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Obviously I cannot tell a person how to pass every state's bar exam. I can tell you, however, how difficult it was to pass the Texas Bar Exam and what I found was needed.

At the time I took the exam there were roughly twenty five or twenty six subjects on the exam covering virtually every course I took in law school. Obviously they didn't ask me everything on the exam. But I was required to know everything as far as the examiners were concerned.

The Texas Bar (in 1992 at least) was a three day exam lasting six hours on day one, six hours on day two and three hours on day three. The first part was the multi-state bar exam which virtually every state uses now to cover certain general subjects which are similar in most states. That part was multiple choice. The second part was a short essay portion covering a number of state specific subjects. The final part was also essay and covered civil and criminal procedure and civil and criminal evidence under Texas law.

By far the most failed portion of the Texas exam is the day three portion. The questions are specific to Texas law and many of the people who studied law outside of Texas got nailed by this portion.

The exam is offered twice a year (Feb and July) and failing the exam means a long wait for a second chance. Relying on your recent graduation from law school to get you through the exam will ultimately result in failure. The only way to pass the exam is to review every major subject in great detail. There are lots of bar review courses available. The most popular when I was in school was Bar/Bri which lasts about six weeks (six nights a week including Saturdays) for about three hours per night. I realize that it is a major time sink. Failing the exam will result in far worse. My suggestion is that you take this or some other review course that covers everything because you will need to review virtually everything you studied in law school and do it over and over again.

The Texas Bar is somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as difficulty. I have heard that the New York Bar Exam is far more difficult. Since I have not taken that one I can only speculate. I suspect that all of them are of similar difficulty. It all depends on the point of view of the person taking it.

The key is preparation. The day three portion of the Texas exam fails more people than any other portion of the Texas Exam. For that reason I also took a special three day course on day three of the Texas Bar after taking the six week bar/bri course.

One of the best things about the bar review course that I took is that they frequently tell you that this area was questioned on the bar exam last year or the last 2 years or last July or whatever. The point is they often give you hints that this might be on this years exam because it was on the last 5. Then you can focus on studying that particular material if you feel uncomfortable in that subject area.

Ultimately when you take the bar exam, no matter what state you are in, you will find that a lot of the material you covered will not be on the exam. That is the nature of the bar exam. They cannot cover everything. But you must be prepared for anything that they might ask that falls within the categories known to be on that exam. Study everything. Leave no stones unturned. Whatever you neglect will end up being on the exam. So neglect nothing.

Learn more about this author, Joseph Mohr.
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