As I’m sure you’ve heard me say a few thousand times already, I failed the bar the first time. The difference between my first bar prep experience and my second, couldn’t be any farther apart. This was a purposeful design, as my first attempt was spent with a giant cloud of anxiety hanging over my head, and I decided for my second attempt that I could not live like that any more.
The first time I studied for the bar, I took the first month to get my bearings, realized my bearings were wrong and I needed to study how I studied, not how the commercial bar prep program told me to study, and spent the last month doing just that. Basically, I spent that last month cramming in as much information as I could, practicing here and there, and panicking 24 hours a day.
During my second attempt, I learned how to use my time more wisely and was able to spend my final month practicing essays and going through multiple MBE questions – practices that I think influenced my bar score more than reading long outlines could have. Below I’ll outline what I think you should do in your last month before the bar to give the bar your all.
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I went to law school with the intention and understanding that when I came out, I’d be working for a family company as their in-house counsel. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I had to take the bar exam, failed the bar exam, and had to face taking it a second time. I couldn’t figure out how to look for a job while studying for the exam because there just wasn’t enough time in the day to do it all and rest.
When I first started law school, the bar exam seemed so far away, and then all of a sudden it wasn’t. I was terrified by the process – so terrified, in fact, that I never asked what the admissions process was like.
From the day law school starts, you are inundated with offers from commercial bar prep programs for lower rates, free highlighters, or candy, in return for signing up to use their program. Many of my classmates locked in these specials within the first semester of school and had their payments broken into portions that were then added to their school tuition bill. Half-way through second year, one company had joined forces with my law school to offer their prep program as part of the tuition fee – everyone got it automatically, but you could opt out. 
“You can’t pour from an empty cup.” I don’t know about you, but I heard this phrase quite often during my first year of law school – mostly from people not in law school who were worried about my stress levels. And I can remember thinking, “they just don’t get it. This is the path I chose, and I will always be stressed out and fried.”
The first time I took the bar, I relied heavily on the commercial bar prep programs’ essay questions and graders’ responses to gauge how I was doing. I stayed away from the topics I was having a harder time remembering rules to, and I maybe did three MPT questions total. Now, I did okay on that portion of the bar, but if I had done just a little better, I would have passed. I used the tips below the second time around and passed with flying colors (not kidding – I increased my essay scores by 47 points), and I think if you were to incorporate them into you’re studying, you would also see an increase in score.