Here are two simple things that helped me pass the bar. First, in law school, I built a strong foundation. Parsed out, there are only fourteen (14) subjects that are tested on the California Bar Exam. In law school, I tried to take as many of these classes as possible. I did this because the two (2) months after graduation to study for the bar are not long enough to learn six (6), eight (8), or twelve (12) areas of law for the first time. It simply cannot be done. The harder a person works in law school to, at the very least, familiarize herself with these subjects is time that will be saved during their crash course two (2) month bar study. The time I saved I used practicing the actual test (writing essays and performance tests). Please understand, learning the black letter law is curial, but it is not sufficient. The time I spent working on taking the actual test, helped me more than memorizing the law. I was able to save this time, however, because I took a heavy course load of bar classes and familiarizing myself with the black letter law up front. I memorized the law too, I was just able to do it faster. Woody Allen once said 80% of life is showing up. Here, 80% of this test is learning the black letter law in law school.

My second piece of advice, and the other 20%, is study. I studied every single day. I didn’t study all day every day, but I did something once a day. I studied the law, I studied past essays, I studied past performance tests, and I studied multiple choice questions; I studied at least one of these areas every single day until the test began.

If you have questions for Connor, feel free to contact him via email at connoroc@uchastings.edu.