The most important factor in passing the bar exam is designing a good study schedule and, equally important, sticking to it. Once you have eliminated all distractions, you are ready to start work on your bar exam study
schedule. Either a bad study schedule or no study schedule will kill your chances of passing the bar exam. Here are two tips:
1. Make a detailed written daily study schedule and stick to it. Account for every minute. If you are taking a bar review course, as you should be, include that time in your plan. Plan every day, day in and day out, from now to the bar exam. Plan your life, live your plan. Post your schedule on your bathroom mirror, on your door, on your refrigerator.
2. Include study for every part of the bar exam every day. Don't just do MBE questions, do everything, every day. Spend time on the MBE, time on outlining essays, and time on studying your lecture notes on the essay subjects. If your state has an additional part, such as the New York Multiple Choice questions, spend time doing five multiple-choice questions, too.
Stick rigidly to your time limits. Students go over their time limits trying to "finish" a single subject, and then they find that they have neither finished that one subject nor accomplished anything else. Spend only the time you have planned to spend.
Teaching Assistant Marcia DeGeer, who works at a large law firm in Manhattan, suggests that students should get a big wall calendar covering their two-month study period. They should assign each subject to specific days, being careful not to leave a subject they have never studied before until the last few days before the bar. I shall return later to how to distribute the subjects in your schedule.
Good luck!
Mary Campbell Gallagher, J.D., Ph.D.
President, BarWrite® and BarWrite Press
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