Passing the Bar Exam: A Step-by-Step Guide for California Bar Re-Takers

By Jessie Zaylia, Esq.

Are you taking the Bar exam? Have you found yourself frustrated by having to take and retake the exam? Most people who fail the Bar fail on the written portions, not the multiple choice. This book shares a straight-forward guide that demonstrates *how* to write for the Bar exam as opposed to teaching the law or simply stating "what" to write.

Although this guide is geared toward California Bar re-takers, first-time takers and Bar candidates from states outside of California can benefit and have benefited from the exact lessons that this book provides.

This e-book is not a tutorial of the law; there are courses for that. Rather, it is a step-by-step guide that helps you learn how to show the Bar examiners that you can apply the law to the facts in a way that fits the Bar requirements and expectations.

Also included is an important chapter about mental health because the Bar takes its mental and emotional tolls on so many people. This is, sadly, an often-silenced issue. It's time that we discuss it in the open.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781667811147

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 9781667811147

DEDICATION

for Michael Whitehurst, my rock

Also, with gratitude to my law school support circle:

Natasha

Heather

Kevin

Noah

Chris

Table of Contents

CH. 1: You Failed, and That's OK

CH. 2: The Essay-Writing Formula

CH. 3: Performance Test Passport

CH. 4: The MBE

CH. 5: Mental Health & Mindset

Q & A

Final Thoughts: If They Can Do It, You Can Do It

About The Author

Notes

Ch. 1: You Failed, and That’s OK

Failures make the greatest instructors. Hear me out.

Think about the most talented people in the world. Most of them sucked—at least for some period—at whatever skill that you know them for now.

Michael Jordan, who is arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, once said, I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.1

Thomas Edison said, I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.2

And we should fiercely embrace Oprah’s words about failure: Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.3

When we entered law school, a decent number of us pretended to know what we were doing when the crude fact is that none of us knew what the hell was going on. We were competing against a bunch of students who were as talented as we were, if not more so.

Imposter syndrome kicked in, and we panicked to find a 2L or 3L in the top 10% of the class, thinking that if we could just find one of these magical unicorns, subtly force them to get to know us, like us, and take pity on us, then we, too, could ascend by osmosis to the top of the class.

But that’s not the way it works. Truth time: all of us did a fair amount of guessing during the first year of law school. Through the sheer manner by which statistics work, 10% of us fell into the top tail of the bell curve, and the rest of us didn’t.

With that in mind, the best person to teach you how to succeed in law school isn’t the person who happened to guess right and, as a result, ended up in the top 10%. Those people probably couldn’t articulate with enough clarity the steps that it would take to fill those shoes… just as a savant cannot explain the steps it would take to get good at, say, playing the piano blindfolded.

Stephen Wiltshire is a savant with a photographic memory. He is an artist who is often referred to as the Human Camera. His skillset revolves around remembering and perfectly drawing a landscape just by seeing it once.4 As amazing as Mr. Wiltshire is, he would not be able to teach you how to draw.

Rebecca Tillman-Young is an artist who learned how to draw from an early age by making mistakes and trying again and again. She can and does teach others how to draw because she made mistakes herself, learned from them, took classes, made more mistakes, learned from them, and continued.

The best person to