Ctrl-Alt-Dissent

I teach a spring semester section of our Advanced Legal Applications (ALA) course at the University of Akron School of Law. ALA is a bar exam prep course. It has quickly become one of my favorite courses to teach for a variety reasons — one big one being that I get to learn all of the meta-strategies for passing the bar, AND I get to coach students throughout the summer which gives a ton of insight into how each generation approaches bar prep along with their struggles and anxieties.

In other words, I’m getting to the “I’ve seen it all” stage of teaching this course.

At the end of the semester, I like to leave my students with some words of encouragement. Below is the message I just sent my students today. If you’re also studying for the bar exam this summer, I hope this helps. You’re going to be great.

***

There may come a point during bar prep where you suddenly feel overwhelmed—that you can’t do this, that there’s no way you can memorize all of this information, and that maybe you just aren’t cut out for this profession. If and when you hit that point, I want you to remember a few things.

First: the bar exam is not the hardest challenge you will face in your life or your career. The fact that you are here—that you not only completed this class, but graduated from law school—means that you are capable of doing hard things. This exam is one more hard thing, but it is not the hardest thing you will ever do.

Take a second and think about how you got here. You put in the time. You were consistent. You were disciplined. When you spend all of your time surrounded by other law students, it becomes easy to forget how difficult this path actually is. But outside of this bubble, what you accomplished is extraordinary. Most people never get into law school. A lot of people take the LSAT and quit. A lot of people never make it past 1L year. You did. You cleared every obstacle put in front of you to get here.

Trust me: people do not accidentally graduate from law school.

All of this is to say, you’ve got this. This is one final push to the finish line. You already have the qualities necessary to pass this exam. You have the discipline, the consistency, and the work ethic. Those are the ingredients that matter. And remember, you are not aiming for perfection on the bar exam. You are not trying to get an A. You are not trying to impress anyone. You are trying to pass. Passing means demonstrating minimal competency.

On the essays, that means showing that you can write a deliverable that looks like a lawyer wrote it—that’s your organized IRAC structure. On the multiple-choice portion, it means showing that you have a working understanding of the highly tested rules. That’s it.

In many ways, this is actually easier than what you had to do in law school. In law school, it was not enough to simply know the black letter law. To earn top grades, you had to outperform your peers. You had to understand the nuances, the policy implications, the exceptions, the competing arguments, and produce sophisticated analysis that impressed your professors. The bar exam is different. The graders are not looking to be impressed. They are looking for competence. They want to see that you can identify the issue, state the rule, apply the facts, and reach a reasonable conclusion. You can absolutely do that.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and bar prep is notoriously rough on people’s mental health. Take care of yourselves this summer. If you hit a wall, take a break. Forcing yourself to study when your brain is completely fried is not productive—it just burns you out before exam day even arrives.

Your bar prep schedules are designed with this in mind. Preparing for the bar exam is a marathon. You do not prepare for a marathon by running 26 miles every single day. Resist the temptation to overdo it. I know law students are particularly bad at this. It is okay to step away for a bit when things become overwhelming. Go outside. Touch some grass. Reset. Then come back to it.

And remember, not every day of bar prep is going to be good. In fact, some days are just going to suck. Maybe you score lower than usual on a multiple-choice set. Maybe you completely blank on an essay topic. Maybe your brain just refuses to cooperate that day. That is normal. It happens to everyone.

The important thing is remembering that not every slip needs to become a slide. The people who pass the bar exam are usually not the people who were perfect every day. They are the people who stayed consistent over time. Concede the bad days. Then show up again tomorrow.

In the words of my favorite show, BoJack Horseman: 

“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day—that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.”

Email, call, or text me if you need anything this summer—even if you just need to vent, spiral for a bit, or be reminded that you can do this.

You’ve got this. I’m proud of you, and I believe in you. 

Best, 

Jess 🦝