Don't Fear the Reaper (i.e. the Bar Exam)

Well, we’re here. The bar exam classes have ended, and you now have two weeks to insert the laws of an entire state into your tired, tired brain.

Here’s a sampling of questions you may be asking yourself:

• “Where did the summer go?”
• “Why did I go to law school?”
• “Why is everything on this page highlighted?!?!”
• “Am I going to barf on exam day?”

The answers are really quite simple:

• “You’ve been inside studying.”
• “You have no one to blame but yourself.”
• “Because you need to know all of it…”
•  “Yes.”

Although the studying is grueling, the real horror of the bar exam is the result of the fear of the unknown. Sure, you’ve taken tests before (lots of them), but the bar exam is different. You aren’t in a familiar classroom with recognizable classmates. If you’re sitting for the Virginia bar, you will test in a literal thunder dome style arena surrounded by hundreds of strangers (inexplicably) wearing suits. A poor performance on this test won’t just screw up your G.P.A., it feels like it could be career ending. The atmosphere may be unnerving and the stakes may seem higher, but you have been here before.

The exam will look exactly like what Barbri, Kaplin and Themis have been forcing you to stare at all summer.  The questions may even be written in the same font. The content won’t be dramatically different or appear in a radically different form. In fact, some of the actual exam essay questions may be identical to the practice exam questions. Same dumb names, same references to random cities in your state, same facts, and, most importantly, same answers that you’ve already read and reviewed.  You’ve been taking the bar exam again and again all summer. These final two weeks are an opportunity to take it a few more times. The more practice questions you do, the more times you’ve experienced what it’s like to sit for the bar exam. Don’t let the atmosphere or the location of the bar exam distract you. You’ve got this!   

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Read More:

Overview of the Bar Exam
7 Tips for Surviving the Last Month of Bar Exam Studying
Ten Tips for a Successful Bar Exam