14 Amazing Bar Exam Study Tips!

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Follow These Bar Exam Study Tips From the Beginning of Bar Prep

With commercial bar review courses starting over the next week or so, we’d like to offer some suggestions and important bar exam study tips on how to Conquer your final test from the very beginning of your bar prep period.

1. Maintain good physical and mental health. Exercise or at least get fresh air daily. Take a walk to clear your head each day. Try not to eat fast-food or order take-out every day. Your mind and body will thank you at the end of July if you maintain a healthy diet and exercise regimen.

2. Recognize that energy drinks and coffee are not substitutes for water, meals, and sleep. Students have ended up in the ER because they abuse these stimulants. While studies have shown that, depending on level of intake, caffeine can help to improve mental performance, especially on alertness, attention and concentration, too much is not a good thing! If you are tired … sleep! Your body is telling you what it needs. Listen to it!

3. Sit down with friends and family at the beginning of bar prep and ask them for help. Yes, you heard us right! That could mean monetary support, emotional support, meal prep, babysitters, etc. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness when studying for the bar exam. The more help and accountability you have, the easier the next few months will be for you.

4. Life doesn’t stop while you’re studying for the bar exam. Friends and family will get married, have birthdays, graduation parties, BBQs, etc. You will have doctor’s appointments, dentist appointments, job interviews, etc. Over the next 2.5 months look at your personal, family, and professional commitments. Prioritize what you must attend and decline all other offers.  Recognize that overextending yourself while studying for the bar exam will just cause you greater anxiety. Know that it is OK to Just Say No to the family BBQ, or your second cousin’s daughter’s first birthday party. However, it is also important to spend time with family and friends. This is an important balance to keep and after studying hard, you are absolutely entitled to take breaks from studying. Just don’t book every weekend up until the bar exam.

5. Avoid all drama – family drama, relationship drama, law school drama, work drama. Avoid it like the plague. Don’t gossip. Be Nice. You want all the good karma you can possibly have while studying for the bar.

6. Disconnect during prime study hours or set limitations on your technology usage. You do not have to completely disconnect from social media – but you need to set limits and stick to those limits. Go ahead and check social media during your study breaks.  Just remember anything and everything is a distraction when you are studying for the bar exam. We suggest purchasing a kitchen timer and time your technology usage while studying. (The timer will also come in handy when doing timed multiple choice questions, essays, and/or the performance test under timed conditions.)

7. Turn off all notifications on your cell phone or computer. Every notification received is a distraction that hurts productivity and impacts your focus. Instead of being a slave to your notifications, allow your e-mails, texts, and social media updates to accumulate and check them at designated times (e.g., lunch, dinner, or after studying). Out of sight, out of mind.

8. Stop using your phone or e-reader before bed and do not use your phone as your alarm clock. It’s too tempting to check right before bed. Keep your phone in another room. Get a real alarm clock. When you get a good nights sleep, you are more productive the next day.

9. If possible, treat studying like a full-time job. You wouldn’t take five smoke breaks or coffee breaks in the morning at work; so don’t approach bar prep like you are on vacation. Plan to dedicate a solid 8-10 hours of studying each day.

10. Don’t wait to practice multiple choice questions, essays and/or performance tests until you feel ready. You will never feel ready. Jump in head first. You will thank us for it in July.

11. Don’t focus on checking all the boxes on your study schedule. Your quality of studying is more important than the quantity of questions or exercises you complete. Students become so worried about their bar course completion percentage or status bar that their focus shifts from learning to just checking boxes off items in their study schedule. We’ve worked with hundreds of repeat bar students who swear that they completed 100% of their bar review course. They failed. Completing 100% of the course is not a guarantee of passing. Focus on quality studying!

12. Don’t compare yourself to your friends or others you know studying for the bar exam. Everyone has their own approach, suggestions, techniques. What works for one individual, might not work for another. Focus on individual performance!

13. Stop measuring your self-worth or whether you will be a good lawyer based on a multiple choice practice set or one graded essay. During your preparation, focus on learning and understanding why the answers are the way they are. It is better to get questions wrong during bar prep and learn why you got those questions wrong – than to get them wrong on the day of the bar because you didn’t learn from your mistakes. The only score that matters is the one you get on the day of the bar exam.

14. Try to get ahead in your lecture schedule so that you can leave yourself with at least 2 weeks at the end to work on putting it all together. The biggest complaint we hear from first-time bar students is that they are sick of watching substantive lectures in the beginning of July. By finishing those lectures early, you will give yourself more time to focus on memorization, simulated practice, and test strategy. This is where BarSiege comes in.  BarSiege is a daily schedule that provides an hour-by-hour guide on how to study for the Bar Exam over the final two weeks, helping you refine your focus, improve memorization, write practice essays, performance tests, and answer multiple choice questions on all areas of the law.

Choose Fortnight Bar Prep to help you Conquer the Bar!