Repeating the Bar

The time has come when you check the bar examiners website, look up your number and see that you have failed the bar. Shock, disappointment, sadness, angry, embarassment - you run the gaunlet of emotions. What do you now?

Spend a little time with your emotions. Get them all out - have yourself a cry, throw your books across the room, but then there comes a time when you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. That will determine what you are made of and that, believe it or not, will determine what kind of lawyer you become. In the future, when you do pass the bar, you''ll bee in the middle of a particularly trying case and everything goes wrong, but your client is depending on you for help. You refocus your energy, dust yourself and your client off, and begin anew.

If you must take the bar exam again, do not take too long to get over your emotions. Have your cry and move on. It's time to refocus again on the bar. I've had students tell me that they have studied the hardest they had ever studied for anything in their lives for their first bar exam. That's probably true, but that's why it's time to examine how your study. Taking the exam again will call for a change in approach, strategy, and preparation for you to pass that final hurdle in fulfilling your dream of becoming a lawyer. The bar exam is not an academic exercise. The bar examiners want to know whether you are prepared to practice law.

Look at your scores in depth. What areas of the law did you not do well in? Were you weak on evidence or real property?What areas of the exam did you not do well in. Was it the essays, performance test or MBE? That's where you should start in reformulating how you are going to pass the bar. Did you do well in the essay portion or the performance test but not the MBE? The answers to these questions will determine how to prepare a strategy for yourself as your prepare for the next exam. If you are weak in writing essays, practice strategic writing and essay evaluation; if you are weak in MBE. do more practice questions and, more importantly, critique your subject matter comprehension.

Don't do the same thing you did for the first bar you took. I personally don't think that re-attending the same bar review course you took previously is going to help you. You need the extra time to really bone up on those weak areas, without, of course, neglecting the stronger areas of your performance. If you need extra help, see about getting a private tutor who can work one on one with you to keep you sharp and motivated and you'' be on the way to passing the bar. Keep working, don't despair and good luck.