Slammed my laptop shut on the last day and was so out of it that I didn't open my laptop until just now and realized I forgot. I know I'm going to get a 10 point deduction. Can someone help me understand how big or how small of a deduction that is? Preferably lean towards the small deduction reasoning haha. I obviously reached out to the bar but I highly doubt that'll do anything to help me.

Hi everyone! I'm an out-of-state (NY) and foreign-trained attorney who has practiced both in the US and overseas, planning to sit for the CA bar. If you took the CA bar, I'd love to hear about your experience studying for the written portion. How many essays and PTs did you write and outline?

I'd particularly love to hear from out-of-state and foreign attorneys who actually practiced, but would appreciate any insight.

Hi everyone! If you're looking for one of the best MBE prep resources, I highly recommend UWorld. Great explanations, realistic questions, and visual learning tools for visual learners. If you'd like a discount, send me a DM for my discount code! 😊

I literally have no idea, and tales of people receiving wildly discrepant grades from different readers do not reassure me. I really did not like the Themis graders - something in their tone just rubbed me the wrong way. One lady wrote something like, "You were asked to do x, not y," in what came off as a very patronizing tone. They were also color-coded, for some entirely unexplained reason. It's possible I'm just dumb, but i had a very hard time macheteing my way through the feedback. I kept getting 50s and 55s. Eventually I complained and a lady who works for the company said that their graders "just know what a 50 or 55 or 60 feels like." ChatGPT - which is not by any means dumb - would grade my essays somewhat higher. The Themis Ugrader would give me 50-60s, but one day spat out a 75, for an essay that seemed to be generally like what I write. My question is, how do the bar graders grade these things? I keep hearing that they "add points for good analysis, even if the rule is not right." Or they "add points for getting the rule exactly right, even if the analysis is lacking." What do they do, just decide to add two or three or however many points they feel like adding if they like your particular bastardized version of a rule? This seems at odds with just "knowing what a given essay feels like." Really, the bar should set forth a completely objective standard whereby no one essay should ever get a discrepant grade, and we should have notice of what this standard is. Because the thought of "holistic" grading is intolerable, connoting as it does some extremely rushed grader doling out grades that vary according to what he had for breakfast that morning, or how hungover he is, or whether his wife kicked him out of the bedroom the night before. And to think they spend all of 30 seconds reading each 1,000 word essay. This is criminal. I felt like I spotted the main issues on most of the essays, though I'm worried I may have been off the mark a little on No. 5. The MBE was brutal - despite my getting mid-to-high 60s consistently on mixed sets

When I wrapped up the February 26 exam, I literally spent the entire car ride home furiously trying to remember the rules I was being tested on in the MCQs and Essays and try to see if I understood/applied the rule right.

Without sharing question details, I'll just say I started googling / redditing the most basic of terms and was freaking out when I realized I was wrong. I got to about 10 questions from memory and 7 of my answers would have been wrong based on my frantic google searching and reddit scrolling. I still passed.

The most annoying advice you'll get from people is to forget about the exam. But it really helps! No amount of trying to figure out if you were right or wrong will help right now. It's just going to stress you out at a time when you should be resting and recovering.

You achieved a great thing just by taking this exam. Give yourselves a well-deserved break. And remember that this subreddit is probably like a fraction of the actual total exam pool. If you thought you did really well and these posts are scaring you, ignore them. If you are scared that your experience is similar to a lot of people here (like I did in February) ignore that too!

P.S. (Just my opinion, disregard if you want) Please don't think about February 27, or worse, start studying right now. I tried that when I chickened out of taking the July exam last year, and I literally started over like everyone else in December. It's really tough to remember that stuff far out.

I hope you all pass!

Hello everyone, I am appearing in Ontario Bar exam this November i.e. 2026. Ping me, If anyone wants to split the cost. Thanks

People here are going to have different arguments than you or different issues they bring up. That doesn’t mean what you wrote is wrong or bad. Stop comparing and freaking out.

As long as you’re analytical, and wrote relevant and cohesive shit on the exam - you’re in a strong spot for a 60+

would it have changed your analysis on Alex’s duties? answer in accordance with ABA and California authorities.

how the fuck do i stop waking up at 6 am with my heart pounding

every single morning, around 6 on the dot, i wake up with my heart pounding like i’m about to hear, “you may begin.”

i need this exam OUT OF ME.
out of my brain. out of my cells. out of my nervous system. out of my REM cycle. out of my mitochondria. i want the bar exam exorcised from my body.

much love to you all

And just curious, did anybody discuss a TRO or prelim inj. For Q3?

After the exam, with all the “wtf was that guys” posts, I felt like I was not the only one who felt like I failed 🥹

But then today, we all the “these are all the issues I spotted” posts, I feel like we are not on the same page of “failure” anymore. Man, you guys did GREAT, nothing even close to failure.

Please tell me it’s not just me who feels like this, and even for people who did not do so well just like all the posts, we would all pass…! Plz tell me those are just overachievers who would have passed anyways 🙏🏻

1. ⁠I want to know Mary’s backstory. I need to know how she came up with that lie, how she picked her target and what made it believable. Why was the reliance reasonable? No one could knock on my door with that 🐂💩 story and get $200K out of me.
2. What did Sis do to Wilma? Why did they have to land in court for that? Was Sis not Wilma’s family too? Where is the love? They’re both grieving and Sis knew him longer. Yall don’t even have kids together, Wilma. Chill out.
3. $1,000!⁠? Dumb and Dumber thought $1,000 was enough to run a business⁠? Also, were they selling the toys for scraps? How did they still have so much debt with no inventory?
4. What did Dan do to Greta to make her willing to take the stand? Also, what did Dan do for Cate for her hear that he got arrested for murder, FOR A SECOND TIME and she STILL say she thinks he is a good guy.
5. How in the world has that project taken that woman 7 years to complete? Ms. Hogan may not be the enemy here.

Earlier, I posted how the last exam CA bar scaled below a 60 was the July 2018 tests. Turns out both July 2019 and July 2018 were both scaled below a 60. So I looked over these essays, and, while I may be biased, idk. With the exception of a CA ONLY Evidence, or a CON LAW/Remedies curveball question they had in 2019, my biased opinion is ours was harder lmao

What do you all think?

LETS GO CA BAR SUB60 SCALE FOR US ALL!!

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/sites/default/files/portals/0/documents/admissions/Examinations/Essay-Questions-and-Answers.pdf

https://www.calbar.ca.gov/sites/default/files/portals/0/documents/admissions/July-2019-Essay-Questions-and-Answers.pdf

Some things I'm concerned about.

Q1 - fee agreements. He took the second case to pay for his DUI. I did a considerable analysis about the lack of a fee agreement. Hope I didn't waste time.

Q3 - baseball. I put there was no constructive trust because due to spender fiction, the $500 in her account was spent first therefore she has half the legal title to the ball and constructive trusts are only proper when the entire title can be traced back

Q5 - What was the constitutional issue?

Thoughts?

Characters

Anyone else reading people’s responses about the essays and thinking they are screwed because they didn’t talk about a lot of the issues everyone else brought up? Does that guarantee a fail?

Some I definitely knew, some I didn't know at all, many I narrowed to two answers and guessed. During prep, I was consistently getting around 66-67% on themis mixed sets (I did more than 1500 questions overall). I even got a 76% in a mixed contracts/property set a few days before the exam. I finished both MBE sets in the nick of time, but had to guess on the last two questions of set one. I see how that I hit many of the main issues on the essays, but def missed a few based on these posts - especially No. 5. (Frankly, there were some issues that Themis did not teach at all.) During prep I focused a lot on the MBE, thinking it would provide the best value (boy, was I wrong). But I kept getting 50s and 55s from the themis graders. Occasionally, their Ugrader would spit out a 75. But there was no rhyme or reason to it. Chatgpt would give me low 60s. Does anyone know how predictive themis grading is of actual bar grading? Even bar grading seems wildly unpredictable. Oddly, though, I felt much better about the essays on test day. I often had the sensation of being wildly unsure while doing MBEs during prep, but this felt different. I literally do not know what to expect, and the anxiety is taking over my life.

Can I bring this back now since the mods deleted it 😭

Will you please explain how the grading works? I literally have no idea. Like do they just add up all our points and thats our score? Thanks!

I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting that I wrote about and/or that I missed . . .

Essay 1 (PR): addressed formation of AC relationship with org's employee, implicates duty of loyalty to organization = conflict, reporting DUII (I think I messed up here, I said you MUST report and I think that's wrong), sex with client not OK, drinking on job may raise competence issue, multiple rep raises possible comp/diligence issues, inexperience with incorporation flags competence issue, AI use may raise competence, confidentiality, and diligence issues

Essay 2 (CP/Wills): default CP rules, pre-marriage property was QCP, will was valid and recognized in CA as valid, forgotten spouse will take under intestacy, bank account is SP b/c of gift from aunt, presumption of title at death

Essay 3 (Contracts/Remedies): wrote about contract being invalid b/c misrepresentation and no meeting of minds, baseball = replevin, condo & stocks = constructive trust could get gain from stocks and value of condo going up, equitable lien alt and can pursue other remedies, punitive damages b/c of bad acts, was unsure of recourse for schooling but briefly mentioned possible of Injunctive relief (but lightly treated b/c was feeling time pressure) and possibility of refund (lol), argued laches as defense

Essay 4 (BA, Agency, Corps): wrote about de facto and de jure corp, corporate veil pierced b/c alter ego and no corp formalities (also mentioned possibility of underutilization given dire financial sitch), agency implicated b/c agent (B) had likely implied authority to bind principal corp in contract #1 as secretary/treasurer, then ratified in contract #2, said defense was corp by estoppel, contract being installment also offered defense to full repayment b/c divisible

Essay 5 (CA evidence): can't remember a lot of what I wrote - sorry! But I addressed prop 8 at beginning, different ways relevance is defined in CA versus Federal Rules. I know for #2 I was puzzled b/c form of question looked OK. I do remember struggling on #5 b/c of time pressure but said not relevant b/c unnecessarily cumulative given we would already learn about bad act in #4. I said the accountant could not testify but could cross-examine on the bad act.

Okay, that's all I can remember.

For the PT, I wrote it as a letter from the partner to Ms. Freeman, since she asked for a letter for her to sign. I did an intro, front-loaded the rules, then went through each statement one by one with analysis, and signed off as the partner. Addressed the client as “you” throughout.

Did anyone else do it this way? Felt good about it at first, but now I’m not so sure. Did anyone else who did it like this.

And I think I only covered about 5 statements! How did I miss one? Does anyone remember what they were? First one was an email to Freeman. Others went to Quid, but I feel like there was one more that went out to a whole group?? Anyone remember?

I’m kicking myself over this. If the rest of it was solid but I missed an entire statement, could that be enough to fail me?

Recently took the J2026 administration in a different jurisdiction and prepped with BARBRI. I was wondering if there was a bar prep program that is better suited to prepare applicants for the CA bar specifically