time for part two of this episode!
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