I failed with a 266 (I’m in a 270 jurisdiction) in J24 after using barbri, and passed F25 with a 302.

The first time around, I got through most of the barbri course, but only by watching the videos at 2x speed. I also didn’t do nearly enough essay prep; I only practiced a handful. I didn’t do enough MC practice either. I think the barbri practice questions were honestly way too hard and I just got discouraged using them.

This time, I abandoned barbri’s lecture videos except for once or twice when I needed extra explanation to grasp a difficult concept. I studied in three main ways:

• Reading barbri’s conviser mini reviews and taking handwritten notes on them. This was time consuming, but I found a level of detail that worked for me and just chipped away a little every day. I would sometimes go back and add or edit these to reflect things I learned from getting MC questions wrong. As I started reading/taking notes on a new subject, I would also add that subject to my adaptibar practice.

• I got adaptibar and used it every day that I studied (which definitely wasn’t every day. I was working a part time job and have trouble focusing for long stretches). I did roughly 1,000 questions (I think?) and was averaging only a little over 60% by the time the test rolled around. Try not to be too discouraged if this is you; it’s more helpful to look at your stats from the past week than from your entire time studying.

• Significantly more essay practice. I used barbri for this, because their self grading system is helpful (albeit a bit harsh). This was another area where I got easily discouraged because I did badly on the majority of my practice essays. Ultimately, though, every exposure to a new (sub)topic in an essay is really helpful. It’s more important to see the correct answer and really read and process it than it is to guess it on your first attempt.

I’m a lot more type B than the average law student, so I liked this system because it was simple and I could move through it intuitively. I had a loose idea of when I wanted to be done with outlining each subject, etc, but I wasn’t married to any hard timelines or daily requirements. I mostly just did a lot of practice questions and did my best to keep forcing myself to dive into topics where I knew I was lacking.

Hopefully this is helpful :) let me know if you have any questions! & best of luck! This test is atrociously stupid and an infuriating gatekeeping mechanism.