Performance Test - the Most Underprepared Bar Prep that Often Makes or Breaks the Overall Bar Exam Result - PT Deserves Own Dedicated, Formal Class

PT deserves its own dedicated classroom time and hours of targeted preparations reasonably proportional to the 2/7 grades (California) and its frequent determination on the overall pass/fail outcome.

Our performance in the performance test in California, a UBE jurisdiction, or another state can single-handedly make or break the result of the Bar Exam. It often does—the performance test often acts as the gatekeeper of passing both the written portion and the Bar Exam overall.

With all the good intentions, law schools often do not pay enough attention to performance tests, usually covered in a few hours of individual, short workshops (run in-house or outsourced to commercial bar review companies). Let's consider how much time we invest in preparing the essays for the bar (five essays or 5/7 of the total grades of the writing portion in California) in three years of law school time when pursuing a Juris Doctor degree. We spend almost all the available time resource we have at our disposal on preparing for the writing portion of the Bar Exam. Almost all all law school doctrinal classes and Academic Support classes are dedicated heavily to it. In sharp comparison, the time we spend on preparing for the PT, 4-5 hours of workshops in three years of law school time, is staggeringly disproportionate to the 2/7 grades of the writing portion it sets and the ultimate and frequent determination on the overall pass/fail outcome.

The underlying assumption may be that good preparation for the essays or legal writing classes guarantees good performance for the PT, and thus, some simple introduction of the formality difference is sufficient. For many students, this is not their actual feeling of bar exam experience, though - for many, the difference between essay and PT or the legal writing teaching of law school and PT is too large to be treated similarly and they would optimize their Bar Exam efficiency, performance, and grades when trained and practice specifically for Performance Test.

If one did poorly on the performance test, passing the written portion and the Bar Exam is tough. Passing in such cases is possible in theory. In reality, many jurisdictions have the same individual grades for all applicants' writings. The examiner's grades are usually more or less consistent.

In California, a good impression and grade for the essays may give us a slight edge for the performance test - the last writing the grader sees. But more often than not, the edge is not significant enough to compensate for a poor performance in the performance test. It also makes the grader doubt their previous grade upon seeing poor work in the performance test. Out of disappointment, they might assign a lower grade than it deserves to your performance test. The Bar graders are not famous for their generosity in giving grades. In UBE jurisdictions where a performance test is administered first and the same individual grades all writings, poor performance sets the grading tone for the entire writing session.

Even in a jurisdiction where performance test(s) and essays are graded separately by different persons, a PT score ranging from 20% (UBE) to about 28.6% (California) of the written portion is not something an applicant can afford to lose.

By all means, a performance test is not something a Bar applicant can afford to treat lightly in the bar preparation. On the contrary, systematic and practical training and preparation that targets the performance test has explicitly a sense of necessity for passing the written portion and the Bar Exam overall.