In my study schedule, I then recommend that you tackle 50 or 100 multiple choice questions. These can be acquired from e-bay if you want to save money (people are always on there selling used materials from bar prep courses). You can also often acquire past examinations and answer keys from the state bar associations themselves. And if you are taking BARBRI or some other bar prep course, then you'll have no problem -- they give you plenty of sample questions to look at.

On the actual bar exam, you'll have to answer 100 questions for every 3 hours of the exam. That 1.8 minutes per question, or about 1 minute and 48 seconds per multiple choice question.

I recommend that you take the questions in 50 question chunks. Pick out 50 questions from your materials, and put yourself again in an isolated, extremely quiet environment. Set your timer -- give yourself exactly 90 minutes for those questions. Then go at it, and do as well as you possibly can. Act as if this is an actual exam, try to score as high as you possibly can.

In your first few exams, you are going to do miserably. But that's OK. Questions will look familiar, but you'll get lost in the tricky detailed differences between answer choices. You might only get 10-30% correct in your first go. Don't worry about it. That's OK.

After you finish the exam, correct it and record the % amount that you got right. Keep this number -- it will be crucial later when determining what areas you're strong in and what areas you're weak in, and thus where to devote any excess study time that you have.

Then, go to the answer key and examine each question, both the ones you got right and the ones that you got wrong. Make sure that you understand how you got question wrong. Was it because the answers were slightly but meaningfully different from one another? Was it because you read the question wrong? Or did you just not know a certain concept?

If there are new facts or things that you learned from answering the question, then by all means scribble a note to yourself. The best way to incorporate such lessons would be to draw an arrow and a small note on your outline. After a while, your outline will be the authoritative source of all of your collected knowledge about the exam.

I cannot overemphasize how important the above elements are. From very early on, you are training yourself for the exam. You are learning to see the types of questions that they ask, how you can be fooled by close answer choices, and the sort of detail that they demand from various parts of your outlines. Also, you're getting comfortable in general with the multiple choice format, both with regard to the technique and timing. It is much more important to spend time drilling yourself in these skills, rather than spending time listening to a dry voice in a classroom, or by reading through columns after column of fine print.

Taking the Full Exam and Improving Your Weak Areas

When you take your first 50 questions for any given subject, you'll probably get only 30-50% right. By your fourth set of fifty, hopefully you'll be scoring somewhere between 50% and 70%. Generally, on average, you want to be getting about 65%-70% of the questions right.

If after the fourth set of fifty you are still scoring below 60%, then spend some of the designated slots in the schedule on doing 100 more questions of that subject. Review your outlines carefully, be extra meticulous in writing down the reasons for your mistakes. Inevitably, your scores will rise.

If you follow my study plan, you'll have done more than 2,200 multiple choice questions. This should be sufficient to pass the exam, if you have done them thoroughly and conscientiously. Most people that I know who passed did about that many, sometimes a bit more, and sometimes a bit less.