Lee Burgess: Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast.
Today we are talking about tips for what to consider before establishing
your bar study schedule, as part of our "Quick Tips" series.
Your Bar Exam toolbox hosts are Alison Monahan and Lee Burgess, that's me.
We're here to demystify the bar exam experience so you can study
effectively, stay sane, and hopefully pass and move on with your life.
We're the co-creators of the Law School Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the
career-related website CareerDicta.
Alison also runs The Girl's Guide to Law School.
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review or rating on your favorite
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If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us.
You can reach us via the contact form on BarExamToolbox.com,
and we'd love to hear from you.
And with that, let's get started.
Welcome back!
Today we will be talking about what you need to consider in order to create,
customize, or select your study schedule.
Whether you're choosing a preset bar course, modifying an existing study
schedule, or diving into creating your own self-guided study plan, you need to
make sure your schedule works for you.
We're going to talk about the impact of accommodations and past scores,
how much time you will be studying each week, how life events come
into play, scheduling breaks and catchup time, and giving yourself a
cushion for unexpected occurrences.
First up, let's talk about accommodations.
If you don't get accommodations, this won't apply to you, and if you get them
but your accommodation is something like special permission to wear
headphones, to drink water, or to sit in a particular type of chair, then they
won't impact your study schedule at all.
If, however, you have extended time in some way, you need to make sure
that you are factoring that into your study schedule, or that the
study schedule you purchased can be modified to take that into account.
Extra time accommodations impact how many practice essays, performance
tests, or MBE questions you can complete in a given study session.
This is generally reasonably easy to adjust, but what really catches people
off guard is the full practice test.
Full practice tests are absolutely crucial to bar success, and
practicing with your exam day timing is what makes them so valuable.
You learn things about your stamina and needs that you just don't
get in individual essay practice.
If you have an extra 15 minutes or so to accommodate an extra break, then you
should practice accordingly, but this probably won't make a huge difference
to the schedule itself, as long as you are able to plan for a couple of
days to accommodate the practice test.
If, however, you have enough extra time that you will have one or two
extra days to take the exam, then your schedule needs to leave room for you to
have that extra day or two to practice.
Continuing with things that only apply to some listeners, if you're
a repeat taker, then you need to take a look at your score report.
We've talked about this on our blog and are also happy to
take a look if you'd like to.
We've linked to that in the show notes.
To the extent that your jurisdiction gives you information, did you ace
one part of the exam, but another one lagged significantly behind?
Were you generally pretty even, but within a few points of passing?
Or generally pretty even, but also have a lot of ground to make up?
Note that how close you are depends heavily on how your
jurisdiction scales its scores.
A 30-point gap is pretty close in California, but a
bigger stretch in a UBE state.
That information can be super useful for planning your bar studies.
If you have one definite strength, then you should still spend
time on that part of the exam.
But your focus should be on maintaining your scores and maybe building on
that strength to get even more points.
Don't ignore it completely, but more time should be spent on your weaker
area, figuring out what went wrong and doing dedicated, thoughtful
practice to help you make adjustments.
If you were close to passing, then you should continue the work you
did before, but maybe with a heavier emphasis on memorization and practice.
You likely already have the background knowledge and a general understanding
of what you need to do on exam day, so you can probably bridge the gap
with memorization, practice, and thoughtful assessment of that practice.
If you have more ground to make up and you don't have a no-longer- relevant
reason that would account for it, then you need to take a hard look at what
you did last time and do something different, but in a thoughtful way.
For most people, this means more time spent practicing.
For some people though, they also need more time developing a baseline
understanding of the material, which also means that they need more total
study time than they devoted previously.
Once you have a sense for what your accommodations and past scores
mean for how you will need to adjust your time, you can get into
the stuff that impacts everyone.
How much time do you really have for your studies?
For this exercise, we recommend either a digital calendar or a dry erase calendar.
The digital calendar should be one that you find easy to manipulate and that
won't impact your actual calendar, at least while you're in the planning phase.
A dry erase calendar can be easier for some people to look at.
Both have the benefit of being easy to make changes in, and that's
what's really important here.
So, you should use whatever is easiest for you to review.
As you're doing this, keep in mind that our general rule of
thumb is 400 hours of study time.
This goes up if you have accommodations that impact your timing, if you have
a lot of ground to make up based on prior exam scores, or you have a shaky
background in the tested law; and can go down if you are taking a one-day
attorney's exam in California, or if you are within a few points of passing
and really know the law, but need to just throw yourself into practice.
First, take a look at how much time you are going to be
studying in an average week.
We talk about studying full-time versus part-time, and that's a useful
way to sort through schedule options.
But at the end of the day, one person's full-time studying might
be the same number of hours as another person's part-time studying.
So, really think about this.
What other day-to-day obligations do you have?
How much time do they take and how much energy do they leave you with?
Are there any that you can drop or reduce during the bar study period?
Keep in mind that meals and rest are not items that you should drop
from your daily obligation list.
Once you do that, how many hours of solid study time will
you have each day of the week?
We suggest actually looking at the specific times of day when you can study
and scheduling tentative appointments with yourself to study, just to
see what that makes your week look like, especially if you can include
your daily obligations on there.
Also, look at the last few weeks before the bar exam and consider if, when,
and how you might be able to ramp up your studies to make a final push.
Once you get your standard week figured out, take a look at
holidays or other live events.
Is someone important to you graduating or getting married?
Are you planning on the February exam, but your family is absolutely
obsessed with the winter holidays?
Do you have one or more trips planned for the middle of your bar study period?
List all of these things and assess them one at a time.
What can you reschedule?
What can you skip?
Of the things that are set in stone for you, how much time will they ideally cut
from your schedule, and how much time will they realistically cut from your schedule?
We work with a lot of people who tell us that they'll study during their family
holiday gathering or while traveling to and from an out-of-state wedding.
But when it comes down to it, there's too much going on for
that study time to be useful.
Just be honest with yourself about what you can do, so you can plan effectively.
Get all of this information onto your calendar along with your standard week.
Whew!
That was already a lot to think about, and we haven't even gotten to the
really squishy considerations yet.
First up, breaks.
Most bar studiers who struggle with this seem to fall into one
of two camps on taking breaks.
Some bar studiers are absolutely convinced that they will never need breaks.
They will study 12 hours per day, every day, from law school
graduation until the bar exam.
Or they're working a standard 9 to 5 job, but will study for
eight hours in the mornings and evenings and 12 on the weekends.
For these people, reality sets in quickly, and if their study schedule relied on 60
or more hours of study time per week, it will fall apart and leave them frantic.
The other camp is the studiers who plan for more breaks than study time.
They either overcorrect so hard against overstudying that they don't have enough
dedicated time to pull together a cohesive schedule, even though they actually have
time available day-to-day, or they plan so many trips throughout the study period
that they can never build momentum.
As usual, there's no one "right" answer, but optimal break planning
falls somewhere in the middle.
At minimum, as mentioned above, you want to make sure that your study plan allows
for a sufficient time to sleep and eat.
If you aren't taking care of those basic needs, you won't be able to
retain information in an effective way.
If possible, we also recommend trying to come up with at least one activity
per day that will recharge you.
This does not have to be something expensive, and it shouldn't
be anything that is lengthy.
Think about a phone call with a friend who is willing to chat with you about
anything but the bar exam, a regular workout routine, a daily meditation
practice, a walk around the neighborhood, or an episode of a favorite show.
Note that some of these types of activities might also be able to
serve as a reward for finishing your daily or weekly study tasks.
We also encourage you to incorporate breaks within your study time.
This might not appear on your study schedule itself, but it will impact
how much time you give yourself for each activity and could seriously
impact how you feel at the end of it.
Look up the Pomodoro technique and consider adapting it to your bar study.
During substantive review, most people will hit a wall at some point where
they are reading without thinking.
Set a timer for 20 or 30 minutes, or whatever works for you,
each time you start to review.
When the timer goes off, set another timer for five minutes.
Use that time to stretch or get some water and do a mini reset before diving back in.
When you are doing a practice essay or a PT, you should be setting a timer for
the amount of time you'll have to write during the bar exam, but you can arrange
for yourself to have a five-minute break between writing the essay and
reviewing it, and another between your review and diving into the next task.
When it comes to taking days off from study time, our recommendation
depends heavily on how much and how long you are studying.
Again, we have a flexible rule of thumb with 400 hours as the target study time.
If you are studying long enough that you can hit that target with five study
days per week, then you can probably leave two days a week off or for catchup.
If your studies are more condensed, then you might want to plan on one short day
per week - performance test practice can be great for a short day, since it doesn't
require any outside law - and leave the rest of that day open for breathing room.
So, these are your planned breaks.
But what about unplanned ones?
Illness is really the biggest one.
It can knock days or weeks out of your bar study time, and
you can't really predict it.
But there are also major life events and changes, both good and bad,
that can pop up without warning and really throw off your studies.
As you make or select your study schedule, before you get frazzled and exhausted,
take some time to figure out where you'll make up time if something happens.
Is there a second or third review of the subjects that you could reduce or remove?
Or maybe you can pare the substantive review back from study
development of understanding to quick
memorization of heavily tested law.
Basically,
Lee Burgess: take a look at your schedule before you start and figure out what you
can do to go from an "ideal" schedule to a "good enough" schedule, and write
down that plan just in case you need it.
Also, make a decision about what changes to your study schedule would
lead you to make the shift from preparing for the immediate bar exam to
preparing long-term for the next one.
No one wants to think about these contingencies, but taking the time to
plan for them will leave you feeling more anchored if something happens.
Once you have all this information - and I get it, it's a lot - you
can plan your bar studies.
This might mean filling your calendar with your own agenda of substantive
review and practice, or figuring out which purchased study schedule and prep course
will best fit into your available time.
Either way, it's always best to have enough information to
make the right decision for you.
And with that, we are out of time!
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If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to
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Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!