The whole thing I wrote about doing the fourteen-hour-a-day hooked on Bar/Bri study plan? I realised that wasn't so helpful when I was having lunch with a friend and she said "but I read about the fourteen hours a day on your blog -- I just can't do that." I also went to an "I passed the Bar" party for a friend who I am sure did NOT study 14 hours a day, but there he is, a new admittee just like the rest of us lucky 38%.
I can't speak for any of my classmates, but the most important thing I did was treat studying like a job. A new job for which I had no skills and needed constant training. I realized that I had never really studied properly before in my life -- not for lawschool, not for college, not in high school. I had to learn how to study, I had to go into parts of the office supply store I had never visited before, and I had to do it fast. I bought highlighters and flashcards and pens and pencils and an endless supply of legal pads, and I wrote outlines for the first time, wrote notes longhand, and wrote and wrote and wrote. I still have a deformed finger from all of the writing.
Then, when I was done writing, I typed up notes. I condensed the notes into outlines, and then condensed them some more. In the end, I had a two-or-four sided outline for each subject, and during the last few weeks, I had this outline handy when doing practice essays so that if I didn't know something, I could highlight it, and write it out, and go through the whole drill again.
I also kept Sakai's attack outlines with me like security blankets. Even if you don't do Bar/Bri, find attack outlines you like and memorize them. When you sit down for a con law question and remember to run through all the standing-type issues, and then realize you don't remember the test for commercial speech, it won't kill you because you have already written 1000 words and you are on a roll.
MBEs, well, I went old-fashioned, again, with flashcards for everyone I got wrong, and my outlines handy, and post-it notes of exceptions and rules (in that order) all over the house. It took me a while to stop fighting the MBEs, but I managed, despite my double-bubble nightmare on the actual exam.
PTs -- these really are, I think, the most important thing, whatever anyone says about hiking your score with MBEs or a really good essay. I forgot everything I had learned in lawschool and as a paralegal and, again, went back to outlines and pieces of paper and old-fashioned drafting. I did a lot of practice PTs, and this made the real things seem more comfortable because the practice ones were tough. To open an exam booklet and feel relieved when you see the question is a blessing, especially if there are 200 points riding on it.
Finally, my Bar exam studying secret, if there is one, is to be relaxed about time. I carved out a huge amount of time for studying, but spent a good part of that time watching daytime TV, eating lunch or surfing the web. Because I labeled the maximum amount of time possible as study time, it didn't have such a huge impact when I took time out, because I felt a sense of time-abundance, especially since I worked full-time through half of law school while raising three kids. Being at home for all that time "studying" was a luxury to me.
There is one more thing. People say that the Bar exam is useless because the law is not something you will ever use in practice. This isn't true. The PT method I learned is invaluable now I am the most junior associate in a busy firm, with bankers boxes full of motions in limine to respond to, and the basic, step-by-step, ABC legal knowledge helps make complex tasks feel more manageable.
It is worth it, and it is possible.
