"The Bear" and the Bar Exam

The Bear, the FX dramedy about a fine dining chef forced to return home to take over his family's Chicago-based sandwich shop, recently earned 13 nominations for the 75th annual Emmy Awards, including a nod for Outstanding Comedy Series.

The Bear is one of the most nominated comedy series of 2023, coming in third behind Ted Lasso with 21 and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with 14.

What does a bear have to do with bar preparation?

Check out the article, “Keys to Success on the Bar Exam,” in the 2019 Special Edition of The National Jurist magazine.

The article features representatives from three bar review companies—BARBRI, Kaplan Bar Review, and BarMax—who provide various tips and advice on tackling the bar exam.

Here’s one piece of advice in The National Jurist article from Mike Sims, president of BABBRI, and that discusses a bear in the forest:

Everyone knows the bar exam is a pass/fail exam. But have you taken the time to think about what that phrase means for you and your bar study? The NCBE publishes score distributions for the MBE. (www.ncbex.org/statistics-and-research/statistics/mbe-statistics/) Each year, the distribution of scores fall into a bell curve with a mean scaled score of about 140 out of 200. Considering that the passing score for the MBE in many jurisdictions is about a scaled 135, the critical thing to measure when you are studying MBE practice questions is not how many questions you are getting right but how you are doing relative to everyone else. In other words, you want to know where you fall on that bell curve.

The best way to think about this is to remember the old joke about two hunters who came upon a bear. They were getting ready to run when one sat down and started changing from boots to running shoes. “You can’t outrun a bear,” his buddy yelled. “Don’t have to outrun the bear,” he replied. “I just have to outrun you.”

Admittedly, that is a cruel way of thinking about it, but it is the best way to think about studying for the bar exam. In law school you’ve been conditioned to think about your grade in terms of the percentage you got correct: “I got a 9 out of 10, or a 90 percent on a test.” An “A” is irrelevant on the pass/fail bar exam. Instead, you need to make sure you are doing well enough, in enough areas, so that you pass. You do not have to outrun everyone. You just need to outrun the bottom 20 to 30 percent, or maybe 40 percent, of other people studying for the exam.

Rather than focusing on what percentage of practice questions you get right, focus on how you are doing relative to everyone else. This is your percentile ranking. If you are in the 30th to 40th percentile or higher, that means you are doing better than 30 to 40 percent of other takers in that subject. Most importantly, that means you are on track to pass.

You can read the full The National Jurist article here.