You, too, shall pass

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This post is a love letter to the February retakers and takers of the Maryland Bar.

Bar prep is one of the toughest times in your working life. Feel comfort in the facts that 1) everyone feels the way that you do about bar prep; 2) you have already accomplished so much; and 3) there are a billion people on the planet who would gladly trade places with you — because of the opportunities you have and community you’re a part of.

Here are some tips for managing bar prep while balancing other responsibilities (children, jobs), gathered from those who passed the bar without devoting 15 hours a day to studying:

First, keep this in mind

Our heroes have retaken the bar.  A quick Google search will reveal giants on whose shoulders we stand: Justice Benjamin Cardozo, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and many more. Others will undoubtedly stand on your shoulders, because you will pass, just as they did.

Take care of yourself

Keep away from people who stress you out. Some of the best advice I received was to avoid the law library. That way, I didn’t hear how many hours others were putting into their studies. Keep in touch only with the friends and family whom you know to be supportive and kind; you don’t want to risk an unpleasant conversation clouding your mind during precious study time. Quitting social media is also a wonderful idea; many takers I spoke with took a hiatus.

Don’t waste time outlining — draw mind maps

This is a wonderful tool, introduced to me by Professor Micah Yarbrough at Carey Law. Instead of time-consuming outlining, which is linear and difficult to remember, create webs of ideas. The relationships between ideas are much easier to remember, and the act of drawing helps to cement the concept in your brain. For example, when studying civil procedure, circle “jurisdiction” and draw arms stretching out, labeled with the four things you need to remember about jurisdiction: “subject matter,” “personal,” “service of process,” and “venue.” Then, circle “venue” and draw arms labeled with the three things you need to know about venue: “proper,” “improper,” and “transfer.”  And so on.

Incidentally, this is also a great prewriting technique, espoused by Bryan A. Garner in “The Winning Brief.” It can feel silly to draw pictures, but you’ll be shocked at how easily interrelationships of complex ideas are clarified.

Stop doing chores

This means that meals are big batch — casseroles or from a crockpot — and that you eat the same thing five times in a row. Don’t switch to ramen thinking that it’ll save you time; your brain needs decent nutrition for this incredibly taxing task.

Take your bar prep schedule with a grain of salt

I really disliked my commercial bar prep when I followed it to a T. After about two weeks, I realized that I’d gotten through law school, I knew how to study, and I should do what I thought was best — not what the bar prep company’s research said was best. Here are some ways to personalize your commercial bar prep:

• Watch the lectures on 1.5x or 2x speed — so you can get through a four-hour lecture in two hours.
• Only watch the lectures of professors whose style actually works for you. (I like jokes and puns as memory devices. I hate pop songs. I’m not familiar enough with Taylor Swift’s catalog for it to be a useful tool.)
• Concentrate your studies on the sections with the potential to yield the most points. (This will change as Maryland shifts to the Uniform Bar Exam, but for me, it meant giving short shrift to the MPT and focusing on Maryland law.)
• If you don’t have time to keep up with the prescribed schedule (and virtually no one does), mix and match activities — make sure you’re doing practice questions every day.

Basically, if it helps, do it.  If it doesn’t, skip it.  And remember, this too shall pass.  And so will you.