Brennan Blogs: How I Passed the California Bar Exam

I was recently asked if I could write up a little blurb for the San Diego County Bar Association's weekly publication. I was asked to respond to the following question - Now that you have passed the bar, what advice do you have for current students preparing for the exam?

I have decided to share it here just in case any other future applicants venture their way onto this blog. Well, here was what I wrote up...

The State Bar of California requires that all prospective attorneys spend six hours a day for three days taking the California Bar Examination. In preparation, I spent about ten hours a day for three months studying. Essentially, given my intense studying habits, the bar exam itself was just another day.

Make the bar exam just another day.

When the results came out, I didn’t want to look back with my name left off the pass list wondering if I could have done more. Accordingly, I decided to leave no stone unturned. I took both Kaplan’s full MBE course and Barbri’s comprehensive bar course. I went to every class. I made an outline for every subject, sometimes two where I needed to know both California and Federal law. I completed all of Barbri’s near 100 practice essays. I finished five Barbri practice performance tests. I answered over 3,000 practice MBE questions provided by both Barbri and Kaplan (on a side note, Kaplan’s practice MBE questions were undoubtedly superior). Lastly, I made a flashcard for almost every practice MBE question I missed.

I did all that, I made the bar exam just another day, and I passed. I hope whoever reads this does the same, especially the passing part.