Preparing for the Bar Exam - Practice Questions

Doing practice questions when preparing for the bar exam is one of the most overlooked study methods. You should start doing questions right from the beginning. Often students say they are waiting until they think they know enough law, which they never think they do, so they never practice enough questions. Doing questions, and doing them correctly, should be the mantra for students during bar prep.

Below is advice from the forthcoming book, The New York Bar Exam by the Issue (Thomson West):

You should begin practicing questions as soon as you begin your bar review class. Don't make the mistake of waiting until you think you know enough law: first, you'll never think you know enough law; second, once you've attended a class and reviewed your notes on a topic, you're ready to go to work. Working with rules as you learn them by applying them in the context of new factual situations is the most effective way to learn whether you truly understand them. It also allows you to find answers to questions that naturally arise as you practice the material — while you still have time to do so.

Why to Practice Questions

The reason to practice questions is to learn from them. While you may find this difficult to believe, you've learned as much as you are going to learn from your notes after you've read them once or twice. You've got to put them aside and move on to the questions to apply what you've learned to actual problems. This is the only way to find out what you know and what you don't. When your studying is "question-driven," it will lead you back to any gaps in your knowledge of the rules.