The Zen of Passing the Bar Exam

By far the best supplemental bar exam mindset book written, and as a 3 time repeater, I've read a bunch of them. This is not the typical how-to book written by authors who are basically "I passed my bar exam on the first try and I have a book's worth of notes to pass along to subsequent test takers who might pay for this book enabling me to pay off my exorbitant law school loans" authors.This author is a clinical law professor. He has many years of experience and insight into a wide variety of learners. He teaches bar prep at his law school, among other things, so he's used to dealing with a wide range of learners, especially law students who struggle with passing the bar exam. He's got mindset ideas common to most supplemental books. Yet, this book is leaps and bounds above those other books, in that he weaves attitude with performance skills. Through a series of very specific mini-examples and targeted skills exercises, the author takes the reader thru various essay and MPT traps he's seen over years of teaching. He points out the traps, and he also gives direction on strategies to avoid them. He gives targeted practice situations to work around those traps, and tools to self-evaluate your performance. This is unlike full essay work common to the bar prep programs, because the skills are short, allowing for your own level of repetition until mastery. The Zen tips are not as hokey as some of the mindset things in other books, and I found myself repeating them in my head a few times during the actual bar exam I passed.This book is well worth your money and your time.Chapter 3 is worth multiple reads. Do a general first read - no highlighting. Do a second read, working through the exercises on notebook paper. Do your third read as a target self-assessment. Repeat this process until you mastered it.This author really knows his stuff, and passes it along in a concise book. He helped this reader frame the fuller professional bar prep systems into a more personalized system that works, and he helped me address my own mindset hurdles, something the commercial bar prep programs failed to address.

Very helpful for getting into the right frame of mind for bar prep. Highly recommend to anyone who is getting ready to start the process and needs help seeing the big picture. I would remember a lot of the big takeaways from this book throughout my studies.

This book is one of the most valuable investments a bar exam taker can make. I bought it and read it (it is a very quick read) before starting a commercial bar exam course. It allowed me to skip the course's essay-writing technique portions and focus more on the MBE portion of the exam. Using Professor Noreuil's guidance, I scored highly on every single practice essay that I submitted to the bar prep course's reviewers ( I submitted 14). This was quite the confidence booster. Ultimately, I passed both the July 2013 Arizona UBE and the Feb 2014 New Mexico exams on my first attempt. I can't recommend this book enough!

This book is great and relatively inexpensive written by an actually a professor ( and he's not selling a system and he didn't just graduate from law school a couple of years ago which I appreciate.)What I needed and got was both a Zen approach and a great surprise - some solid help on the MBE. I'm struggling in California and the approach helped immediately. My scores went up 10%.I thank Professor Noreuil for taking the time and trouble to write this book and publish it. I even think I might sit on a cushion for a moment or two after my scores get up to 80%.Josephine Gerrard Balakrishnan

Just wasn't worth it. I tried to get into it, but all I was worried about was cramming as much information into my head before the bar as possible. There's no way I could have added on more reading about the bar that wasn't going to actually be tested on the exam. I wanted to get into it and someone else might find it useful, but I just couldn't.

If you read it, then you will see why I am giving 5 start. I can say a lot of good stuff about the book but as a human being we don't take words or experiences of another we want to see by ourselves. Thus, read the book and you have the right to disagree or agree with my 5* review :)

I was looking for a book with practical tips that would enable me to pass the bar. This book has a few tips, but most of them can be found via a Google search. Other tips are common sense ("if there are two similar answers, choose the more specific answer"). I didn't find the Buddhist stuff helpful. I'm scared of failing the bar. Reading this book didn't alleviate my anxiety. This book is shorter than I expected. I definitely wasted my money.

Really helped me put the process of bar prep in perspective and focus on tackling the opportunity of taking the bar holistically! Here's to me passing the bar in February!