BarBri Practice Essays: Do Them! Do Them Now!

There is a small, but vocal group of BarBri alums that encourage current BarBri students to not turn in practice exams for grading.  The argument is BarBri purposely "fails" you and getting that "fail" is not worth the loss of confidence.  

I understand getting a failing grade can shake your confidence, but you're suppose to fail in BarBri.  Where else are you going to get feedback about your writing style, organization and reasoning? You can have all the knowledge, but without good writing style, organization and reasoning, you will fail the essay portions of the bar exam.  

Unless you pay for Essay Advantage, a numerical score is not given to you. You only receive a pass or a fail.  I failed every single practice exam.  Lets read some of the comments I received from my graders:

• You failed because you failed to analyze 1st degree murder 
• You failed because you did not adequately raise and analyze all issues, including relevance. 
• Your analysis is too conclusory and insufficient. 
• You need more thorough analysis, you tend to be very conclusory.  
• Use headings!
• You are disorganized. 

Only when you turn in several essays and fail all of them do you see a pattern.  I failed a lot of them because I didn't know the rule from memory.  This was a good realization and I was able to go back and focus my studying.  More importantly, I became painfully aware that my analysis was always weak and conclusory.  To remedy that I kept writing "because" after every statement I made.

The best way to improve your writing is to find the constants in your failed exams.  I can think of no better way to improve your essay writing than to fail every practice essay BarBri gives you.