Here are two questions lots of graduating 3Ls are asking right now: "How do I study for the Exam and how important is it?"

A California attorney has answers to those questions.  Todd Stevenson is not only a practicing lawyer in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, but he's also,"The Bar Exam Doctor."  He has been tutoring students over five years now for this critical part of the California Bar Exam, and he wrote the following as a response. 

Did you know that one performance exam is equal to two essays and makes up one-third of your total bar exam testing time? Despite this, students pay much more attention to the essay and multiple choice sections of the bar exam to the exclusion of the performance test. This is a big mistake. Students should spend much more time practicing performance exams. A student should typically write at least five performance exams prior to taking the bar exam. A student should do a couple of performance exams during the onset of his or her studying, one or two exams during the middle phase, and several at the end during a mock bar exam situation. This provides students the opportunity to understand their weaknesses, with time to improve before the actual exam.

As a practitioner, I can tell you that a law clerk or first year attorney who can write a well researched and well written legal memorandum, brief, or status letter to a client, or assist on composing a legal pleading or motion is extremely valuable to a large firm and even more so to a small firm or sole practitioner. I can recall my first day at a large firm after passing the bar exam. The partner attorney asked me to assist him with a memorandum of points and authorities. At first, I was a bit nervous to handle the task. However, after a quick review of the skills developed while preparing for the performance exam, I was able to conquer this task. This scenario is exactly why the performance exam section is part of the bar exam.

The performance exam is designed to test your ability to organize, analyze, then write within a three-hour period. The one thing that is not a secret but which is crucial to your success on the performance exam is repetitive practice! Without practice, there can be no improvement!

We developed www.barexamdoctor.com so that candidates preparing for the bar exam would have a place to go online, to practice writing performance exams, and to receive substantive feedback from well qualified graders! The practice along with the feedback is a key component to a student’s improvement on the bar exam.

Thank, Doc! You're absolutely right about the importance of practice!