My Bar Prep/Bar Exam Experience!

Bar Prep.

I used Themis for my bar prep company, after using their free prep course for the MPRE and really liking it. Prepping for the bar exam took ten weeks, from right after graduation in mid-May to right up until the bar exam which was at the end of July. I have a lot of my bar prep experience documented on my Instagram so I would head over to those reels videos to get more of my commentary on how bar prep went and what exactly you do in the course, but overall I felt really good about it! The prep course is a mix of video lectures, practice essays, and practice multiple choice. I also did a lot of handwritten notes/outlines on each subject and made a TON of flashcards for rules and vocab. On average, I probably studied for about 8 hours a day although the course was flexible and you could accomplish tasks at your own pace. Toward the end, I did start to get a bit burnt out so I started to study less to give myself a break but I felt overall pretty good about the amount of the course that I had completed when I went into the exam.

If you’re in law school and stuck on which bar prep company to choose, I highly suggest trying out the free MPRE courses that they offer (most of the big bar prep companies do). That way you can see how they structure their courses. Since the bar prep course would be pretty similar in structure, you’d know exactly what you’re signing up for!

Bar exam.

There isn’t a -ton- I can say about the exam itself other than the structure, since we aren’t really allowed to talk about the contents. The first day of the California Bar Exam is 5 essays and 1 performance test. You bring your own laptop to complete it, or handwrite it in a booklet. A performance test essentially gives you a hypothetical boss and a hypothetical client and asks you to draft some sort of legal document or memo as if you are an attorney, with the facts and case law you are given. The second day is multiple choice questions, 200 to be exact! You answer these on a Scantron although I believe that is changing for future administrations of the test. The multiple choice is part of the Multi-state Bar Exam (MBE), so a lot of people around the country were taking the same multiple choice as part of their bar exam, whereas the essays from day 1 are California specific.

I took the Bar Exam in Sacramento, which had around ~700 test-takers. Lucky for me, my law firm’s office is nearby so I arrived extremely early both days to go over and put my lunch in the office kitchen. (you can’t bring food in with you) I was VERY nervous the first day. I ate probably half of a banana and a couple bites of a Starbucks breakfast sandwich, and that was it. Most of my nerves went away after I got seated inside the exam room though. I was also seated next to one of my friends and talking to her in the morning made me feel a lot better! The convention center room was so big I couldn’t even see all the way to the very back row. They seat everyone at 8 foot tables in long rows, 2 people per table based on your applicant number. Luckily, I was placed toward the front of the room in row 4 so there were not a lot of people in front of me to distract me. I was also close to the bathrooms and the water station. You aren’t allowed to bring in water, and if you get up to get water or use the bathroom, the test time keeps running. I thought the no-water rule would be a huge issue because I drink a TON of water in a typical day, but I ended up only getting up once in the two days. The time went by really fast for the essays, I felt like I could have used a bit more time but got down just about everything I wanted to write.

I was exhausted after the first day. Sergio picked me up and we got Chipotle for dinner. The only thing I did that evening between between test day one and two was watch the bachelorette! I had all of my study materials still with me, but I didn’t feel like reviewing them.

The next day, I was not as nervous as I was the first morning. Multiple choice has always been fun for me, and I do much better at them than the essays. Some of the questions were pretty tough but overall I think it went okay and I had lots of time left at the end to look over ones I felt unsure about!

I think if there was anything I would have changed about how I prepared for the bar exam if I could go back in time and do it again would just be to do more review for the subjects I disliked the most. I definitely had a baseline understanding of all of the subjects tested on the exam, but there were a few I just hated learning about that I could have reviewed a little more to get a better grasp on some of the more complex/niche rules. More review, and just more practice overall! Toward the end of prep I was feeling a bit burnt out and doing less and less practice essays just because I was so tired of them. I wish I had maybe done a few more practice essays or at least issue-spotted some just to have more practice under my belt going in.

So now we wait for results! For California, they are released in mid-November. In the meantime, I’ll be working full time as a law clerk at the same law firm I interned at spring semester. I would say most people start their jobs while they wait for the results. When you start working after the bar depends on where you work. I had two-ish weeks of vacation after the exam before returning to the office and some of my classmates get a couple months before they have to come in to work!

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Let me know if you have any questions about bar prep or the bar exam via instagram or tiktok 🙂