u/Flimsy_Mud699 — reddlx

Hi everyone,

I’m a first-time taker and a foreign attorney, passed Feb 2026 bar.

I just wanted to share my study experience in case it helps anyone here. I also really wanted to give back to this community — I got a lot of emotional support from Reddit before and after the exam, and it honestly helped me get through some tough moments.

For context, I’m a full-time law firm attorney and a mom of a 4-year-old. I started studying as soon as Barbri 4mo course opened in October.

Study schedule

I studied during lunch and after my child went to sleep. From October to December, I couldn’t study more than about 5 hours on weekends. Thankfully, my husband was incredibly supportive — during the last two months (January–February), he took full care of our child on weekends, so I was able to study almost the entire day (around 10 hours each day).

Also, 3 days before the exam, I booked a hotel near the test center and did full day studying there.

Materials

I used Barbri and Adaptibar — nothing else. My Barbri progress showed about 370 hours, but since I watched lectures at 1.5x, my actual time investment was less.

Since I had zero background in U.S. law (just some contract review drafted based on U.S. law), and my country is not a common law jurisdiction, I focused on building a solid foundation through Barbri lectures. I listened to every lecture-type courses diligently (at 1.5x speed).

Barbri outlines were way too long, so I created my own condensed outlines based on the lectures and Barbri outlines. Each subject ended up being about 8–10 pages, which I later realized during my 3 days last minute study, was still too long for final review. In hindsight, I think having a 1–2 page “attack outline” per subject for essays would have been very helpful.

Some subjects like Contracts and Criminal Law felt relatively intuitive (similar to concepts of my country’s law), but Community Property was completely new to me. Professional Responsibility, Civ Pro, and Crim Pro were tricky — they had similarities but also important differences that made them confusing.

I haven’t taken the MPRE yet (planning for August or October), so learning both ABA and California distinctions without prior exposure was honestly painful.

For MBE

I completed all Barbri MBE books and reviewed explanations thoroughly. Took all explanatory lectures after completing questions.

I did about 600 Adaptibar questions (wish I could’ve done more). I tried to stay within 1 min 40 sec per question, but if the question was long but familiar, I allowed myself more time.

I carefully reviewed explanations and added notes to my outline whenever I encountered new or tricky points.

Essays & PT

I submitted all graded essays on Barbri (I recall 4 essays and 1 PT maybe, already forgot the details)— and I highly recommend doing this. The feedback was much more detailed than I expected, with clear explanations of where points were gained/lost. It was extremely helpful.

I printed out essays from the past 5 years but realistically only completed about recent 2 years’ worth. I also prioritized Barbri essays since they provide structured explanations.

I fully wrote out fewer than 10 essays. However, I issue-spotted and outlined around 50 essays, spending about 10–15 minutes each, followed by detailed review of model answers.

Constitutional Law is my weak subject (it was during the country’s bar too…), and while I understood Criminal Law for MBE, I hadn’t fully memorized rule statements for essays — which worried me. Fortunately, neither showed up on my exam. I do think I got a bit lucky there.

MBE performance prior to Feb 2026 exam

- Adaptibar average: ~70%

- Barbri average: ~63–65%

I was worried about MBE until the end, but people told me Barbri questions are harder and less clean — which I agree with. The actual exam felt more straightforward.

Exam day

Morning MBE: Finished with ~15 minutes left, so rechecked answers and revisited ~10 flagged questions (but didn’t change any of my responses).

Afternoon MBE: Felt significantly harder (I had booklet 7) compared to morning MBE. Only ~5 minutes left at the end, so only had time to check answers and revisit ~2 questions (also didn’t change anything). Honestly, about 50% of the questions felt uncertain, so I was worried I might fail because of MBE.

Essays: Essays 1, 2, 4, 5 felt strong (felt like, I scored around 70+). However I mismanaged time in both sessions. For Essay 3, only had 40 minutes left, missed a couple of issues and stopped in the middle of a sentence. For PT, only had 1 hour 5-10 minutes, so I had to stop mid-sentence again. I definitely had 2–3 more paragraphs I wanted to write.

Final thoughts

I’m sharing this in case my experience or study volume helps someone. Feel free to ask any questions — I’ll do my best to answer!

And again, thank you to this community. Reddit really helped me stay sane through this process.

Good luck to everyone preparing!