I highly recommend Steve Harris’ program for California Bar Examination repeaters. His books WINNIN’ TIME! and The Trigger List are absolute must-haves for anyone who wants to pass this thing. There’s a lot of great things I could write about Steve’s wonderful program, but I’ll focus on some of the best things.
What Steve understands in a fundamental sense is that success on the bar exam is about maximizing efficiency. There are many commercial outlines out there that present the law neatly and accurately. But none of them do so efficiently. A good outline spells out the rules the way you will write them in the exam. That’s the only thing that is important. Simple and to the point. WINNIN’ TIME! does all of the extra work of paring and slimming down complicated rules and multi-factor tests into single sentences so that you can memorize them efficiently, spit them out quick and maximize points.
The Trigger List is brilliant because it allows you to see the forest for the trees for each and every subject tested on the exam. By pairing each of the bar’s previous essays into simple issue lists, the book allows students to move seamlessly from theory to practice, and on how the most commonly tested issues nearly always appear in conjunction with each other. You need to know the law, but the key to passing the exam is whether you know the patterns. The Trigger List will help you see the patterns, and by the time you are ready to take the test, you will be able to outline an essay in your head almost before you finish reading the question and fact pattern.
Finally, the feedback Steve provides on essays will be the most comprehensive and thoughtful you will ever get, even in law school. His written feedback will be longer than your essays, and he will even suggest ways to improve your strengths as well as your weaknesses.
The bar exam is difficult. It is designed to trick and overwhelm students with the idea that a vast amount of material can be tested at any time. But it’s just a trick, and it is doable, and Steve has managed to prove above all else that it is predictable. The issues are predictable, the exam writers are predictable, and the graders are predictable. That means you can outwit them. Steve can help you make that happen. — Imran K., Esq., passed the July 2017 California Bar Examination