Tackling Bar Exam Questions Tactically

So you've read our previous article and managed to get a handle on the materials, indices and detailed table of contents, but you're still not as comfortable as you'd like to be, or you're not quite happy with your performance yet. Perhaps you're second-guessing yourself too much or stubbornly sticking to a question for too long. Well, we've been there too and have developed a tactical approach to answering questions that can help you break your bad habits and speed up your answer choice assessment. 

Triage

One of the best ways to maintain a good pace and feel more confident as you take a practice exam is to use a triage method. Below, we suggest triage categories by question difficulty level that you can use to guide your approach. With practice, you should be able to quickly assess difficulty level before even beginning to answer.

• Super hard questions: These are questions that you have absolutely no clue how to answer, where even elimination won't get you a good guess. These types of questions include nitty gritty tax details or things that don't relate to anything you can identify in your resources or memory. These questions should be guessed as quickly as possible once identified as super hard and not flagged for review. 
  
  
• Hard questions: These questions are challenging, but you've got a clue. Doing a preliminary search for the answer is optional and if you can't find the answer, you should be able to get a good guess down by process of elimination (if you can't, then this is probably a super hard question). Flag hard questions for review (consider marking this on the scantron beside the question number, if permitted). If uncertain, err on the side of not flagging as you will likely not have much time for review at the end, but hard questions are usually the ones most worth flagging. We recommend flagging mostly in the exam's final section.
  
  
• Normal questions: These will likely comprise the majority of questions on the exam, being the ones you look up and answer within 1-2 minutes. Simply answer and move on without flagging, unless you're on the fence as to whether it's of normal or hard difficulty.
  
  
• Easy questions: These are questions where you certainly know the answer or are very confident in your choice without having to look it up or you can find/calculate it within 30 seconds. Whether you're confident enough in throwing a question into this category will depend in part on the time you have left on the exam, so this category should be fairly flexible. You should not flag any of these for review.

You should adjust the threshold for these categories as you practice so that you end up finishing the exam on time. In other words, if you find that you're running out of time, maybe add some questions you found to be on the higher end of "hard" into the "super hard" category, or throw some normal questions into easy and don't look them up in the materials, especially toward the end. Also, for hard and normal questions that you flag, feel free to write down a small note of what you searched already for when you review (e.g. "not in Duty to Others").

Efficiency

Below are some general tips on how to be more efficient in your exam approach.

• If you're not confident of an answer to a question after a minute and a half, go with your gut, even if you "sorta recall the mats saying something else". Going with your gut is important because you likely won't have time to look up every answer, and it is especially important for Professional Responsibility (PR) questions. After practicing enough PR questions, you'll get a feel for the way the LSO prioritizes different ethical considerations and procedures over others. This will allow you to often answer questions without looking in the materials, saving you valuable time for the more substantive non-PR questions.
  
  
• Sometimes, the question itself isn't the best indication of where to look for the answer. The answer options may sometimes provide a better clue of which section or keyword to search, so keep this in mind before jumping straight into your detailed table of contents or indices from the question. You may even be able to eliminate some potential search avenues by assessing the answer options briefly before looking through your materials. Read the answer options every time before searching!
  
  
• Finally, keep an eye on the clock! We highly recommend noting in your timesheet your question number goal at different intervals (e.g. every 45 minutes). This will allow you to adjust your pace regularly to ensure that you aren't spending too much time on questions and setting yourself up for a question-guessing blitz at the very end. It could even indicate that you're going too quickly and can spend a bit more time on some questions going forward. But don't worry if your pace varies a fair bit from your target; this is normal and the goal isn't a perfect pace, but just to help you answer as many questions as possible thoughtfully!

We hope that these quick tips will help organize and streamline your approach to answering Ontario Bar exam questions. As always, practice is everything!