Another way to think of the bar exam

And so we enter the final half mile of the bar review marathon (or law school marathon as it is).

One of my friends gave this analogy to the bar exam: The bar exam is like a giant wall that is off in the distance. Nobody is quite sure how big the wall is, but you have to go over it, and you need a ladder to do so. Throughout the summer, you are adding rungs to the ladder by studying and all the while the wall is getting closer and closer. Some people have been building giant ladders, others have footstools, still others probably think they can scale it without a ladder. All you can hope is that by the time you get to the wall, you have enough rungs on your ladder that you can get over the wall. In the end, as long as you have enough to scale it, it doesn't matter whether one person has more rungs than you or not. It's the same wall either way.

To add to that, I would echo a general piece of law school advice given to me a long time ago: don't talk about the test afterwards and try and avoid listening to those yahoos that do. Everybody is going to miss somethings and get others, and in the end, all you need is enough to pass. This is a general competency test, not a law school exam. At the same time, it's a lot denser than a law school exam in that it tests a broader range of material in a shorter amount of time. So what? For the most part, it's all review of stuff you've done three years ago, so it's just a matter of remembering how you scaled that first wall to begin with.

And with that, I am off to the library to test some of these rungs. Hopefully I will avoid as many people as I can, which is easier said than done.

Tags: bar exam studying