A Little More Rumination On What I DId Differently ...

... to pass the July 2012 Bar Exam.

I just replied to an email from someone taking the CA bar exam again in which I tried to communicate what I did differently this time to pass.  As you might imagine, I have thought about this quite a bit since November 16, 2012, at 6:18 p.m., and my thoughts, and understanding on the subject have evolved somewhat since my last post.  I have pasted below relevant portion of my reply to this person, (with minor editing):

Looking back, I think that they must be looking for something like the "casual disdain" (or "casual contempt"?/"casual disgust"?/"bored familiarity"?) with which I wrote my answers on the last exam.  I believe the graders try to see through the words on the paper in an effort to get a feel for the state of mind of the person writing it. When I think about the instructions on the front of the essay packet I imagine that they must be looking for signs that the writer is so secure in their command of the material that they don't have to rely heavily on the crutch of the strictly structured IRAC format. 

After years of struggling to understand why my nicely structured and IRAC'd answers, calmly written in 60-70 minutes on subjects in which I knew the rules inside and out, received scores of 50, 55, or 60, but my hurried, unstructured, much less IRAC'd answers, which had always been dashed off in 50 minutes or less, and which frequently produced scores of 65 or 70, I finally convinced myself that I had to make a serious effort to figure out why this was happening.

The only answer I could come up with (that made sense to me, anyways) was that they were looking for an answer that was more than what amounted to an "outline with details."  And when they saw a strictly IRAC'd "outline with details" I imagined it created an image in their mind of a writer who was trying to show he knew all the issues, all the rules for the issues, all the elements of the rules, and all of the facts which related to those issues/rules/elements - which was something they specifically advised us not to do in the instructions on the cover page of the essay packet.  I also knew these (issues/ rules/elements) are things that everyone who graduates from law school should know.  What I needed to discover was the conceptual, fundamental, ethereal, difference between a nicely structured answer that received a score of 65, 70, or 75, and my own nicely structured answers that almost always received scores of 50, 55, or 60. 

I decided that this must be what they mean when they say that they are looking for an answer that shows more than that the writer can simply recall the issues and rules, but can write about those things in a lawyer-like manner.  We must be able to combine them in a way that communicates an understanding of how the issues/rules/elements/facts relate to each other and to the solution of the overall problem presented.  They must be looking for an answer that shows that the writer knows those elemental things so well that he has moved beyond merely being able to create the blueprint for a complete answer.  They must be looking for signs that writer understands the subject completely and grasps, and can effectively communicate, a comprehensive solution to the big picture of the problem presented.  

I imagined it to be similar to the difference between, for example, a baker who is competent enough to combine all the ingredients of a recipe to bake a cake, and the baker who has mastered the fundamental baking process, is proficient at building a complete cake, with multiple layers, and who can decorate the multilayer cake in a way that tastes good and is pleasant to look at, thereby producing a complete, high-quality, nicely finished product that has value to the consumer.


Despite the short length of that reply it took me quite a while to compose so I decided that I might as well share it with the rest of you.  It is basically the same as what I said below, but the different way in which it is presented might strike a chord with someone when the earlier explanation did not. 

Take good care, and good luck on the upcoming exam.

GP, Esq.