As a practicing attorney new to California, I signed up to take the July 2021 California Attorneys Exam. 400-500 hours of study are recommended, and I planned to study for 20-30 hours a week in the 4+ months leading up to the exam. I started slow as I was ramping up at my new firm, and then my plans were dashed when I became terrifyingly ill at the end of April. I have lived with complex chronic conditions my whole life, and it’s unusual for me to be unable to “push through.” But this experience was like none other. My brain and body went offline, and I couldn’t move, walk, talk, read, think. I needed help moving from room to room. I couldn’t leave the house and I certainly couldn’t study.
Amazingly, I started to come back online about 3 weeks prior to the exam, giving me a glimmer of hope that I could study for - and maybe even pass - the exam, despite losing months of time. I managed to get a couple hours of casual studying in, with lots of breaks and lots of breathwork. It was apparent very quickly that I wouldn’t be able to put in the recommended study hours, and a few days later my health got much worse. Chronic patients know that recovery from a flare happens on its own schedule, in fits and starts with a lot of backwards steps. We were new to California at the height of the pandemic, and I didn’t have a local medical team to rely on. Fortunately, we found our way to someone who was able to give me enough relief to get me back to studying. There were less than 3 weeks to go… but I had already registered and paid, and I didn’t want to wait 6 months to take the next exam, so I decided to give it a go.
Still sick as a dog, but at a level that I could temporarily “push through,” I studied. I had started taking my brain health seriously after my 6th concussion, chewing through books, articles, and podcasts to learn how to care for the organ so important to my personality and my livelihood. So, ignoring the study protocol outlined by my very expensive bar prep course, I studied in a much gentler way than I ever had before because I had no choice. If I studied as I did when I was in law school and when I studied for prior Bar Exams (which I had also passed under challenging health conditions), I would have found myself in a dangerous health situation. And as it turns out, this gentle approach - one that incorporated science-based study tips and prioritized my sleep, my nervous system, my stress levels, my energy, and my food and water intake - worked.
For the next two-and-a-half weeks, I studied 0-8 hours a day, depending on my energy levels. I went in hopeful, but the 2021 remote exams were historically painful, plagued with technical glitches galore. I came out completely drained and immediately crashed. I had studied for less than 70 hours and couldn’t believe I really had a chance - but four months later I was on the Pass List!
While I certainly don’t recommend anyone else plan to study this little, I believe if you incorporate the below tactics into a longer study period, you’ll be able to feel confident in your knowledge and ability to pass. What follows are the steps I took that allowed me to pass the California Bar Exam under absurdly challenging circumstances. While there are loads of great Bar prep courses available that cover content, I’ve never heard of one that incorporates science-based neuroplasticity practices to train students to study smartly and efficiently. I credit passing the California Bar under such dire circumstances primarily to these tools – and related stress management practices - that I learned from Dr. Andrew Huberman’s The Huberman Lab Podcast.
Neuroplasticity Study Protocol
Limit studying sessions to at most 90 minutes, and then take a break.
Prior to study sessions, get yourself alert and focused.
Avoid distractions. Leave your phone in another room. Consider setting up web site blockers to prevent drifting off task.
Use breathwork to calm and focus your brain. Inhale and exhale through your nose, making your exhales longer than your inhales. See below for stress management tips.
Figure out what allows you to get your brain into an “alert” state. For me at the time, the exam being days away was enough to make me alert, but some other approaches that I gravitate toward are: (1) dancing to some bouncy, happy music; (2) doing complex coordination movements (check out the SwitchedOn app!); or (3) doing energizing breathing techniques (e.g., inhale and exhale through your nose, with the inhales longer than the exhales).
Stare at a point on a wall or screen, or object for 30-60 seconds to reset and focus your brain.
While studying, you want to repeat the learning cycle, embrace errors, and take micro-rests.
Figure out what your learning cycle is for each session and focus on just that. For example, writing down the key topics/factors for a subject matter as bullet points from memory, converting them into an outline for a practice essay, or drafting an essay using an outline.
Do as many repetitions of the cycle as you can, pushing faster than is comfortable. It turns out that learning depends on making mistakes. Do not be slow and careful! You want repetitions and errors.
Pause every 2-3 minutes and do nothing for 10 seconds. Allow your brain to absorb what it just learned in the previous few minutes while you take a mindless 10-second break.
Within one hour of completing each session, allow your brain to process the information by taking a nap, or doing a self-hypnosis, meditation, or yoga nidra (check out YouTube and Insight Timer for guided recordings).
Sleep is when the real learning happens. Try to get lots of sleep on a stable schedule. Limit screens within 3+ hours of bed time. If you want to learn more about how to get better quality sleep, check out my sleep tips, which allowed me to go from being an insomniac to someone who consistently gets restorative sleep (YAY!).
Consider listening to some of my favorite Huberman Lab podcast episodes that focus on neuroplasticity and learning: How to Focus to Change Your Brain, How to Learn Faster by Using Failures, Movement, and Balance, and Optimize Your Brain with Science-Based Tools.
General Study Tips
Handwrite your notes as much as possible. Your brain learns better from handwriting versus typing.
Write and rewrite subject elements, legal rules, essay formats, and everything you need to memorize on scratch paper and/or white boards. Do this over and over again until the information is glued into your brain.
Write subject elements, legal rules, etc. on giant easel-size post-it notes and hang them around your home. Not only will the act of writing help to solidify the information in your brain, but whenever you walk by a post-it note, you’ll be able to study and test yourself. By the week of the Bar Exam, our living room looked like I was trying to solve a true crime mystery. See photos!
Write legal rules on mirrors around your home using dry-erase markers. Read them while brushing your teeth.
Print out any online/typed study materials so that you can study without staring at the screen all day. Eye fatigue can negatively affect your studying performance.
Take walks and bring your notes with you. Read and test yourself while you walk.
Review study material with a buddy – friends, family. Practice explaining what you’re studying to lay people – that will help you to break things down in a way that even someone with no knowledge of the law can comprehend, and it will help you notice any gaps in your own understanding of the material.
Set timers to remind you to get up and move your body, dance, do jumping jacks or squats, rest your eyes, breathe, eat, drink water, etc. Also, set a timer to remind you to stop studying for the day and get ready to wind down for the evening.
Step-by-Step Guide for Writing Essays
With your brain crammed full of relevant information, you need an approach for converting it all on the day of the exam into a passing essay for each question. Here’s what I did:
Read the call of the question and determine the subject (e.g., contracts, torts, etc.).
Upon determining the subject write down all of terms/topics/factors that are relevant for that subject matter. This is the info that you wrote down a million times and might be wallpapering your home.
Next, carefully read the entire prompt, and reread the call of the question. While reading, write down or note which of the terms/topics/factors apply to the prompt/question.
Outline your essay using the relevant terms/topics/factors.
Draft.
Breathe.
Review your list of terms/topics/factors and make sure there’s nothing to adjust in your essay.
Breathe.
Submit.
What to Eat on Study Days and Test Days
Water with electrolytes/minerals.
Whole fruits and vegetables, high quality protein, carbs.
Figure out ahead of time what foods to avoid (such as heavy carbs and processed sugar that might make you more lethargic and negatively impact your cognitive function) and what foods to consume to fuel your brain (focus on protein, vegetables, and carbs).
Figure out during your study months what foods allow you to feel and perform your best. Do that on test days.
Stress Management Techniques for Study Days and Test Days
Long exhales: Develop a habit of inhaling and exhaling through your nose, with longer exhales than inhales. Longer exhales help to bring your brain and body into a parasympathetic (rest-digest-recover) state and out of a sympathetic (fight-flight-freeze) state.
Double inhales-exhales: Incorporate double inhale-exhales into your daily routine when you need help shifting into a more parasympathetic (relaxed, calm) state.
Inhale through your nose à at the top of your inhale, inhale again through your nose à exhale a long exhale through your mouth. Repeat.
The Windmill: On study days and during exam breaks, practice the “Windmill” exercise to calm your brain and body.
Bag breathing: turn a gallon-size plastic bag inside out or use a brown paper bag à enclose the bag around your mouth and nose à inhale and exhale. Bag breathing can help you to recover from and reenergize after physical, mental, and emotional activity. You can learn more about the value of bag breathing here.
iBreathe is my favorite guided breathing app.
Remember that Bar Exams follow a very mechanical grading rubric. They aren’t testing your intelligence, critical thinking, or ability to perform well as an attorney; they are testing your ability to follow instructions and regurgitate information. Therefore, you need to train your brain to recall and write down the terms, topics, and factors for any subject that might appear. Incorporate these science-based study tips, prioritize your health and wellbeing (sleep, eat well, move your body, hydrate, manage your stress), and believe in yourself.