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To prepare for the bar exam, or any intense all-or-nothing test, you need to pay close attention to how you practice for the test. You can’t just spend hours passively studying the material and expect to perform well when you take the actual test. Instead, you need to make sure you practice.
Start with mini-tests
After you have studied the bar preparation materials for a few weeks, you will have a basic understanding of the material that will be tested and how that material will be tested (ie essay format, MBE format, etc.). Now, it’s time to start your practice tests.
To start with, you need to use mini tests. A “mini test” is a short test of your knowledge on a single topic or subtopic. Examples of mini tests include: reviewing cards containing the elements of intentional errors, outlining an answer to an essay question, writing as much as you can remember about subject matter jurisdiction, doing 20 criminal law MBE questions, or writing a complete answer to a single essay question.
You can use mini-tests throughout your preparation for the bar exam, but they are vitally important during the first few weeks because they allow you to practice for short periods because most of your time during these early stages should be spent studying and memorization. After each mini-quiz, you review your results and learn from any mistakes you made.
Comprehensive practice tests
A few weeks before the bar exam, you should take at least one full practice bar exam. The purpose of taking a full practice test is to ensure that you can focus for a full test day. This is a difficult task. Since you recently graduated from law school, your attention span must be strong, but taking the bar exam is like having four finals every day for two or three days in a row. It is qualitatively different than a law school exam.
Many bar prep courses have a full practice test built into their schedules. If your bar prep course doesn’t, or if you’re studying on your own, be sure to make time for a practice test. In most jurisdictions, this means spending a full day writing several essays and a timed performance test and a second day doing 200 timed MBE questions.
Regardless of how you take a full practice test, take it seriously. Give it your all and see how you respond to the intensity of the bar examination process. This will expose your strengths and weaknesses and allow you to focus your studies during the last few weeks leading up to the bar exam itself.
