Want to know the 5 Biggest Bar Exam Mistakes? Take a listen to Jessie Zaylia, who failed the bar twice, made a few mistakes along the way, learned from them, and passed on her 3rd time.

Listen to what corrections she made to make her a bar exam passer.

Here is a link to Jessica’s Videos and blog, where she reveals how she passed the bar exam:

Mistake #1: Not Reviewing Bar MBE answers in detail

Mistake #2: Didn’t Nail the Main issue in the answer

Mistake #3: Didn’t Master Time Allocation with Timed Practice Exams

Mistake #4: Didn’t Go to ‘Library’ before ‘File’ on Performance Tests

Mistake #5: Be Honest with yourself about Test Anxiety and Learn How to Handle It

Do you want someone to look at your bar essay answer and give you personalized feedback on an essay by essay basis?

Jessie can help you!

Contact her at http://www.IPassedMyBarExam.com/CBX.  Mention “DUSTIN” to get 20% off your essay or PT review!

Here is a full transcript of this interview:

Intro: You’re listening to the IPassedMyBarExam.com podcast, helping you pass your bar exam with ease and confidence; episode number 18.

Dustin: Welcome, future bar exam passers! My name is Dustin Saiidi, founder of IPassedMyBarExam.com and author of the Amazon bestseller The 7 Steps to Bar Exam Success. Today we’re going to bring on Jessie Zaylia from cbxtutor.com. Jessie took the bar and passed on her third time. She now helps others by tutoring them in a very unique way which we’ll hear at the end of the interview. She also will come on today to share her top 5 mistakes she made during her failed bar attempts, and why she passed on the third time. So without further adieu, let’s go in to the call.

Alright, welcome and we are here with Jessie Zaylia from cbxtutor.com who’s going to come on today to tell us the 5 biggest mistakes people take when going through the bar exam. Hi Jessie, how are you doing?

Jessie: I’m doing great, Dustin. How are you?

Dustin: I’m doing well. Thanks again for coming on today.

Jessie: You’re welcome.

Dustin: So, tell the listeners a little bit about you and your bar exam experience, kind of what you went through, and how you came around to helping people the way that you do now with the bar exam.

Jessie: My experience with the California bar was terrible. I don’t think that anyone has, necessarily, pleasant experience with the California bar exam but mine was awful. I took it three times before I passed, and for anybody who’s a repeater, they know that when they realize that they fail the first time it’s kind of as if your world crashes because your friends are passing and you’re not, with maybe a few exceptions, and it’s a giant blow to your ego and also makes you feel a little bit hopeless like, “Oh my goodness, Am I going to be able to pass this thing? I tried so hard. What am I doing wrong? Yada, yada, yada..” It takes a lot of will power to get up on that horse again. So I did, I took it the second time, and interestingly my written scores did not change, not even for one tiny bit from the first time that I took it. But my MBE scores shot up, and I actually almost passed with my MBE scores. I was 7 points away from passing, so then I tried some things that were very very new for the third time. And when I took it the third time I felt normal. The first two times I didn’t feel normal. I would look at the essays or PT and say, “Okay, this is different and so I can’t answer the way that I normally answer because this is different, and I’ll fail if I answer it the same way. And I learned that’s a little something called test anxiety. That actually it is the same and if you feel like it’s different, you probably need to see whether that’s something that you are afflicted with and then you may do something about it. So, I promised myself that if I did indeed pass the California bar on the third time, that I would post about it on my blog. And my blog is 100% free; there’s no ads, there are no ads, and it’s just not monetized in any way. I want people to be able to find this information for free because the bar is just so oppressive, so that’s what I’ve done.

Dustin: Yeah, that’s awesome, congratulations on passing. And that’s how I found you is through your blog, and you put 3 videos on there about your bar exam experience. They were very captivating, let’s say, when I was watching it. And you know, a lot of people have liked it. I think right now we have 41 comments just on that blog post alone which is a lot in the bar exam space.

Jessie: Thank you.

Dustin: So, what did you do, I know we”ll kind of go into the 5 mistakes in a little bit or unless it’s going to come up during that time. What did you kind of do with the MBE? You said that on the second time your score shot up. Was there something different, specifically, that you did?

Jessie: Yeah, there was. And this is going to be one of my 5 but that’s okay. We can go ahead because that is a good question. Now, I know that this is something that people really disagree upon. The blogosphere is rife with the division between whether to do PNBR through Kaplan or whether that’s a big waste of time. The first time that I took the bar, I did not take PNBR Kaplan because I read so many entries and opinions about people thinking PNBR is a big waste of time. Plus, I was taking Bar/Bri already and they have their MBE component. But the second time I went and took Kaplan, and there is such a difference between the two, I found. I found the questions in Kaplan to be much more realistic when compared to the bar. I found that the questions for the bar we had were too easy. I felt that they do not accurately reflect like, the degree of difficulty that existed in bar exam. So I took Kaplan and they have a combined course, I want to say it’s something like, 5 days at the beginning and then at the very end towards the last week or two before you take the bar they have a 3 day thing that they do. So, I took whatever that’s called. I mentioned that in my blog and I gave a link to it. But, that’s what I did. I also did something very different from what people are typically told. People are told to do 33 questions a day. 33 brand new questions a day to get through that giant red book or to get through whatever book you’re going through. I did not have time to do that, I just didn’t. I needed to focus on my writing which is what most people need to focus on. So what I did instead is, I took those 5 days initially that I took with PNBR. I saved my answers, I always save my score sheets, and I would go back through those. And I would study the rationale behind the answer that was given, and I would look at why I answered the way I did, whether I got the answer right or wrong; it didn’t matter. I went over those questions, and I did that throughout my entire time studying for the bar and even at the very very end. When I took their 3 day tests at the very end, my scores were much better than it were at the beginning, much better.

Dustin: Nice. So, good preparation program which in your case was PNBR Kaplan for the MBE helped you out.

Jessie: Yeah, yes. I didn’t do it the way they told me to do it. I just repeated the questions that I had taken before. I didn’t do 33 questions a day, that was just impossible.

Dustin: Right.

Jessie: To me it seems like, if you do 33 questions a day, it’s not necessarily helpful if you don’t have the time to then look in the back and really study the rationale behind the answers for those questions. That’s so important, the rationale’s critical because you’re not going to see those exact same questions on your bar so it’s not a matter of memorizing that, you have to get in to the bar’s head. So for me that was very important, and if that meant that I didn’t have time for 33 questions that’s just what that meant. And my scores, the second time when I took the bar, since I failed I got my scores back and my scores from the MBE were very good. I think, what is it, they do a raw score and then they do a like, askewed score, they curve it. So I think my raw score, if I remember right, was 138. Something like that.

Dustin: Wow!

Jessie: It is high. So that’s what I did. I did not do those new 33 questions everyday. I did not have time for it.

Dustin: Nice! I think what you bring-up is a very, very critical tip as well. Because I see a lot of people they’re like, “Oh, just try to do like, 2,000 MBE questions.” They’re focused on the number but, what you said is right. You got to – you can’t just, it’s not just the number of questions you blitz through. It’s not the quantity, it’s more of the quality. So you got to go back and look at it; “Why is this the right answer”, “Why are these the wrong answers,” and really absorb it.

Jessie: Yeah, that was my experience.

Dustin: Awesome, awesome tip. What’s the second mistake then, I guess we can jump in to.

Jessie: Okay so, I’ll just sort of go in to the other portions of the bar. My second tip is for the essays. One thing that I noticed is that it’s not about doing this crazy issue spotting, unless you’re in an evidence question that happens to be a race horse. Which the latest evidence questions from what I have noticed from the past 5 years or so, they have not been race horses anyway. They are also going along with the same pattern as the other essays and that is, you typically have one major issue per essay.

One of my friends put it to me this way, “Jessie, the bar examiners just want to make sure that when you get out into the field, you are not going to commit malpractice.” I think that’s absolutely true, now that I look back upon my experiences. And you have to make sure that you really are paying attention to the most obvious thing that the examiners are trying to kick you in the teeth with. So when you have an assault issue, they’re talking about assault in that paragraph, the next paragraph they’re probably going to talk about a battery, you might have a second assault appear somewhere in the next paragraph. But I’m just going to give an example.

When you take the bar, the same people who annoyed the ever living crap out of you during law school, who would talk about the exam immediately after the exam do the same thing with the bar. It’ very annoying.

And I remember, I had this issue, it was a civil procedure question, and this was the third time I took the bar. And there was a very very small collateral estoppel issue. The big issue was not that, there was a bigger issue. I can’t remember what the bigger issue was because it does not fit in to the story. But I had time so I mentioned that there was collateral estoppel, or that it was an issue and that it did exist and why did it exist. But I took two sentences to deal with it. Seriously, didn’t take a lot of my time.

Then I was done and after that period was over, even before we were let out of the giant room, this jerk behind me he said, “Man, did you see that res judicata question?” So if we remember back to law school there’s a difference between res judicata and collateral estoppel, there’s a difference. And sometimes the two are fit under the giant umbrella called res judicata, but there are actually two separate issues. And so this guy was talking out res judicata, res judicata, that he was freaking out everybody around him. I saw the beads of sweat pour upon our faces and I thought, you know what, that guy is not going to get any points for what he think is brilliant about res judicata. And he’s probably spent way too much time talking about that because he’s so impressed with himself, as opposed to the giant issue of, you know, whatever the hell it was i have no idea. You know, let’s just say, jurisdiction. Something like that. I’m sure he probably missed the very giant issue because he was so proud of himself for finding this very small issue.

So don’t do that. Don’t listen to people and them thinking that they are so brilliant that they found this very tiny nugget of something. First of all, they’re probably wrong. Second, they probably spent way too much time addressing that rather than allocating appropriate time to discuss the major issue in a forward manner.

So that is my third piece of advice, is to make sure that you can look at the paragraph in front of you and think, what major issue are they waving a flag about. And then the same question with the next paragraph, and the same question with the next paragraph.

Dustin: Right. They’re also probably re-taking the bar.

Jessie: Who knows. This guy was so cocky that it makes me think he was a first timer because I don’t know if any repeaters are very cocky. Maybe I’m wrong about that but, I know I wasn’t. It just blew my confidence down the ground.

Dustin: Awesome! I’m sure we’ll get in to that later as well. Great, great tip on mistake to avoid. What is the next one?

Jessie: The next one, since it ties in so well with what I was talking about earlier regarding time allocation is, time allocation. And for this I have a story, I like to have stories that are examples of the mistake because I think we learn better from examples.

Time allocation is so very important and people think that they don’t need to practice timed exams. I think that probably, I would think that it’s a small percentage of people who feels this way but I’m learning more and more as I’m helping candidates for the bar, I’m learning that more and more people are actually not doing that. They are not taking timed practice exams.

There was a study that came out from Harvard and I linked it to my blog, and it said that practicing exams is a better way to learn the material than actually sitting down and studying and reading the material over and over again; it’s taking practice exams well. If that’s true, then by extension, I would imagine that since the California bar is a timed exam then you can do nothing but benefit by taking timed exams.

One of my friends, who is brilliant by the way, she’s very very smart and she eventually did pass the bar but she failed twice. The second time she took it, was the second time that I took it. And there was a contracts question, she and I both love contracts, I don’t no anyone else who loves contracts but we love contracts. And after the first portion, it was the very first essay, she came up to me during lunch and she looked like she was about ready to pass out. She was gray and I said, you know, “What happened?” She said, “I set-up this beautiful contracts answer. It was perfect. It was just step, by step, by step. It was a perfect outline of everything, all the issues, adequate discussion on all the major issues – everything. And then I looked up and I have five minutes left.” When you take the bar exam, similar to when you take a law school exam, time does not fly by more quickly when you are taking one of these exams. So you must, must, must practice timed. Very important that you do that.

Dustin: That’s awesome! And I think, that’s actually one of my number 1 tips I give as well. And for me is the number 1 reason I passed was taking timed practice exams over and over and over, as opposed to just learning the law and studying the law and trying to figure all that stuff out. Once I figured out that it’s the essays and what we’re actually tested on is kind of like, walking in to that room, take a 1 hour essay and, you know, issue spot and being able to write a good legal analysis. That’s when everything changed for me.

Jessie: Right.

Dustin: Great, great tip and interesting story with your friend. Did she end up passing, eventually?

Jessie: She did. She took it the very next time. Didn’t make that mistake and she passed.

Dustin: Awesome! What is the next mistake that people make?

Jessie: Okay so number 4, I’m going to go ahead and jump on to the PTs that we were addressing you know, one of each part of each exam. So the second time that I realized that I failed the bar, I finally checked my ego at the door 100%. I emailed some of my friends bout practice essay. I called one of my buddies about the writing as well and he called me back and it’s my friend Noah, he won’t mind me mentioning his name because now I just call this the Noah method. He spent an hour on the phone with me, explaining how he does PTs. And I explain it more thoroughly on my blog but I’ll just give you the quicker tip.

And the quick tip is to always, always, always, always go to the library before you go to the file. I think that this is going to apply to everybody but, I think the trick attached to that is going to apply more to your laptoppers than your handwritters. I hate to say that for I know there are handwritters out there but, let me just explain to you why. When you read a case in law school, chances are you wrote a little case squib or you stole somebody elese’s case squib or something like that to learn more and more and more. Then you’re given a law school exam, you know the law already, and you apply the facts.

The same thing is going to happen here, that when you very first start a job, kind of the opposite happens. Your boss gives you some details just like it does on the instructions and in the memo that you get in your PT. And then he’s giving you some of the facts and you’re thinking, “Oh God, I need to look at this facts.” and you don’t know what you’re doing because you don’t know the law of whatever particular firm or field that you’re working in, chances are. And then you try to research the law and it takes so much longer to do that.

I have the benefit of working for a firm the entire time I was taking the bar exam all three times so, by the time the third time came I thought, you don’t do that. It makes sense that you go to the library first because you know the law, and afterwards you apply facts. So what do you do? You should go to the library if you have statutes there, if it’s just a couple of statutes, a couple of code sections, then okay read the code sections or whatever browse through them.

If you have a whole bunch of a longer list of code sections, that’s not going to be helpful to read through those. It just isn’t. It’s going to be a grandiose waste of your time. The cases are going to point to the code sections, I think a lot of us knows this already but, that’s true. So you need to go to your cases and you need to write a little case squib. Always start out your rope part with whatever statute is going to apply. But you will know that because the cases are going to tell you what statutes are going to be the important ones.

So you want to do that, and then after you’re done stating the black letter law in the statute, then you can talk about how the case interpreted that. You do a little case squib and then you do that for the very next case, and you do that for the very next case. So if you’re a laptopper, obviously you’re able to do this and leave quite a bit of space between your case squibs. What I actually like to do, I’ll just back-up a second, is while I’m reading the memo I’ll do an outline of how that answer should look like right there and then. My answer is outlined, all I need to know is where to plug-in that case squibs when I write them. So when I read case number 1, I’m going to know whether it’s going to fit to issue number 1 or issue number 2 or issue number 3, whatever. So then I’ll just plug-in that case squibs where ever it needs to go.

So by the time I’m already in the file, I’ve already got my outline which are going to be your issues. I’ve already got my case squibs, which is going to be your goal. Now all I need to go and do is to find those facts. And there is a way to figure out, you know, what things are more important. You know, if there is a transfer then that’s probably what’s really important so pay attention to that. But that’s going to be the most important thing is that you go to library first. Always do that.

Once he told – once my friend Noah told me this is what he does or what he did and he passed the first time, I went home, I did exactly what he said. I did it timed, very important again, and then I looked in to the sample answer and it was so good. It was so good!

And I have never had that easy of a time on a performance exam, ever, before that moment. But once he talked to me, it made sense in my brain, I put it together by practicing it once and then I never touched the PTs from that moment until I took the bar exam. And when we talked was the day after I found out I failed the second time. So I didn’t touch a PT from that day all the way until I took the bar exam for the third time and it was like, it all made sense. Much easier.

Dustin: Nice! Sounds like a very simple way to break down all the irrelevancy that’s put into a PT, and just finding what’s important and put it down.

Jessie: I hope so, it definitely worked for me. It just makes sense, the worlds came together, cosmos aligned, whatever. It made sense to me.

Dustin: Cool! We’ll get people your email and contact at the end of this so that they can contact you if they want to know the Noah method from you as well. Cool, and what is the fifth mistake you made or somebody made?

Jessie: This one actually is something that I made and I’m sensitive about this one, not personally, but I’m sensitive to the fact that others might want to hear this. When I spoke earlier about test anxiety, I just did not think I had it especially because in undergrad, I was so good at what I did. I made straight A’s. I was given all these awards by the faculty, faculty voted me for most outstanding graduate and everything.

And so I thought, “Oh, I know what I’m doing.” I think a lot of us who go to law school come as rock stars, a lot of us do. And then most of us get kicked in the teeth. I like to use the metaphor being kicked in the teeth a lot when I talk about the law, in case you haven’t noticed because it’s what it does. Anyhow, I thought for sure, test anxiety would not apply to me because I was always very very good at taking test when I was an undergrad. Now when I came to law school, I was not as good with taking my test but I did not attribute that to any idea that I could have test anxiety. Instead, I attributed that to me not being good, oh I don’t know, any other sort of self-defeating how-horrible-am-I appeal that I have to my self.

That’s what I would do but I wouldn’t want to show it because everybody thought I was very smart. So I didn’t want to show that I had this doubts by myself. And even professor, I had a couple of professors come up to me, after different semesters and they said, “Oh my God, Jessie you’re so smart, I can’t believe you have a B on this exam.” And they would sit down and they would talk to me, and when they are talking to me it made sense that I was able to talk to them about the exam.

I had ideas, I’ll be like, yes that’s right. But when it came down to the test, I was all over the place. Again, I didn’t realize that. I did not recognize it for what it was. Finally when I took the bar and when I fail it the second time, I had somebody telling me, “Do you have test anxiety? You need to check this out.” And I was like, “No I really don’t think I have it. I just think that I’m bad at this, I’m not good at this.” He said, “You need to figure this out immediately. It’s worth it for you to do that.”

So the third time I took the bar, I did everything differently, except for the MBE obviously since that worked for me before so I kept that exact same thing for MBE. But everything else I did differently including going and getting medicated. I talked to somebody about it. They said, “It seems to me that you probably do have test anxiety if you’re sitting down during the California bar and when you’re getting the same information. The essays are, they are not exactly the same content but, you handle them the exact same way every time essentially. And when your looking at that and saying, “Oh my God, this is so different. I can’t answer this the same way or I’m going to fail.”

That is test anxiety by the book. So I got medicated. I got put on a daily, low dosage. And that just helped me maintain for those 3 months or whatever. And then I got put on an as-needed which was Ativan. And I practiced taking Ativan too. I practiced everything.

So I did a fake bar exam the week before the actual bar, the third time. And I practiced getting up in the morning, taking an Ativan, and then taking the test to see how I did. And I did okay. With the exception of one where I didn’t really know the law and I didn’t know what hell I was doing, but I didn’t get as bad scores as I thought I would.

And so I practiced that and that’s exactly what I did for the bar. I continued taking my low dosage everyday the entire 3 months, and every morning I would take one Ativan and I sat down for the bar and I felt like a normal person. It was unlike the prior two experience, completely. It was just, I felt normal, and I just can’t tell you how re-assuring that was.

Dustin: Wow! Thank you for sharing that. I know, I appreciate, and I’m sure the listeners can appreciate that as well. So thank you.

Jessie: Well that’s my pleasure. It’s better that you go and at least just see if this is something that might apply to you. It might not but, you know, it might. And you’ve got to get over yourself, to get over the bar you just must do that. It’s worth it.

Dustin: What were some of the symptoms? I know you mentioned a little bit when you’re sitting down on the test and you start having those worry thoughts. What are some other symptoms you had that maybe led you to believe that you may have test anxiety?

Jessie: I wish I could say. I don’t remember any particular symptoms that would have otherwise tipped me off. All I remember is, when I would sit down for the bar. So unfortunately, this may apply to the repeaters better because you practice exams even though they’re practice, they’re not like the actual bar. And that it is the exam itself.

So if you’re sitting there and if you’re thinking, “This really is different. This is actually not at all the same what I’ve been looking at before. So I can’t answer the same or I’m going to fail.” And so you start answering differently. That’s going to kick you in the butt.

And that is the symptom. And that’s the only symptom that I recognize. It’s not like, sweaty face or my heart started beating really weird. People might have that too but, that’s not really what happened to me. Although, now that I think about it, I remember feeling more physically comfortable when I was sitting for the third time. So, I wish I could say that there are particular symptoms but I don’t think there necessary were.

Dustin: I see, I think I had former test anxiety, at least in the beginning of law school. Sometime in tests I would get sweaty palms or my heart would bit a little bit faster. But I never really linked it to test anxiety because in undergrad I never really have those issues but, now that you bring it up, it may have been test anxiety. I use personally, different types of meditation and just different type of relaxing exercises.

Jessie: I tried that too. I did try to just relax but I think that I was perhaps not good at that or maybe I needed something a little more extra because, again, it’s very hard to – I’m not a doctor so I’m very hesitant to give any of this advice but it’s not really advice it’s just really my own experience and I think that it could apply to others.

I think that people probably did very, very well in undergrad and so this is probably something that’s under-diagnosed in a lot of bar takers. They think like, “Of course, I don’t have test anxiety. I graduated Magna Cumlaude in undergrad so, of course I can’t have test anxiety.” But it’s a different animal. California bar is a different animal. Law school is a different animal. So I think that, that’s something that people – it won’t hurt them to look in to it.

Dustin: Definitely, yeah. That’s a great great thing to bring up because you know, I think that people should be more honest and introspective of themselves and what they’re going through during the bar exam so that’s great.

Jessie: Well yeah, so those are my 5!

Dustin: Oh I did want to ask you this too, I know you said you worked during your bar exam prep all three times?

Jessie: No, not all three times.

Dustin: The last time?

Jessie: The last time I worked. The first two times I did not work. And the first time I’d say, I did not deserve to pass the bar because I was going through – I say, “Don’t go to personal stuff.” Well if personal stuff happens, you can’t not go through. Don’t add additional drama but, I was coming up, my last semester in law school was very difficult.

I was taking care of my grandmother that was dying from cancer and she passed away probably about a month before I started studying for the exam. My dog that I loved dearly, she was put down by my ex and it was terrible. And all this different things were happening and I found someone new who was wonderful and you’re not supposed to find someone new but I did.

So, I wasn’t studying nearly as much as I should have the first time. The second time, I took off work – I’m sorry, I got hired before I took it the first time but it wasn’t actually working, so let me just clarify that point. But the second time I took it, I was at my firm and they were very supportive and said, “If you need extra time off it’s fine.”

So, I took my time off and I studied my butt off. You know, it really pisses me off when on the bloggosphere, I see some jerk say something like, “You know, all you really need to do to pass the bar is have dedication and will power or whatever. It just takes time and dedication, time and dedication. No, it does not take time and dedication. It takes that in a minimum.

Time and dedication for philosophy majors out there, those are necessary components but they are certainly not sufficient at all. If you’re studying the wrong law, if you don’t have good time allocation, but if you have a lot of time and dedication you’re going to fail because that’s exactly what happened to me the second time. I could not have studied more than I did the second time.

The third time, again my bosses were very very supportive I was extremely lucky, and they said, “We’ll, you can bill a minimum of 130 hours a month. And we’ll support you studying for the bar.” I ended up billing about 150 hours a month just because things have to be done to not commit malpractice in law, if I was lawyer.

But I did, I worked on that paralegal stuff basically while I was taking the bar. And as soon as I was finished I would get up early, go to work, bill until 5:00, 6:00 at the the very latest, go home. I also rented out a room about ten minutes away from work. I lived 45 minutes to an hour away from work at that time. But instead, I just rented out a room for a few hundred bucks, for those three months I was studying for the bar. So it was just 10 minutes away. I drive home, I would do something relaxing like eat and then I would

study, study, study, study, study; until I fall asleep. I did that everyday and then every weekend I just studied. I studied all the time so you have to be very harsh with yourself and that’s what I did. And it worked and I did passed and I have a friend who passed while she was working too. So it can happen, absolutely.

Dustin: That’s awesome! And now you help people pass the bar exam. You’re a tutor, correct?

Jessie: I hope so, yeah. I tutor and I actually have some tutors working under me. We started, me and my fiance, we started a tutoring business just for the California bar exam informating some of the principles that I’ve spoken about already but a little more detailed.

So, when I was going through the bar, one thing that frustrated me to high heaven was the idea that I could not even pay somebody to sit down and talk with me for an hour. There was no by the hour tutoring out there that didn’t also come attached with a giant package where you have to spend $5,000 to $10,000 for this giant package. Oh it will include tutoring or you can add by the hour tutoring after that.

But hell, I already spent thousand of dollars, I was already enrolled and my overall general bar prep course. I didn’t have that extra thousands of dollars and you know, the only people who have that or who come from families who have that available to them, I simply do not. So I was frustrated by the idea that I could not pay somebody to pick their brain or to say, “Hey, look at my essay. Can you please tell me what am I doing wrong with my essays. What am I doing?” There’s nobody out there.

And I searched and searched. So I thought, you know, after I pass the bar I’m going to do this. Now I’m an attorney so I don’t have time to really tutor people but one person who was looking at my blog, this is how it all started, he wanted my help. So he did that same thing to me that I did wanted to do to somebody. He gave me his essay, he said, “Please, please, please help me. So I agreed to do it but I understood that I don’t have time to do that for everybody in the whole world. Especially for free I just can’t do that, I can’t.

So I told him I would do it for free for him in exchange for me using his essay as a sample for free for others to use and hopefully benefit from. So we have that example to give for somebody who’s interested in getting tutoring, and you can see the detailed feedback that we gave and it’s very very personalized.

We’re able to look at what you’re doing and see if you have any patterns or if you’re just rushing through it or if you just clearly have a lot or you don’t have a lot, or if you are not seeing those big facts or if your chasing after small irrelevant – not irrelevant, but very unimportant issues. We can see what people are doing so we do have some tutors who have gone through a rigorous process to work for us.

The company is called CBX Tutor and you can find it on cbxtutor.com. And for those who don’t know, CBX stands for California Bar Exam, it’s kind of an internet thing. But that’s what I do. I’ve got some great feedback, people are passing the bar and I’d like to think that I helped and maybe they would have passed it anyway, I don’t know. But, it’s something that I wished that I has and so I had decided to create it.

Dustin: That’s great! So it’s more of like they can come one or a couple of times like lower price and they can just, “Hey help me get over this.” and they can come to you and help them out. That’s awesome!

Jessie: Yeah it’s about, I think it’s about $150 an hour and some things take longer than others. So if you want an hour just to pick our brains about anything. About what’s it going to be like when I get there or what things should you bring that’s not on the California website but, I you sort of want to just pick on any of our tutors’ brain about anything, you can do that by the hour.

And so that’s $150 per hour. During a solid thorough essay review takes 2 hours. It takes a long time. Not only do we have to get familiar with the question that you’re writing an essay on, but then we have to look at your answer. We’re going to need to look at the sample answer so what people do is they look at the California bar, and they pick one of those questions and they will send us the question that they answered and they will send us the sample answer in the California bar supplies and then they will send us their written answer.

And then we also, we do the essay ourselves, so it takes a lot of time to do all of that and then to go over your essay very very thoroughly to see what’s going on and then to give you very very detailed feedback about what you’re doing that’s good and what you’re doing that is not good and how to improve. Because that is frustrating when you’re told by your general bar exam person, your grader, when your told, “Hey, need more analysis.” “Need better analysis.” that pisses me off because that’s wonderful and how is what I wrote not analysis.

Everybody thinks that they’re doing it right. So it’s not he what that I need, it’s the how that I need. And you’re not providing me with the freaking how. So frustrating so, what we do is we give you the how and we do this for the written portion of the exam so the essays and the PTs. The PTs take 3 hours. They are beasts, it takes a long time. So we go ahead and do that in 3 hours. You’ll see that it takes 3 hours, at least. We only charge 3 hours for the PTs and we only charge 2 hours for the essays even if it takes as longer. Often times it takes as longer.

Dustin: That’s awesome! You guy’s really break your back for it and really really get in there to help them out. That’s great! So you guys also have discount for my people, is this correct?

Jessie: Yeah, we do. We are offering a 20% discount off of your first order and all you have to do is to mention Dustin and mention this webnar or mention Dustin’s book. And Dustin’s book, for those who are not already aware of this, is The 7 Steps To Bar Exam Success. So if you mention any of those 3 things we’ll go ahead and give you the 20% discount off of your first order.

Dustin: That’s awesome! And I’ll have a link that I’ll announce here shortly and also on the blog that goes straight to that page where they can order from you guys or contact you for more information.

Jessie: That sounds great. Thank you!

Dustin: Cool, Jessie! Well, fantastic tips! Than you for coming on and being your authentic self in revealing what you went through and I’m sure the listeners really appreciate it.

Jessie: Well it’s my pleasure. I would love for people to learn from my mistakes, better than learning from they’re own skin. It’s so much better to learn that way.

Dustin: Yes that’s true. Well thanks again for coming on and we will talk to you later.

Jessie: Okay. Thank you, Dustin, Take care.

Dustin: You too. Bye-bye.

Jessie: Bye-bye.

Dustin: Alright, there you go and that was Jessie Zaylia. You can head on over to her blog. I made a quick link for you just click on IPassedMyBarExam.com/CBX and you can go ahead and check out her tutoring program that she has. Also, mention the word Dustin to get your 20% discount. Also, head on to IPassedMyBarExam.com/12Keys and get your free 12 Keys pdf to passing your bar exam. So that being said, thank you for listening. Go out there and get them this week. And remember that you’re all bar exam passers and that your name appears on the pass list.