january 20, 2026: BOMBING A PRACTICE EXAM

 Here’s yet another thing I wish students knew about bar prep:

Bombing a practice exam doesn’t mean you’re doomed. It means you’re practicing correctly.

At this point, you’re supposed to hit walls. You’re supposed to run out of time. You’re supposed to completely forget rules.

That’s the point. The goal isn’t to ace the practice test. It’s to use the practice test to figure out what you missed, to see how your brain reacts under pressure, and to adjust while you still have time.

Bar prep isn’t linear. You don’t get a little better every day. Some days you’ll feel like you’re going backwards.

That doesn’t mean it’s not working. Even an upward trending stock pulls back from time to time. Don't panic. Instead, "buy the dip" on yourself, your potential, and your future success. 

 Here’s another thing I wish more students understood during bar prep:

Falling behind doesn’t mean you’re cooked. It means you're human.

At some point in the process, most people miss a day. Or a few days. Or fall off track completely.

They don’t talk about it, but it happens.

And what matters most is not happened, but what you do next. You don't need to restart. You don't need to punish yourself into catching up.

Instead, you need to reconnect with your plan in a way that’s realistic for where you are now.

You’re not behind. You're on your own timeline.

You still have time to prepare.

You still have time to pass. 

 My last post about the bar exam not being a moral test reached over 40,000 people.

It confirmed what I’ve seen again and again, that bar prep is as much an emotional challenge as it is an academic one. It also reminded me how many students carry the weight of this exam quietly. And it's not just the pressure to pass, but the pressure to prove they belong.

Here’s one more thing I wish every student knew:

You don’t have to feel confident to be ready. You just need to practice enough to perform when it counts.

Most people assume being ready means being calm. But it usually looks more like doubt mixed with discipline, and second-guessing mixed with progress you don't fully see yet.

You can pass without ever feeling certain. You can show up scared and still do the job.

Confidence is not the requirement.

Consistency is. 

  The Bar Exam is not a moral test.

You don't pass the bar because you want it more, or because you stayed up later than everyone else, or because you punished yourself into productivity.

I've seen people pass who studied less but studied well. I've seen people fail not because they lacked effort, but because they pushed too hard for too long without rest.

The exam is not a test of character. It's not a referendum on whether you deserve to be a lawyer. It's a skills-based test, and the sooner you start efficiently and effectively honing those skills, the more predictive your success will be.

 With prep for the February 2026 Bar Exam fully underway, I'm writing to remind examinees that bar prep doesn't reward perfection.

I've worked with students who write beautiful rule statements: organized, detailed, and confident. But when the clock starts, they freeze. Not because they don't know the law, but because they think every answer has to be flawless.

Bar prep rewards clarity under pressure. Not brilliance. Not elegance. Just functional, structured thinking under time constraints.

The students who do well aren't always the smartest. Instead, they're the one who train themselves to write through panic. Who keep going even when they don't feel ready. Who stop waiting for perfect and instead start practicing messy. 

 There's something surreal about walking out of your last 1L exam.

You've been stressed out for weeks. Likely running high on caffeine and adrenaline. And suddenly there's a weight lifted off your shoulders.

For a lot of student I work with, the end feels quieter than expected. There's no celebration, just a stillness stemming from the fact that their brain doesn't know what to do with free time.

That stillness matters, because it doesn't just represent the end of finals. It's the beginning of a reset. And if you're in that space right now, take the win. You showed up for yourself and your loved ones, even when you weren't sure it was working.

That counts more than you think. 

What if academic performance isn't actually a motivation problem.

When students fall behind, their first instinct is usually to blame themselves.

"I should have started earlier."
"I should be more disciplined."
"I should want this more."

But what I often see underneath is often something else: perfectionism, fear of failure, or overwhelm that's never been named out loud.

Motivation issues are often avoidance in disguise, and avoidance is usually a survival strategy. The problem isn't that you don't care, it's that caring too much has become exhausting.

Once you see that clearly, you can stop shaming yourself and start moving forward again. 

 During 1L finals, the hardest part isn't just the studying. It's managing what your mind does in between your studying: the self comparisons, the second guessing, the quiet panic that maybe you misunderstood everything throughout the entire semester.

I've worked with students who were doing just fine academically, but mentally, they were stuck in fight or flight.

And that's what we focused on. Not rewriting their notes, but regulating their nervous system enough to use what they already knew.

Success during finals isn't just about who worked the hardest. It's about who can think clearly when it counts.

Goodluck to the 1L's gearing up for their first finals season. 

  What makes law school hard isn't just the workload.

Most people assume law school is tough because there's so much to learn. And yeah, the volume is real. But that's not the part that wears students down.

What makes the experience difficult is the constant self-evaluation. The way every cold calls feels like a test of your intelligence. The way that creating outlines feels like a race to who finishes first. The way silence in class starts to feel like failure.

But it's not just about learning the law. It's about managing the pressure of proving you belong in the room.

Once students start naming that out loud, they stop feeling like it's just them.

And that's when everything starts to shift. 

   You do not need a master plan.

A lot of law students are afraid they’re falling behind because they don’t have a five-year plan.

But the truth is most of the lawyers and professionals I know didn’t follow a straight line.

They found clarity by doing, by taking action. Not by waiting until they were sure.

It’s okay to start with what interests you. It’s okay to try something and realize it’s not the thing. It’s okay to let your path unfold instead of forcing it.

Direction matters more than certainty.

You don’t need a master plan.