If you’ve read or watched the news lately, you’ve probably heard about the story of Katie Zacharia, who graduated from Pepperdine Law School (where I did my LLM) and took the California Bar Exam back in 2011. Unfortunately, like many law students, she did not pass on her first attempt. But rather than retaking the exam, she moved on to other endeavors. Fifteen years later, presenting herself as an “attorney” or a “lawyer” without a license ended her short stint as White House press secretary and resulted in significant personal embarrassment and serious professional scrutiny.
While her story is currently making headlines, the underlying lesson is one that resonates deeply with anyone who has faced the disappointment of a failing score: if you fail the bar exam, the absolute best thing you can do is to get back on the horse as soon as possible.
When students receive a failing score, the natural instinct is often to retreat. The physical and emotional exhaustion of the study process can make the prospect of diving back in feel impossible. Many students tell themselves they will just “take a break for a year” or focus on gaining work experience as a law clerk before trying again.
But as a bar exam coach, I can tell you that procrastinating a retake is almost always a big mistake.
Here is why you should jump back in sooner, rather than later:
1. Your Foundation is Still Intact
Right now, you might feel like you know nothing, but that is not true. You spent months understanding and memorizing the intricacies of Evidence, Contracts, and Constitutional Law. That black-letter law is still fresh in your mind. If you take a year off, that foundational knowledge will atrophy, and you will be starting your memorization process from scratch. If you retake the exam immediately, you have a leg up.
2. You Can Focus on Execution, Not Ingestion
Because you already have the rules in your head, an immediate retake allows you to shift your focus away from passively reading outlines and toward active practice. You can dedicate your time to learning how to better apply the law and aggressively use the facts in your essays, improving your MBEs (one MBE at a time), and mastering the Performance Test.
3. The “One Day” Trap Life rarely slows down.
The longer you wait to retake the exam, the more life happens. New jobs, relationships, moves, and family obligations will inevitably fill the space you once dedicated to studying. Many candidates who plan to take “just one year off” find themselves looking back a decade later, wishing they had just pushed through the discomfort and conquered the exam when they were still in study mode.
The Bottom Line
Failing the bar exam does not define your intelligence or your potential as a lawyer. It is a difficult test of endurance, and it’s very important to remind yourself that many successful attorneys stumbled on their first attempt.
You powered through a very expensive three years of arduous studying in law school and took the Bar because you had a strong desire to become a licensed attorney. Remember your reasons for embarking on that journey, and don’t let failing the bar become something that haunts you for the rest of your life – something you have to make excuses for at dinner parties, or the reason you need to emphasize that you are a “JD” because “Esq.” is just out of grasp.
Take a deep breath, dust yourself off, and start building your retake strategy today. You had a reason you set out to slay the beast, and you are closer than you think.
As always, if you want help creating an effective study plan for an upcoming exam, please reach out. I’ve coached over a thousand retakers to success, and would love to be a resource for you in your journey to practicing the law (with a real license!)