One of the biggest mistakes you can make while preparing for the bar exam is wasting valuable time doing thousands of multiple-choice questions to improve your accuracy rate. Many bar exam takers waste time and energy on this, only to find out later they failed the bar exam because they didn’t do the one thing that would have helped them pass the bar exam.
Yes, practicing multiple-choice questions is important but sometimes what you need is to learn the rules well first. Otherwise, you answer thousands of multiple-choice questions with the same level of understanding. It’s no wonder it takes so long to see your accuracy rate improve when your level of understanding of the rules remains the same.
Recently, I talked to a bar exam taker who had completed 7,500 multiple-choice questions and worked with an MBE tutor before taking the bar exam. Despite her effort, she didn’t pass the bar exam. Think about how long it took her to complete and review 7,500 MBE’s and work with an MBE tutor. She wasted precious time and still didn’t get the results she wanted. She is perfectly capable of passing the bar exam if she ditches this strategy.
Would you advise her to do a couple thousand more to pass the bar exam? Of course not. That’s how I feel when I see bar exam takers wasting time doing hundreds or thousands of MBE’s before the bar exam without first learning the rules well.
Doing thousands of multiple-choice questions doesn’t work because the process doesn’t get you to a better place of understanding of the rules. It’s an inefficient process for learning the rules because it’s not fast enough. Even if you review the answers, you aren’t getting the full story on how that rule works and why. You only get a snippet of the rule due to the concise nature of multiple-choice questions.
A better way to prepare for the bar exam is to use your valuable time to understand the rules better. Use your time to interact with the material in a meaningful way, beyond a surface level. You will get more bang for your buck, so to speak, from your understanding of the rules than you will from practicing thousands of multiple-choice questions.
When you understand the rules better, you will get massive benefits:
- You will see your accuracy rate improve and it will be consistent (which was your goal in the first place when you set out to do thousands of MBE’s.)
- You will feel confident because you will know how to answer the question even when it’s presented differently.
- You won’t freeze or run out of time on the essays because you will spot the issues and know how to flush them out in the analysis.
You may be asking yourself, “How do I understand the rules better? Aren’t my bar prep course, outlines, succinct videos, flashcards, and other resources I’ve purchased enough?”
Yes, they are enough. But how have you been interacting with the material? Have you been staying busy going through the motions or have you been thinking through the rules and connecting the dots?
By this point, you probably own more bar prep resources than you care to admit. Purchasing one more bar prep resource won’t help you pass the bar exam because the creators of those resources can pass the bar exam in their sleep. However, you need to understand the rules well, not them. They learned the material so well that they can even sell their outlines.
The problem when you purchase outlines, videos, flashcards, etc., is that you skip the uncomfortable phase of figuring out the rules on your own. The learning happens in the process of creating those attack outlines and succinct videos. In essence, when you purchase their outlines, what you are really doing is hoping to skip the uncomfortable process of learning the rules. You are using them as a shortcut. I love a shortcut just as much as anyone else, but we all know shortcuts don’t work if you want lasting results. You need to sit with the material and learn it yourself if you want to pass the bar exam.
One thing you can do to understand the rules better is to put thought into the rules. Don’t simply commit rules to memory. Don’t simply read and re-read your outlines mindlessly. Think them through, connect the dots, and figure out how they work and why. They are all figure-outable if you put in the time and effort to figure them out.
Another thing you can do to understand the rules better is to fill in your knowledge gaps with other resources that explain the rules in paragraph format. Outlines don’t give you the complete picture; they are too disjointed. They assume you learned these rules well in law school and are meant to be used as a review; they are not meant to teach you the rules.
Think about it: when was the last time you turned to an outline when you were trying to figure something out? Never. It would take too long. It’s an inefficient way of figuring things out.
Rather, use your outlines in conjunction with other resources to fill in the holes in your understanding. It may take you an extra 20 minutes or an hour, but in the long run, it takes less time than failing the bar exam year after year.
The cold hard truth is that if you can’t answer an essay or a multiple-choice question, you don’t know the law. It doesn’t mean you need to purchase more resources. It doesn’t mean you aren’t smart enough. It doesn’t mean the bar exam is hard. It simply means you’ve been avoiding the uncomfortable phase. It means you’ve been relying on those shortcuts instead of understanding the rules yourself.
The choice is simple.
Will you waste your weeks of bar prep doing thousands of multiple-choice questions in an effort to improve your accuracy rate? Or will you use your bar prep time wisely by learning the rules you don’t yet understand?
Yohanna Romero Baca helps JD grads pass the bar exam. She passed the bar exam in 3 states after failing it once by leveraging the written portion. Now, she is on a mission to share what she learned in the process so you too can conquer the bar exam and start making a living as a licensed attorney. She created for you a FREE Workbook outlining the 3 strategies she used to go from failing the bar exam to passing it in 3 states. To download the Workbook, use this link.
