Lee Burgess: Welcome to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Today, we are talking about memorization techniques for efficient bar study. Your Bar Exam Toolbox hosts are Alison Monahan and Lee Burgess, that's me. We're here to demystify the bar exam experience so you can study effectively, stay sane, and hopefully pass and move on with your life. We're the co-creators of the Law School Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the career-related website CareerDicta. Alison also runs The Girl's Guide to Law School. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on your favorite listening app, and check out our sister podcast, the Law School Toolbox podcast. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can reach us via the contact form on BarExamToolbox.com, and we'd love to hear from you. And with that, let's get started.
Alison Monahan: Welcome back to the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast. Today, we're talking more about memorization, since, well, you have to do it to pass the bar exam. So, Lee, why do you think memorization is such a big problem for so many people who are studying for the bar?
Lee Burgess: Well, I think the biggest issue is just the volume of the law. If you took BARBRI, you probably got a book called The Conviser Mini Review. The mini review is like 400 pages or more.
Alison Monahan: Yeah, not very mini.
Lee Burgess: Not very mini. And that is just like a hint of how much law there is to learn. It really is like cramming for all of your law school exams in one fell swoop, it's a lot. And so I think the volume is a big problem. I also think that – and this is going to be an issue, I think, for students who have gone to law school virtually in the COVID days – is, most exams are open book, and I think more exams are going to be open book because people are taking exams remotely. And so, you may not be very well-versed in memorization at all.
Alison Monahan: Oh yeah. We didn't have any closed book exams in law school. I think I had half of my Evidence exam as a final semester 3L was closed book, and we were all just like, "What is this nonsense? Like, what?" And literally that was it, everything else was open book. I never had to memorize any law.
Lee Burgess: Mine were closed book, but I remember being a 1L and watching some of my friends in law school who had been science majors, who had taken things like O- Chem, and complicated classes which required a lot of memorization, and they had the game down, man. They were working whatever system they had used in college. And I was a Psychology and Media Studies major, so I did not do the same kind of huge amounts of memorization, and so it was a learning curve. So
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if you haven't done this in law school up to this point very often, then you need to brush up on your techniques, because here we go.
Alison Monahan: Yeah. I remember second semester Org – that was the one that finally killed... That was the worst grade I've ever gotten in my life, and the reason is because we had like four tests, and by the second test, I decided I wasn't going to go to med school, so I just stopped studying. And the tests were literally memorization – it was just like, "Can you sit down and memorize hundreds and hundreds of these equations?" And that was just not something I was interested in, so I just didn't do it. And then I barely passed. Like very, very barely passed. So memorization was never my strong suit. I'm more of a big picture thinker.
Lee Burgess: Yeah. I think there are also a lot of misconceptions around the bar, about how much you need to know and how accurately you need to know things. I think that's worth unpacking a little bit.
Alison Monahan: I agree.
Lee Burgess: So, the reality is you are not going to know everything perfectly. It's really not possible unless you have a photographic memory.
Alison Monahan: Right. But where I think that can lead people astray is they hear that and then they think, "O, well, I don't need to know anything perfectly." And I'm not sure that's really right, either.
Lee Burgess: Oh, I agree. And I think I've become a little more focused on that fact the longer I do this work. I think there is absolutely some stuff you do need to know perfectly. You don't need to know everything perfectly, but you need to know a chunk of stuff perfectly.
Alison Monahan: Right, there are just certain things. And people get very frustrated sometimes around this, or annoyed when we push back on them when they're our students and saying, "Look, you need to get these words right." "Oh well, I've got the concept." It's like, you don't need the concept to summary judgment; you need to say the words. They're basically magic words for a lot of this stuff that comes up all the time, and if you don't know cold the words that you need to say when hearsay shows up, that's a problem. But then there are lots of other things that you need to be able to identify and kind of have a general sense of, but you don't necessarily, and it's not realistic, to think that you will have element-by- element, word-by-word knowledge of each and every single one of those things. It's just not possible.
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Lee Burgess: Right. I think evidence is a great example for this because there are just some things, like you must write out "Hearsay is an out of court statement offered for the truth of the matter asserted." You can't say anything other than that. That is the rule for hearsay, which you memorize in law school, and that's just got to be at the tip of your tongue. And then even when you get into some of the hearsay exceptions, you need to know exactly if it's a three-prong test, what those three prongs are, and there might be terms of art in those three prongs. But maybe some greater concepts, you don't need to know the exact wording. But on a lot of this stuff, especially if it's codified law, you just have to know the buzzwords. And you might say, "Well, I don't need to know those buzzwords because it's only going to show up in an MBE question." But the MBE question tests the knowledge of those buzzwords in the answer choices.
Alison Monahan: Right, exactly.
Lee Burgess: So, you do have to learn those terms of art and those buzzwords. They still are important. I think that some things that are tiny nuances that you don't need to know with as much detail, but if it's got elements to it, terms of art, or if it's something that's just really common knowledge in the legal community, then you just need to know that stuff. And I think we've been doing a lot of our "Listen and Learn" series on the podcast. If you're listening and you haven't checked those out, you might find those interesting, because what we're doing is we're giving rule statements for heavily-tested law on the bar exam, and then we're working through examples. And we give you a sentence. It's like, "This is the sentence."
Alison Monahan: Right, just learn it.
Lee Burgess: Just learn it. Learn it, memorize it. It's almost easier to just memorize it than it is to try and think about how best to frame the rule statement. Just memorize it.
Alison Monahan: Right, and I think for the most heavily-tested part of each subject area, there are things, many things, that you'd need to just be able to reel off element-by- element off the top of your tongue.
Lee Burgess: Yeah.
Alison Monahan: But what do you think, what's a realistic goal for people to memorize for each of these areas? Like one page of stuff, 10 pages of stuff? What kind of scale are we talking about? I mean, assuming not 100 pages.
Lee Burgess: It's so hard, because it's like the font size is so tiny. What is really one page?
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Alison Monahan: In general.
Lee Burgess: 12-point font, Times New Roman.
Alison Monahan: Yeah, 10 to 12-point font, you know. Normal margins.
Lee Burgess: Right. I think that probably if you took the heavily-tested stuff in each subject, you're looking at a couple of pages per subject.
Alison Monahan: I think that's right.
Lee Burgess: Maybe a little bit longer for some of the MBE ones. So, let's give yourself two to three. I think you can fit the most heavily-tested on probably, let's say three pages per subject. If you know all of that stuff, that is a very good starting point. Through practice, you will start to learn the other nuances and you will learn more stuff on top of that, but it's just the foundation. If you have foundational knowledge of the 13 or 14 subjects, depending on how you count them, that is going to be a solid starting point for your competency. And I think that we don't do it that way because we do it the drinking from the firehose way, where you're just like, "I'm going to read the 400-page mini review." But we don't learn like that.
Alison Monahan: What you're really talking about could end up being as short as say 40 pages, so one-tenth of the mini review could be what you actually try to memorize. That seems doable to me.
Lee Burgess: Yeah, right. And if you learn all of that stuff and you've got extra time – good for you, memorize more stuff.
Alison Monahan: Well, let's talk about some of the best ways to memorize because one of the very, very best ways to memorize this stuff is actually to use it. So, you write a practice exam, you do MBE questions, you maybe re-write what you get wrong. If you get the wrong rule or the wrong element in your practice exam or if you miss the MBE question because you don't know the law, you write that law down and study it.
Lee Burgess: Yeah. And I think that this is where precision comes out, and we've been talking about precision a lot on our team, like how precise do you need to be when you memorize, what exact language do you need to use, what are the exact terms of art you need to use? I'm really coming around to this idea to just be precise, just memorize it precisely.
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Alison Monahan: Right, get it right.
Lee Burgess: Yeah, don't attempt to get the gist of something, just memorize it. Because I think we spend a lot of time saying, "Well, I generally know that" or, "I could recognize it if I see it on an MBE question." It's not really worth your time. Just learn it the one way, and learn it simply and cleanly, and just make it clean. I think that we sometimes make it so complicated and we're like, "Well, how can I make this rule statement sound as hoity-toity or as smart as it could be?" The bar examiners don't care. They just want it clean and short.
Alison Monahan: Just make it simple.
Lee Burgess: Right, make it simple. I know that you and I have both studied different languages, and it's like you don't study super complicated phrasing when you're trying to memorize new words. You don't try and sound super eloquent, where you're just trying to get nitty-gritty stuff done. You are speaking in a dry, very direct way, and I think you can do the exact same thing on the bar exam.
Alison Monahan: Right. The goal is to communicate, so I think short sentences, precise, pithy. It's interesting, we've been working on some memorization stuff for our students, and sometimes I look at these rules and I'm like, "Wow, this one is really complicated." It's one sentence, it's five lines long. Is there a way that we can make this easier? Like, it has semicolons. If I see a semicolon, I know I'm not writing that rule down that way.
Lee Burgess: Yeah.
Alison Monahan: I'm going to take that semicolon out probably and make it a period, because that's going to be easier for me to remember.
Lee Burgess: Right, or make it a list.
Alison Monahan: Or something.
Lee Burgess: Whatever you can do.
Alison Monahan: I start getting worried when I see semicolons.
Lee Burgess: I think that's fair, that is fair.
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Alison Monahan: There's probably a simpler way to write this down and remember it and be able to reproduce it accurately.
Lee Burgess: Yep.
Alison Monahan: Because that's what we're looking for. We're looking for accuracy, we're not looking for lofty language. It should just be very simple.
Lee Burgess: The other thing that I think goes back to this idea of precision is, I know a lot of times people will study off of multiple different outlines. So, we've already talked about our mini review books.
Alison Monahan: Oh God, I hate this.
Lee Burgess: I know. Then somebody might have SmartBarPrep, which we love, and then maybe somebody else has something else. I mean, there are tons and tons of outlines floating around there.
Alison Monahan: Or somebody has the Critical Pass flashcards, and then they have ones they've made. So, you've got four different versions of the same rules, which is not a great idea.
Lee Burgess: No, because then you are also back to really feeling like you know the gist of them, and I think you're much better off... Any of these resources have language that will totally allow you to pass the bar. They totally allow you to.
Alison Monahan: They're fine, just pick one.
Lee Burgess: They're fine, you just need to pick one. And then repetition. We've been talking a lot on our team about the importance of spaced repetition and how that helps you memorize, and it only really works if you repeat the same stuff over and over again. If you're constantly introducing new things, it's not going to really work. So, I guess I jumped the gun because maybe I should talk about why we like spaced repetition. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Alison Monahan: Well, spaced repetition is just this idea that to get things really into your long- term memory, you need to see them at a point at which you're about to forget them from your short-term memory.
Lee Burgess: Yeah.
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Alison Monahan: So, if you're studying for the bar and you're looking at a study period of say – normally speaking, in normal times, would be like eight to 10 weeks – you don't want to do one week on one topic and then move on to one week on another topic, and then at the very last minute, you go back and take a practice test. That's not the most effective way to study. You need to be mixing this up, so maybe you spend a couple of days on a topic, and then a week, or a week and a half later, you spend another half day on it, these kinds of things, so that you're constantly kind of checking in on that knowledge. You mentioned languages, and I haven't been in a Spanish-speaking country for a while, so my Spanish is starting to kind of flee my head, even though I still talk to my tutor occasionally. And so I was listening to a song this morning and I heard a word and I was like, "Oh, I used to know what that word meant. What is it? Does it mean this, or does it mean that?" And I sat and thought of it and I actually looked it up, and so now it's back in my head. I'm like, "Oh, I know that, and I know how to spell it", because I was misspelling it. But it's that idea of now it's back in my brain for another longer period of time, because I was about to forget it.
Lee Burgess: Right. Recall is super powerful when we start to try and get information into our brains in a way that we can utilize it. Now we're all learning languages on apps or whatever, and so if you've ever used... What am I… I have it on my phone, the one that everybody uses.
Alison Monahan: Duolingo?
Lee Burgess: Duolingo, thank you. They are really into spaced repetition. You see the same thing in different ways over and over and over again, but you will see they also don't change up the phrasing very much because they are also trying to give you one way to say one thing, because it's more important for you to be able to say it one way than to say it five ways. So if you have two to three outlines for every subject, you're trying to learn three times the law, and that's just a terrible idea. Just pick one and be smart about how you study. If you want to make flashcards, I think that's fine, especially for things that you need to get the wording perfect. But you still have to, I think, force yourself to not just do the flashcard and say, "Oh, I got the gist of it", because I think that that happens a lot. It's like doing a flashcard and making yourself write out the rule, to be very honest about what you know the rule is, I think that has a lot of value. But to just be like, "Hmm, diversity: $75,000 or $80,000. It's one of those, it's one of those." And you flip it over. You're like, "Oh, I was wrong", and then it goes in the pile. I feel like you're just going to be like, "But I'm good. I got the gist." That's not what we want.
Alison Monahan: Like, "I knew there was a number involved someplace. It's cool."
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Lee Burgess: "It was the ballpark, you know. They'll give me credit for the ballpark." They will not give you credit for the ballpark.
Alison Monahan: Well, and again, there, the thing with that rule is actually it's not... People just think, "Oh, it's a complete diversity of citizenship and over $75,000." It's actually another element in there that people forget, and that's an element that's tested. And that's the "It's pled in good faith to be over" blah-blah-blah. So, if you just kind of have that gist knowledge, you might actually miss part of the question because maybe they raise an issue about whether somebody was pleading in good faith or not.
Lee Burgess: That's true. If somebody has a scratch on their car and then they sue in federal court for $80,000…
Alison Monahan: Right, and maybe that's an issue you need to explore because maybe the car is whatever. These are things that actually can show up, so I think getting them actually right. And the point of it is that then you can use the law and use the facts that you've been given and recognize these issues, but you have to know it pretty precisely to recognize the correct issues.
Lee Burgess: A place that I find that flashcards can be tricky is helping you see the universe. So if I had a flashcard for diversity, and then I flipped it over, there are a few different things I'd want on there. I'd want all the elements, but then, yeah, you want to highlight that there's this kind of good faith requirement, and then I also probably need to have a note about, can you aggregate claims? What happens when you have multiple parties, can you add them all together? So each flashcard, in my opinion, to be very complete, has to have a lot of junk on it, because you want to learn all this law with these little offshoots because it's not just a one-sentence rule necessarily. Just think about how you want to use the flashcards to get you where you need to be so you're not just doing legal trivia, which can happen with flashcards and just memorizing one-off rules. Your flashcard probably shouldn't say, "What's the amount in controversy for diversity?" And then you're like, "Woo-hoo, I got it right." It's a little more complicated than that.
Alison Monahan: Right. I think it'd be important to remember that you have to actually know this material in order to memorize it. So, you've got to be sure that you've kind of devoted enough time and energy to really learning the material in a way that you can use it. For me, I think the only reason I would ever use flashcards are for things that I literally just need to sit down and memorize. I wouldn't think of them in any other way. I don't think they're helpful at all in any other way. I
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think they are helpful for literally just repetition of rules, but I think there are other things that are probably frankly more effective.
Lee Burgess: Yep, and we're going to get to those. So if you love your flashcards, don't abandon them; just make sure they're going to work for this specific test.
Alison Monahan: Right, and don't spend so much time and energy making them. I mean, you can always buy them if you're just going to be flipping them over anyway.
Lee Burgess: Yes, so true. I'm a big fan of writing rules out repeatedly. I think that's one way that I've always found is a good way to memorize things that I'm struggling with. Just the muscle memory, visualizing it – it's always worked for me. But it has to be handwritten out; it's not necessarily typing it out. We also know that handwriting has different relationships in your brain about how you retain information than typing, which is why you can send emails or texts and not remember that you did them in a different way.
Alison Monahan: Right.
Lee Burgess: So, I think that that's another thing you can do. The thing we're really trying to explore a lot on our team is this idea of quizzing yourself. We were just talking about spaced repetition, but also just using this idea of making mistakes and learning from your mistakes, we know helps you retain information in a different way. So, as much as it might make you feel crummy, you can give yourself a test on your rules at the beginning of a study session and at the end of a study session every week, and review. These might be humbling experiences, but testing yourself and reviewing and retesting yourself – it ends up working. It's not fun, but it really works and is a good use of your time.
Alison Monahan: Right. I think anytime your brain has that moment of surprise when you miss something… There're really, really good studies, and lots of studies showing that's where the learning happens, because you think you know something and then you find out you don't. And your brain kind of says, "Huh, isn't that interesting?"
Lee Burgess: Yeah.
Alison Monahan: Like, "What do you mean I left a word out there?" And that's when you start really processing it in a way that you're learning something. It's never pleasant to get something wrong, but know that you're actually making more progress when you do than if you just sit down and you're like, "Yep, got it. Okay, done."
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Lee Burgess: Also, it's probably good to think of it in an evolutionary way. I mean, of course, our brains are going to retain our mistakes more than we're going to retain our successes, because we don't...
Alison Monahan: Right, if you stick your hand on the stove, you don't want to do that again. Like, "Oh, ow, that hurt. Ow, don't do that!" You know?
Lee Burgess: Yeah, exactly. We forget some things that are unpleasant, like childbirth, so we have more children, but a lot of times we remember what is unpleasant because we don't want to repeat the same mistake twice. So, it's a great way to push yourself. Another thing you can do is even use colors. I know that this is a big one for you. You love colors and all your multiple-colored markers.
Alison Monahan: Yeah, I'm a more visual learner. So for me, if I have to remember, say, two versions of a single rule…. So something like UCC versus the common law rule, or modern versus traditional, or in California, a big one is state versus federal. If I have something like that, which is super easy to confuse, it's really hard to remember, and oftentimes these rules are pretty similar, they're both justifiable. So, how do you remember which one is the California rule and which one is the Federal rule for the rules of evidence or professional responsibility or something like that? I think one of the best ways to do it is to have a visual where, say, all the California rules are always in red and the federal ones are always in black. And so then when you're thinking in your brain and trying to recall those rules when you need to use them, I will often literally see them and I'm like, "Oh, that's the red one. Okay, that's California." So, it's kind of activating a different way of processing this information; otherwise, how do you distinguish between these two essentially indistinguishable rules and keep them straight?
Lee Burgess: Yeah. I have seen colors work really well with people when it comes to jurisdiction distinctions, and you mentioned the California rules. Like studying evidence in California, you have certain rules that have these very tiny nuances, and I've seen a lot of students really find that tracking that stuff in color just helps, because you're trying to figure out where those distinctions exist and use every part of your brain to possibly track that.
Alison Monahan: Right, yeah. And I think anything like that where you always are just consistent about it. Sometimes people mix up their colors from one day to the next. I'm just like, "What are you doing?" That is not the purpose here. You have to be consistent. It always has to be red if it's California.
Lee Burgess: Yeah, exactly.
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Alison Monahan: That seems just unfathomable to me, but that's just the way my brain works.
Lee Burgess: Hey, if it works, it doesn't really matter why it works. It just works. That's why we're talking about options.
Alison Monahan: Right. And I think another visual idea is this sort of memory palace idea. If you're very spatial and sort of three-dimensional, you can also envision, imagine a room where you're walking through the room and different objects might relate to a certain piece of a test or something, or maybe the relationship between things. Sometimes you can find little scenes, basically, of various online stuff where they're actually acting out different scenes. So there are lots of different things you can do. I mean, that's how Ulysses was... Well, I guess Ulysses wasn't the one memorizing it, but the bards of old who are telling the story of Ulysses, this is how they did it. They had to remember all this stuff, and it's like hundreds of thousands of words basically.
Lee Burgess: Yeah. I mean, memorization is not new; we used to have to memorize everything. I don't even memorize most people's phone numbers anymore.
Alison Monahan: I think I know two – mine and my mother's, which is where we grew up.
Lee Burgess: I know half of yours because yours has the same first six digits as my husband's, which is super weird. Super weird that that happened.
Alison Monahan: I actually forgot my mother's address the other day, which is where I grew up. I was like, "What in the world is her address?" I think that just shows how stressed out we all are, because that is really in my brain somewhere. It took me a second. I was like, "Wait, it starts with a number. What is the number?" And then I remembered it, but it was definitely not in the front of my brain.
Lee Burgess: Yeah. Well, let's be honest. Stress does not help retention.
Alison Monahan: No, definitely not.
Lee Burgess: Yeah, so I think that the big thing that I really want people to take from this podcast is that there are so many different ways to memorize. There's a lot of science on this. Trying out some of these techniques is really one of the things that you want to do. I don't really care how you memorize as long as you can get to the point where you can give me a specific rule statement. So if I say, "Give me the prongs for dying declaration", you can just rattle them off to me. That is where you need to be. If you do that by using mnemonics or short attack plans
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or memory palaces or by flashcards – I don't really care, but you just have to make sure that you get to the end result. And you should try some of these different techniques, if you especially haven't done a lot of memorization, to help you get to that goal.
Alison Monahan: Right, and I think oftentimes you can too think about combining them. So if I'm thinking, for example, at a basic level, I need to be able to write down all the different hearsay exceptions – maybe I make a mnemonic for that. I'm sure there are mnemonics out there for that, because you're not the first person to ever do this. So maybe wait, there's a mnemonic that helps you get whatever – I don't even know what it is – 12, 18. I mean, it's a lot. And then, within those, maybe you prioritize like, "Okay, these are the five that show up over and over that I'm going to memorize word for word", and you have flashcards on those. And then you do practice questions with those. And so then, hopefully, you've got your flashcards, you've memorized them word for word, you're doing your best on that. And then when you do the practice question, you get one of them wrong, and then that's going to stick in your brain. So we're not necessarily trying to memorize every piece of law in that level of detail, but you can be strategic about the ones that tend to show up over and over.
Lee Burgess: Yep. You could actually learn a huge amount of information, but you've got to figure out whatever works with your brain, and don't waste time. There's a not a lot of time. Just don't waste time.
Alison Monahan: Well, speaking of time, I think one problem we see a lot with memorization is people tend to try to leave it to the end. And so maybe you have a study schedule that you've gotten from somewhere that says, "Last two weeks, memorize."
Lee Burgess: I hate those.
Alison Monahan: That is way too late.
Lee Burgess: Way too late.
Alison Monahan: That is not going to happen.
Lee Burgess: No, it's such a recipe for disaster. And then you end up just memorizing and not practicing, so you're just thinking that you're memorizing without moving it into your long-term memory, doing any active learning. There's just no way that that is the best way to study. I'm sorry to the bar providers that focus on that. I'm not, actually. I think it's a huge waste of time.
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Alison Monahan: They're making a mistake, don't listen.
Lee Burgess: They're making a huge mistake. Most people need to be studying and memorizing throughout the prep period, so you can see it multiple times, and this idea of spaced repetition will work. The more times you see things, the more it's going to stick in your head. It's just there's science behind it, this is how it works.
Alison Monahan: Right, and I promise you, you will get better. We've been making quizzes and moving them online lately. I made the quiz and then when I take it, I get stuff wrong. And then I take it again, and I still get stuff wrong, but I get less wrong. And I take it again a few days later, and I get different stuff wrong, but I get more stuff right. You will get better if you make yourself do this over and over again. That's just how your brain works.
Lee Burgess: Yeah, but you have to be willing to stumble and have little tiny failures and be honest with yourself what you don't know, because it is a journey. But you will be collecting more and more knowledge as you go. It's not like a light switch. Unless you have a photographic memory, you just don't read the outline and it's in your brain.
Alison Monahan: No, and also just reading it is often not enough. You've got to really interact with the material. Even if you try to, say, cover up certain words and just quiz yourself that way, but that act of quizzing yourself and making yourself realize what you really do and don't remember… Or what you did with writing out the rules – you can imagine Bart Simpson writing those rules over and over. If you write the rule five times and then you compare it to your actual rule and realize you had a word wrong, you're probably not going to get it wrong next time.
Lee Burgess: Yep, that's so true. So, you've got to be realistic and memorize what's actually memorizable. You need to memorize what's heavily-tested, but you can cover a lot of ground if you're strategic about this.
Alison Monahan: Yeah, I think that's right. I think this is not hopeless, even if you're not someone who's naturally that great at memorizing, because a lot of this is frankly a skill and there're techniques. And so, just to say, "Oh, I'm not good at memorizing" is not helpful. This is time for a growth mindset. Figure out what's going to help you get better, and maybe you're not like the absolute best person on the bar exam, but you don't have to be. You should have to be good enough.
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Lee Burgess: Exactly, yeah. Well, I think with that, we're about out of time. Any final thoughts?
Alison Monahan: I would just say don't give up, and I think struggle with the stuff that makes you uncomfortable, and that is ultimately how you will learn enough of this that, hopefully, you can pass.
Lee Burgess: Yeah. And I think using your example of not being able to remember your mom's address, I think that if you're listening to this and you're still in the COVID times, it is really important to realize that we are under stress, our brains are probably not functioning at their best. Give yourself intermittent breaks, give yourself the opportunity to refresh, take walks, meditate, do yoga. Do whatever you do, but be kind to yourself. Don't just think that you can sit down and memorize for eight hours a day. That's not going to be practical, even in the best of circumstances. But also meet yourself where you are and do the best with what you can.
Alison Monahan: Well, and I'd rather have someone commit to spending even 30 minutes a day, or 60 minutes a day consistently to try to memorize a few things. That's ultimately going to be so much more productive than trying to cram an eight- hour day for two weeks straight at the very end.
Lee Burgess: Yeah, I totally agree. Alright, well, with that, I think we're out of time. I want to take a second to remind you to check out our blog at barexamtoolbox.com, which is full of helpful tips to help you prepare and stay sane as you study for the bar exam. You can also find information on our website about our courses, tools, and one-on-one tutoring programs to support you as you study for the UBE or California bar exam. I'm sure everyone wants to take all our quizzes, now that we've been talking about them.
Alison Monahan: Ooh, they're so fun!
Lee Burgess: They're so fun.
Lee Burgess: If you enjoyed this episode of the Bar Exam Toolbox podcast, please take a second to leave a review and rating on your favorite listening app. We'd really appreciate it. And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss anything. If you're still in law school, you might also like to check out our popular Law School Toolbox podcast as well. If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out to myself or Alison at [email protected] or [email protected]. Or you can always contact us via the website contact form at BarExamToolbox.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!
Episode 118: More on Memorization for the Bar Exam Page 14 of 15
BarExamToolbox.com
RESOURCES:
Brainy Bar Bank – UBE (MEE + MPT) Brainy Bar Bank – California Bar Exam "Listen and Learn" series BARBRI SmartBarPrep Critical Pass Podcast Episode 42: Memorization Techniques for the Bar Exam Podcast Episode 78: Learning Through Mistakes in Bar Prep Podcast Episode 83: Honing Your Mindset for Bar Exam Studying How to Pass the Bar by Doing What Makes You the Most Uncomfortable
Episode 118: More on Memorization for the Bar Exam Page 15 of 15
BarExamToolbox.com