“If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker it, it’s you.” Paul Newman – Movie Star
The most common complaint I hear from applicants preparing to take the bar exam is this:
“I had trouble organizing my answer. This created time pressure to finish within three hours. There is so much material in every Performance Test and so little time to absorb and deal with it.”
“Practice makes perfect” in performance test writing; the more you write the better you’ll get. That said though, you can also practice not being a sucker.
Here’s how.
Performance tests contain “tells.”
A tell is something in a poker player’s behavior or demeanor that gives clues to that player’s assessment of his or her hand. Opposing players gain an advantage by observing and understanding the meaning of another player’s tells, particularly if they’re reliable.
There are tells in PT questions. An applicant who sees them may be able to organize his or her answer more efficiently, saving time, and formatting the answer more in the way that the graders of the question are able to recognize and associate with good organization.
Every PT can be said to be organized in three layers, from the most general to the most specific. Because there are a limited number, becoming acquainted with them by going over past PTs at the “Past Exams” web page at the Office of Admissions[1] can put an applicant ahead of students who are just answering performance test questions as they are assigned by bar prep courses.
If this makes sense to you, hang on, and in coming days, I’ll let you know what the main performance tells are, and how to place your bets.
[1] http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/Examinations/PastExams.aspx
