How Bar Exam Perfection is The Enemy Of Good Prep

How Bar Exam Perfection is The Enemy Of Good Prep

Studying and preparing for the bar exam can certainly feel overwhelming. There’s lots of ground to cover in a limited amount of time, and with so much information to digest, it’s easy to feel woefully unprepared. From attending bar prep classes to practicing MBE questions – preparing for the bar exam is stressful and exhausting. For some, the urge to master every section of law tested on the bar exam is irresistible. In this post, we cover how striving toward bar exam perfection can actually hurt your bar exam prep!

How Bar Exam Perfection is The Enemy Of Good Prep

You Don’t Need To Be Perfect To Pass

In order to pass the bar exam, you do not need to know everything about every subject appearing on the bar exam. Black letter law, exceptions to the law, and exceptions to exceptions can make students feel vulnerable as they work through their bar prep. What if they test me on this niche exception? How am I supposed to remember every element of every rule?

Instead, the focus of the bar exam is concerned with your knowledge in specific areas of the law. Perfection in one subject doesn’t lead to passing the bar exam, especially if it’s at the expense of spending time focusing on other subjects.

Bar Prep Perfectionism

As we mentioned above, students have a limited amount of time to prepare for the bar exam. Often, students are only able to spend 2-3 months preparing for the bar exam. Attempting to learn the nuances of every subject that could appear on the exam is not always feasible. Sometimes students spend large amounts of time focusing on subtopics that are rarely tested, which can lead to students not having enough time to cover highly tested areas in other subjects.  There are reasons bar prep courses tell you to dedicate an infinitesimal amount of time to the Rule Against Perpetuities. It simply doesn’t show up frequently on the bar exam, is complex, and your study time can be better spent elsewhere. In addition, bar prep perfection can lead to burnout and fatigue given how much energy it takes to master everything. So, what can you do instead of striving for bar prep perfection and attempting to learn everything?

Moving Away From Bar Prep Perfection

At the end of the day, being a perfectionist does not always yield a higher score on the bar exam.  It doesn’t even guarantee that you’ll pass the bar exam. So, what can you do instead of stress out about every exception to an exception? Remember, successfully passing the bar exam means feeling comfortable with the majority of the subject material. You should be able to get to a point in each area of the law where you feel confident, recognize the issue being tested, and know the rule off of the top of your head. In addition, use your bar prep time effectively. This means focusing on what you don’t know and maintaining knowledge of what you do know. Spending time to memorize and retain information is just as important as learning the material in the first place! The bottom line is that the bar exam requires students to be good or great, not perfect.  Don’t let striving for perfection keep you from getting a great passing score on the bar exam!

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