I will soon be entering the last term of my second year of law school.  Time really does fly.  I am heading on the downward slope to graduation.  But what awaits in the lull of the valley is another crest at the top of an even larger mountain.  The State Bar Exam.

We are all anxious to finish with law school and become lawyers, and even though we all know the bar exam is a necessary step along the way, we may not truly appreciate its importance.  Almost certainly we will be taking a comprehensive professional review course.  But this is not enough.  A review is just that, reviewing what you have already learned.  The real learning comes from hard work in law school.

It is common knowledge that there are generally two major types of memory: short-term and long-term.  Short-term memory may aid you in a law school exam, but it will be of little use on the bar exam; there is simply too much to know and remember.  Long-term memory comes from true study.  If the concepts you learned in law school are committed to your long-term memory you will remember them many months after your exams.  The bar exam review course will then truly be a review; a refreshing in your mind of what you already know and remember.  We have all heard the saying about riding a bike: once you learn you never forget.  It is sort of like that.

The bar exam is not that far off.  Even if you are in your first year of law school you should be thinking of it at least a little bit.  Never lose focus of the fact that before you will ever practice law you must pass your state’s bar exam.  This should motivate us to not only study to pass our exams but also to study in order to commit the material to our long-term memory.  This is what it will take to pass the bar exam and really serve our future clients in the manner they deserve to be served.  God Bless and have a great day.