Trying again

Well you found out your name was not on the list of applicants that passed the bar exam. This is not the end of the world. Hold off on making any instant decisions. Give it a few days to sink in and wait for the final results to arrive by mail.

If you were close and your state offers the chance to get a copy of your essays take it. Give the essays to a third party to objectively look over and give you pointers. This can be a friend from law school or an attorney you know. The feed back will help make your essay writing stronger.

Do not take their criticism personally, they are only trying to help. Take a good look at the questions you scored the lowest on. Was your score low because you didn't know the material or because you didn't convey your thoughts? Either way it is a starting point for the next 6 months.

Use Past Exams to Study

By using past State released essay exams to study you can get a better feel for what the examiners are looking for in your answers.

The state of PA posts past exam questions, analysis and sample answers on their website. If you look at those past exams and then try to write the answers in essay form, you can then grade your own essays. The analysis section describes what the examiners were looking for and how many points each section is worth.

Ask for help

When studying for the bar exam don't be afraid to ask your friends for help. Rather than waisting hours looking for an answer that you think a friend may know, just ask them.

A quick e-mail in each direction will yield great results all the way around. You get your answer and your friend gets a surprise pop quiz to keep them on there toes.

Keep Briefing Cases

How long has it been since you briefed a case? You may think that briefing a case is like riding a bike and it will come back to you, but why take that chance? Brief at least one small case a week to keep in practice so you will not panic when you get the Performance Test.

Usually there is a minimum of one case maybe 2 cases in each Performance Test package. You will need to brief these cases as well as the rest of the library and be ready to write your essay. You don't want those performance test cases to be the first ones you have seen in months.

Fatigue and Lack of Focus

There will be days when you realize you are suffering from fatigue and lack of focus. If you are just not motivated to study step back for a little while and do something else.

Go for a walk and enjoy the fresh air, exercise, do some laundry or something that will make you feel productive. Once you have re-energized yourself try going back to the books for some more MBEs or take the essay material outside with you and read outside.

It is OK to take some down time for yourself. When you return to studying you will retain more.

MBE - One of the answers is correct

There are 4 possible answers to each MBE question and one of them has to be correct. When you are faced with a question that you do not know the answer, without wasting too much time, mentally step back clear your head and look at the four answers again while telling yourself "one of these is the correct answer".

Sometimes this is enough to help you eliminate the really bad choices so you can make an educated guess or find the correct answer by process of elimination. Granted this process will sometimes take longer than you want to spend on one question during the actual exam.

Practicing this technique now will help speed up the process on exam day.

Read the Explanation for Correct Questions

When doing the MBE questions make sure you read the printed explanation answer even if you got the question correct.

Every once in a while you will see that even though you got the question right it may have been for the wrong reason. Sometimes it was even a lucky guess.

Often there will be tips in the explanation that will help you with other questions of the same design.

Further, by reading an answer to a question you got correct you also drill that point of law further into your memory bank.