Dustin here from IPassedMyBarExam.com and author of the #1 Amazon best seller, The 7 Steps to Bar Exam Success. And a question I get all the time from bar exam students is “when should I start studying for the bar exam?” and my advice is, and this applies generally speaking to students, is you really only need about seven weeks or six weeks or so to study for the bar exam.
If you’re taking a bar prep program, just start whenever the bar prep program tells you to do and that will generally be about seven weeks out. If you’re taking the February bar, they’ll probably start early January. They might have like a pre-course in late December. If you’re taking the July bar, that will probably start late May or early June for your bar prep.
Generally those are good times to start. If you start too early, you really risk burnout and you also risk not remembering everything that you study. If you study eight months out, how are you going to remember what you studied 8 months out when you start taking the bar exam?
Also, being in bar exam mode for 8 months that can be very stressing and draining on the mind. Again, six or seven weeks is really all you need, even for jurisdictions like New York or California. That’s all that’s really necessary to pass the bar exam.
What students get caught up is they think they have to memorize so many rules and do so many things, it’s really not that. If you boil it down to what actually matters, what should actually be focused on like taking practice exams as a hint, if you focus on those kinds of things, you don’t need more than seven weeks really to prepare for your bar exams.
Now there are certain exceptions to that. One is if you’re maybe a foreign bar exam taker. You’re coming from a different jurisdiction, you don’t have the basics, then maybe it’s a good idea to learn the basics and start that ahead of time. If you have some kind of disability and I don’t like to call it disability. I just call it challenges like ADHD or something like that, maybe you want to start a little bit sooner so you can make up for lost time or unfocused time that may occur down the road.
Also, if you’re working during the bar exam, you may want to start sooner. There’s plenty of students who have worked and passed, part-time or even full-time, in that six to seven weeks a lot of time. You got to kind of know yourself on that, so if you’re working maybe you start earlier and start prepping. Or if you’re a lawyer or somebody who took the bar exam or didn’t passed the bar exam like years ago and you’re kind of coming back in five, six, seven years later and you want to get back to the bar exam, maybe it’s a good idea to start getting in the mind set a couple of months before that rather than just jumping straight in.
Those are the kind of exceptions that I would recommend, otherwise seven weeks, six weeks is totally fine. It should be enough time. Just focus on the right things as you’re preparing and you will be A-Okay. You only need a D to pass the bar exam, so I’ll say you’ll be D-okay.
Anyway, that’s my tip for that. Head on over to IPassedMyBarExam.com/12Keys, and I’m going to give you a free pdf download on passing the bar exam. It will help you save time, save money, reduce stress and pass the bar exam. Head on over there now. IPassedMyBarExam.com/12Keys. Until next time. Please like and share this video and I will see you in the next video. Always remember that your name appears on the pass list.
Article by Dustin Saiidi
Dustin has written 134 awesome articles.
Dustin Saiidi, author of The 7 Steps to Bar Exam Success, graduated in the bottom half of his class, but passed the bar exam on his 1st attempt. He shares how he overcame those challenges and gives tips, advice, and strategies so you can pass your bar exam, stress-free.
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