Editor's note: It is that time of year again and we're recycling this article for the recent grads who are in the marathon.

Ten Tips for Passing the Bar Exam (Especially if You Didn’t the Last Time)

1. Don’t over-study. Yes, I know that law students think this is impossible but it is important that you don’t wear yourself out and confuse yourself before the bar exam.

If you go into the Bar Exam worn out, you won’t operate at your peak. It is more important to be fresh and rested, able to access what you do know, than to know one more piece of data.

When I took BarBri for the Georgia Bar in 1989, they had a criminal law lecturer who gave me the most valuable advice I ever had for bar preparation. He said that there are three levels of knowledge. In the first level, you have a superficial sense of a topic but not an in-depth knowledge.

By Ellie Izzo, PhD & Vicki Carpel Miller, BSN, MS, LMFT

Daniel, a family lawyer, was referred to us for treatment by his primary care physician, following an annual physical. He had met with his doctor due to multiple physical annoyances which included chronic headaches and digestive problems. When his doctor found nothing medically wrong, he suggested that Daniel might be experiencing physical symptoms due to psychological stress and referred him to us.

Daniel presented as a man sophisticated in many dimensions. He was well dressed, well spoken, confident, calm and charming and really didn’t understand why he was referred for a Vicarious Trauma consultation. Daniel’s success as a family lawyer had its benefits and its disadvantages. While he was very conscious of all the benefits he had enjoyed from a thriving practice, he was less conscious of how the stress in his work affected his health. After some interaction with him about the definition of Vicarious Trauma and after asking him the assessment questions, he experienced an “aha” moment. He was visibly concerned with how he had unwittingly been traumatized through the nature of his work.

Copyright 2007 Riane Eisler and reprinted in CuttingEdgeLaw.com with permission of the author

RIANE EISLER is an eminent social scientist, attorney, and author best known for her bestseller The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, now in 23 foreign editions, including most European languages and Chinese, Russian, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, and Arabic.

Her newest book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics – hailed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “a template for the better world we have been so urgently seeking,” by Peter Senge as “desperately needed,” by Gloria Steinem as “revolutionary,” and by Jane Goodall as “a call for action” – proposes a new approach to economics that gives visibility and value to the most essential human work: the work of caring for people and planet.

Is it time to consider the impact of the billable hour on the practice of law and make some changes? In my opinion, we need to find a more rewarding and fulfilling way to value legal services for the benefit of both lawyer and client alike. The required number of hours a lawyer must bill each year has gone up significantly in the last 30 years and there are those who believe the impact of increasing billable hour demands has made us nothing more than piece workers -- something has to give for lawyers.

Part 2: http://cuttingedgelaw.com/video/david-lerman-part-2

Part 3: http://cuttingedgelaw.com/video/david-lerman-part-3

Part 4: http://cuttingedgelaw.com/video/david-lerman-part-4

The new councilman (we’ll call him John) strutted around City Hall, ordered the janitor and cleaning lady to work faster, and shouted down anyone who dared to express an opinion different from his own. Rumors circulated that he abused his wife. Some people said that she had been hospitalized.

When we were children, we often heard our parents say something to the effect of “Just tell me the truth and I won’t be angry.” And as parents ourselves, how many times have we said something similar to our own children?