In my last post I talked about meeting with bar examinees that were not successful in February. Step one is encourage (push) them to grieve their results early and recognize that those feelings will pop back up at inopportune times as they start to study again. In this post I am going to talk through step two of these meetings—evaluating their results and laying out a plan. To do this I am going to recap a recent meeting where the examinee was in denial about their efforts to prepare the last time.
The meeting started with the false confident front. As soon as I got into the grief conversation that dissipated. We spent the first half of the meeting focused on the grief and talking about the shadow man. Along the way we talked through what he felt happened. At first it started out with a definitive, “I feel I did everything I could possibly do.” You will hear this often. You will also know the background data about what the student did, but this first meeting isn’t necessarily the time to challenge their assessment. You are gathering information and bringing them around to realizing where their prep process fell short. I want to emphasize that the primary goal of the meeting is to help them process the results, you can use a future meeting to get them to see their prep process wasn’t perfect if your sense is this is not the time.
He ran through his analysis of how he did, while we waited for the results from the BLE to come up. Weakest on the MBE, strong on day 1, and unknown day 3, but didn’t finish a few essays because of time. Knowing the background data, I asked some targeted questions:
- Did you get to 85% of your program?
- Did you attend any Raise the Bar events or meet with an instructor?
- How did your MBE diagnostic go? What about your essay feedback?
- What did your typical day look like?
- What do you think led to this result?
- What would you do differently?
- What would you say was your biggest challenge on the bar exam itself?
I wove these questions delicately through the conversation as we evaluated his results (I will tackle evaluating scores another time). You are going to see from the paraphrased answers below that his assessment of “everything I possibly could” was off. But I did not push that narrative, I focused instead on where I saw opportunities to change that were not accusatory for this round.
- Did you get to 85% of your program? I did 92% (not according to our data, only 62%)
- Did you attend any Raise the Bar events or meet with an instructor? No, there was no time
- How did your MBE diagnostic go? What about your essay feedback? Okay, but low. I didn’t find the feedback helpful (no materials submitted to RtB)
- What did your typical day look like? I started on a typical work schedule, but by July I was sleeping until the afternoon, waking up and working all night until the sun came up
- What do you think led to this result? I didn’t finish any section on time but the P&E, timing has been a problem on every exam I have ever taken – but my simulations were okay, so I thought I would be
- What would you do differently? I don’t know what I could do differently other than fix timing
- What would you say was your biggest challenge on the bar exam itself? I felt great coming out of day one, but in day 2 the wheels came off and I panicked, I almost walked out. I stayed because I saw Professor Niesel at lunch and knew she would never let me leave. I am at least proud I stayed as I saw the number of empty seats grow each day. I pulled an all-night study session going into day 3 because I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t finish anything on time. I sunk too much time into one essay in the morning and one in the afternoon.
The BLE report actually showed his MBE was his strongest score, but his points in day 1 and day 3 were insufficient, with day 3 being the lowest. I did not challenge the statements about completion of his commercial course. I will tackle that in the future. Instead, considering the results and his answers I suggested the following plan:
- Spend this next week grieving and working to arrange his life to go back into bar study.
- He needs to work closely with Raise the Bar on anxiety, time management, and more practice – we will meet next week (we set a time) to create a study schedule and meet weekly after. We will both watch out for the shadow man and he will reach out anytime day or night if he needs to talk through something.
- The hours he was keeping, not even including that overnight session ahead of day 3, likely brought him to the bar exam emotionally and physically unprepared for the toll a three-day test would take. He absolutely cannot do that again, so we will structure a schedule that has him here and checking in at a normal time each day.
- There are fixable issues – normal hours, time management, and more practice. I emphasized part of the plan is to tackle these issues over the coming weeks. I told him to write on his mirror the words “I will pass the bar” and look at it everyday to shift his mindset from “I will fail.” I always own this is a little cheesy, but I did it when I studied for the bar and it helped me.
- Finally, to stay connected, because we see the most success with people that stay in constant contact. We had scheduled meetings, but sometimes they will still cancel and drop off the radar. As Zoe’s recent post makes clear if they ghost us, they are far more likely to fail. He didn’t engage the first time, so it was important to emphasize this for me.
We wrapped up having confronted the grief he was feeling, with a clearer picture for me of what happened, and a plan of action that vested him with renewed confidence. There are still hard conversations ahead, but I would call this meeting a success!
Thus, for step two of these meetings—evaluating their results and laying out a plan—this happens on several levels. The plan is very individualized in some ways, yet the same across all repeat takers in other ways. The number one plan for all of them is to stay connected to Raise the Bar and to encourage them to start shifting their mindset. You cultivate this connection by identifying the opportunities you see for success based on their assessment and discussing how you can work together to fix those things.