4. Properly Assess & Tell The Truth To Yourself About Your Personal Learning Curve.

The Fear Factors: Fifteen Reasons Why Applicants Fail The Bar Exam.

Sometimes it takes longer than we anticipate to learn a subject or to learn a specific topic within a subject. At other times, we can learn a topic rather quickly. The variables that determine how well a person learns something or how quickly a person adapts to the information provided us, will differ depending on each individual person's learning style. Does it really matter how quickly or slowly one learns material? I mean, does lightening quick learning or slower than molasses learning say anything about your ability to be a competent attorney? Or, your ability to be a good attorney (however you define it). The answer is no. Not, at all.

Also, no one should decide or determine for you how quickly you decide it is necessary to learn or re-learn information. Again, the operative word is "you." A commercial bar course does not get to tell you that you have 1.5 days to learn something. A friend or colleague cannot guess at it, either. Not a professor nor parent nor spouse should place limits on the time you find it necessary to reasonably master a topic or an area of the law.

No one should make the determination as to the length of time you should take to learn Commercial Paper or Secured Transactions or Contracts or Sales or Wills & Estates or Personal Income Tax I.

Your personal learning curve may be steep (for some subjects) and shorter for others. Act as soon as possible and adjust your schedule, accordingly. You must recognize which subjects require more of your learning time and when you should stop during the bar exam process and actually learn the material. There is no need for embarrassment, guilt, or shame. There is no reason to hide what you don't know, either.

WHATEVER YOU DO, BE HONEST ABOUT WHO YOU ARE TO YOURSELF!

On the flip side, there is no reason to advertise to others what you don't know, either. Folk are not always sensitive to our personal learning curves. All of us have insecurities and unfortunately insecurities manifest themselves in ways that we don't always expect (like playfully teasing a friend about his or her inability to learn a topic (quickly)). That is especially so if the friend did not learn the topic in law school. Sometimes the teasing is not that funny. We do not always recognize that a little bit of joking with someone during a sensitive time like bar preparation may actually be enough to set someone off (and even put some space between a friendship). So, be sensitive if you are a friend and you know that another friend needs time to learn the material, especially if you are not the person helping the friend learn the material.

Now, go ahead; learn the topic as soon as possible. You may have to learn the material in conjunction to reviewing other material. I suggest that if you have to learn a topic, that you treat that subject as its own, private tutorial session. So, when you conduct the testing portion of your day, you also include a short, "learn the law" session on the area of law in which you are deficient. Even if it is 20 minutes daily, your job in this arena is to be consistent.

You have to learn the material. You will have to learn the material in order to be comfortable with answering questions on that subject at a later date. And, if you are friends with Murphy's life lessons, also know as Murphy's Law, you know that the one question that you do not know will certainly appear on the bar examination.

I don't doubt that the topic will appear on the examination at least two times (probably the very first question of the exam, and the last question of the exam). Yes, it would just be your luck for that to happen.

But it will also be the examiners' lucky day, too, for you will be prepared. You will know the area of the law that is new to you because you will have attacked your weaknesses early on in the bar exam process.

Forget Murphy. Prove him wrong!