I Passed the Bar Exam — This Is What I Wish I Knew Before Studying

I graduated near the top of my class in law school (ranked #21 out of 209 in my graduating class), so when I was studying for the bar exam (the test to get licensed as an attorney in America), almost everyone told me something like “you’ll pass easily.” I also did well on the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), and those two data points were highly associated with a high probability of passing.

But in my studying and preparation, the bar exam brought me to my knees and gave me significant angst. I doubted I would pass several times, especially after bad practice test scores. I freaked out maybe once every week during a period of frustration, thinking about worst-case scenarios of whether I would pass the bar.

I waited exactly three months to hear my score, and I would get nervous thinking about it — despite feeling good about the exam and putting the probability of passing at 90–95% based on my preparation, I still thought about what I should do if I failed, whether I would retake it again or completely reorient my life to go back to my previous career of teaching.

I got the results yesterday. I passed with plenty of cushion. The passing score in my jurisdiction, which uses the Universal Bar Exam (UBE), is 266. The highest passing score in other UBE jurisdictions is 270, so I scored high enough to pass in any UBE jurisdiction.

I got a 313, so I passed by 47 points. I did above average on the multiple choice (the MBE) and well above average on the writing section (MEEs and MPTs), so it was a pretty solid score as well. I thought about how I wish I did better on the multiple choice, but this was one of the first exams in my life where the grade did not matter, and a pass was a pass.

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Screenshot from the author from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals

Rationally, I shouldn’t have been so worried and freaking out at points: besides my law school grades and LSAT score, I am (usually) a pretty good test taker, studied extremely hard, and got through 100% of my bar course on BARBRI. Even if I did not study as hard as I did, I had a good foundation of legal knowledge in the tested subjects through law school.

I didn’t want to say I was 100% sure I passed because you can never be 100% sure about anything, particularly an uncertain outcome in the future. Plus, I tend to be somewhat superstitious, so I didn’t want to jinx myself out of passing in the last couple of weeks. Anything could happen — I could have skipped a question on the scantron and circled the wrong answers.

But I think the bar exam and the difficulty of the test taught me a lot of things. It was certainly the highest stakes test I’ve taken in a my life — you do get multiple tries like other standardized tests like the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test), SAT, and ACT, but the bar exam determines whether, as a lawyer, you can move on with your career or whether you have to put your career on hold for another six months or so. I am no stranger to high-stakes exams, but this one certainly was the highest of stakes.

I used to think the bar exam would be easy. When other lawyers who were a year or two above me in law school talked about how difficult the bar exam was, I thought that wouldn’t be me and I didn’t need to get mired in any negativity. I was confident enough in my law school performance that I could help me get through the bar exam with not that much studying, but I was not going to chance it and would study hard anyway.

Boy, was I wrong that the bar exam wouldn’t be difficult for me. On my first practice test, about three weeks into my studying, I did horribly. The score I got would have failed the multiple choice section by multiple points. My bar prep program, BARBRI, told me I was projected to fail. There were still about two months until the test, which was a lot of time, but I started freaking out about how I was going to fail if I replicated that same performance.

Needless to say, my early stages of preparation humbled my previous unwarranted confidence. Despite what my bar passage probability looked like on paper, it was by no means a sure thing. I had to fight tooth and nail for months to pass this test.

I didn’t realize at the time that failing that practice test was one of the best things that happened to me. First, it wasn’t the real thing, so at least I did not bomb the actual test. Second, because I did so poorly and was so dismayed, I thoroughly reviewed each answer and watched the answer explanations multiple times to make sure I understood the rule and why exactly I got it wrong.

When I was in high school, it was very common for friends to humble-brag about how they didn’t study or barely studied and still did well on the test. I tried not to compare myself to them, but I often did worse than these friends after studying a lot.

The lesson I took away was that I was trying too hard and I could do better just by not studying. I’m not saying there wasn’t merit to this takeaway — I often tried and studied too hard and overthought a lot, particularly on multiple choice questions.

This would lead to changing answer choices too often, so a lesson I learned later on in the process was to go with my gut and not change answer choices unless I had some clear and convincing evidence or clearly missed something in the prompt. My gut wasn’t right all the time, but it was right more often than the part that second guesses and psychs myself out. Plus, I had to just move on at some point so I had time for other questions.

On the essays, which were my stronger subject, I would try hard and write somewhat comprehensive essays on my practice tests. But my program was telling me I was scoring 1/6 or 2/6, a failing grade. I originally thought those essays were not bad, but the graders clearly thought otherwise.

This also led to a moment of freaking out, but I later learned that this is an extremely common experience and also makes sense from a test preparation company perspective: give harder questions and grade more strictly so the real thing is easier for the test-taker. Getting bad scores led me to study harder and more, but it did not do anything beneficial for my confidence.

In periods of despair, I often turned to Reddit or other fellow test-takers for July 2025 to commiserate briefly about the bar exam. I saw old Reddit posts about people who thought they failed but passed by quite a bit, posts of people who had similar scores to me, and what they did to improve. I knew early on, it was normal to score poorly, but it still was not reassuring and I wanted to be much further ahead than I was at that point.

If I felt like I was going to fail, at least there seemed to be thousands of people on the Internet as well as classmates who felt the same way.

I took breaks and occasional days I didn’t study much to avoid burnout, but largely kept grinding day after day with no days off. Gradually, my scores started getting better. Instead of scoring 1/6 or 2/6, I started to get 3/6 from the graders, which I recognized was actually pretty good given the harsher grading from the bar prep program. My multiple choice scores started to be in the passing range, with some days better than others.

I wouldn’t say there was one single thing that made the bar exam click for me, but months of strenuous practice. I did about 2,700 multiple-choice questions, with a good amount of them in my weakest subject (property law).

I wrote approximately 40–50 essays and put forward a good faith effort, knowing that test day adrenaline would kick in to increase my focus and make the answers more comprehensive and thorough. On multiple choice, I regularly practiced three-hour practice tests every other day to build stamina to be able to sit through two three-hour multiple choice sessions (which you have to do on the bar exam), and also to practice time management. Again, I knew adrenaline would kick in on test day to let me focus for six hours, but I did want to build in some baseline stamina in case I got a poor night’s sleep.

Multiple choice on the bar exam is unique in that many, many questions often have two answers that seem right. Test-takers often are able to use process of elimination to take out two answer choices that don’t make sense, but then it’s a matter of choosing the best answer of the two remaining. I felt like a good 50% of questions were these questions that actively tried to trick the test-taker, and I would have to read very carefully and then just give my best guess or go with my gut. Since there are 100 questions in every MBE section, these decisions had to be made quickly.

In my preparation, I would be inconsistent and streaky. I would get 10 questions in a row correct, think I was the man and absolutely passing the test. But then I would get 7 or 8 questions wrong and think I was definitely failing the test. Yes, I was probably overreacting to a very small sample size, but seeing that many consecutive wrong questions was always demoralizing.

One thing that often helped was avoiding the immediate feedback — I often found I did better on practice sets when I didn’t know if I got the question right and wrong right away and saw the results later on. That inconsistency often bled into 100 question practice tests — in the last month before the test, I had several practice tests where I tested in the high 70 or low 80% range, which was well above passing. On other days, I scored barely 60% or slightly lower, which was barely passing. There are natural reasons for this — variance, poor sleep, a good day, a bad day, but the bad days would really send me into dark thoughts about possible failure.

One thing I could have done more of and better was to review my answers. I started to thoroughly review the questions I got wrong and really understand why, forcing myself to write down the whole answer explanation. But if I got the question right, I often thought, “I’m good! I don’t need to review this!” While that’s a natural response, the nature of the 50/50 questions on the bar exam multiple-choice meant I could have gotten the right answer by guessing and still not really know why. I should have also reviewed these 50/50 questions I got right instead of breezing through my correct answers.

Another problem I had in the early and mid stages of my prep was rigidity. Three hours for 100 questions averaged to mean I was supposed to spend one minute and 48 seconds on average per question. I stuck to that rule to a fault, and often got pretty stressed out when I fell behind on time.

However, there are some questions where the prompt is two sentences, and another one where the prompt is five paragraphs. Often, the questions on evidence law were two to three sentences, while the questions on property and contracts law were five paragraphs, where it was easy to lose focus, have to re-read, and just have no clue what was going on.

I didn’t understand when first starting that it was normal, and probably pretty smart, to spend 20–30 seconds on the two sentence questions and two and a half to three minutes on the five paragraph questions. I had to balance that time management with just letting go and going with my gut on a difficult question to move on to the next one, but early on, falling behind and spending too long on a question often made me panic.

The bar exam wasn’t just a test of legal knowledge, application, and writing ability. It was more a test of psychological toughness, adaptability, and resilience. It was an exercise in letting go, relaxing expectations, and staying the course. As a marathon runner, I can say the bar exam has all the peaks and valleys of a marathon. It’s not just about legal knowledge and knowing rules — half of the exam is reading questions correctly, having good comprehension skills, and not getting rattled by difficult questions.

Flexibility trumps rigidity in many respects, and on the free response, it is normal and common to come across prompts on subjects where you have no clue what’s going on. This would usually come in subjects few people took in law school, like wills and trusts.

There is one fundamental rule I had to embrace on free-response questions where I had no clue what was going on: make up an answer. I learned that only a portion of the answer was getting the question right. A large portion of grading was also reasoning and analysis. On the very first essay question, I came across a weak subject of mine where I had no clue what the answer was, so I just took a deep breath and thought, “okay, what would common sense say would apply here?”

I proceeded then to make up a rule about this subject matter and tailor my analysis to that rule. The next five questions went much better, but I came across another question where I didn’t know the subject well later on I just had to do the same thing to a lesser degree.

The bar exam’s volume of areas tested makes it impossible to know everything. It’s impossible to know every rule, to know the exact answer to every question. On a broader level, it’s impossible to be perfect, and that took me a long time to really internalize. The bar exam is a test of minimum competence where all you need to do is pass, not be perfect. I can be obsessive and neurotic, and getting bad practice test scores sent me down the deep end of catastrophizing.

I also had to remind myself it was just a test, after all. If I failed, it wasn’t the end of the world. Like everyone else, I could just take it again. There are many worse things that can happen than failing the bar exam, and I know that’s easy for me to say now that I’m on the other side and have passed. But in the weeks leading up to the results being released, I prepared for a situation where I might fail and thought about a plan if that happened. I am not the type of person who gets complacent about an uncertain future outcome, and despite being confident I passed, I was not certain.

I’m happy I passed, and I’m happy it’s over. I know people who did not make it the first time, and that list includes prominent politicians like JFK. I always admired retakers’ ability to bounce back and try again after an unfavorable result. I don’t know if I could have done it and gone through the prep process again — I probably would have done so begrudgingly, having no choice, but that was obviously not what I wanted.

The bar exam was a mental and psychological battle as much as it is a technical or academic one. I think the test made me tougher, more flexible, more cognizant of signs of burnout, and more willing to let go of perfection. My score on the bar exam means I got around 30% of multiple choice questions wrong, and that was still well above the passing range.

Like my performance on the bar exam, I will never be perfect in anything, but I can still strive hard to do the best I can. I wish I were more consistent in my prep and didn’t take bad days as reflections of my overall ability, but there are bad days in life as well, where it’s important to contextualize and just keep going. Even when I felt like it was the end of the world, I never quit and still kept going, and I am very proud of that. Passing was far from automatic and far from easy, but I’m grateful I’ve achieved this instead of the bar exam holding up my life for another six months.

In the legal profession, almost everyone recognizes that the bar exam and studying for it are a rite of passage. It’s almost a form of hazing — my dean emphasized the importance of but it’s what everyone has to go through at our graduation speech.

On the two days of the bar exam, I was nervous, but I talked and chatted with fellow test-takers during breaks. We talked quite a bit, as I learned what they did for fun, where they were working after law school, and what their prep experience was like. I connected with several of them on LinkedIn and during breaks, looked around the room — there were almost two thousand other people at my testing site, many of whom went through the same gauntlet I did.

At that moment, pass or fail, I realized that at least I was not alone. Now, beyond being happy about passing, I am more proud that I worked very hard and consistently, never got complacent, and kept moving forward even on days of freaking out.

To anyone who has to take the bar exam in the future, what I wish I knew is that I should have had the right expectations. It is going to be grueling, psychologically challenging, and you can take nothing for granted, no matter how well you did in law school or how good a test-taker you are. For lack of a better term, it will just suck.

Others might not worry as much as I and thousands of people on Reddit did, but the best part of the bar exam is the satisfaction of it being over. I did not cry or scream in joy and elation when I found out I passed — I took a deep breath and felt a huge sense of relief, like an albatross was off my neck.

It was a feeling better than graduating from law school, better than celebrating my accomplishments of six years as a teacher, and one I hope every aspiring lawyer gets to experience.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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