How to 'spot issues' in a bar exam essay

Brian Hahn

Be honest now. Imagine you're mentoring a starry-eyed 1L starting law school. How would you explain how to "spot the issues" in an essay? How exact and specific can you get?

Is it just a mystical process where the crystal ball in your head somehow divines issues from the heavens?

Bar prep companies and law schools tend to focus on the "R" (rules) and "A" (application) part of IRAC, and then leave you in the dust to figure out the "I" (issues) on your own.

That's funny (not really) because an issue that's never raised is completely worthless.

Issues are king

Contrary to what you learned in law school, ISSUES are the most important component when outlining and writing an essay. Rules are next in line and then followed by application.

You get 0 points for an issue you don't write about, even if you know the corresponding rule cold. An IRAC can't sprout from a seed that's never been planted.

No issues = no IRAC = no points. Identifying the correct issues is the easiest way to quickly signal to the grader that you're at least discussing the right things.

Knowing the law means you know the issues as well (not just the rules).

Once you get the key aspects of "I" and "R" down, the rest takes care of itself. You're pretty much home free.

Fortunately, identifying issues is a learnable skill you can practice for your bar essay preparation. Forget the "just try your best to spot issues bro" advice, and follow this systematic and methodical way to make sure you get all the relevant issues.

Forget about "spotting" issues

You've heard of issue spotting.

When you "spot" issues, it's a random process. It's vague and implies that you pull issues out of thin air because "you'll know it when you see it." You're looking at a fact pattern and hoping pops out at you. It's like a jump scare in a B-movie.

And when you're sitting in the test center under pressure, you might recognize some big issues, but smaller ones might slip by you. You want as many points as possible, right?

"Checking" for issues is the better approach.

The difference is subtle but important.

✅ Issue checking is a checklist approach. As you go through the fact pattern, you run through a list of known, potential testable issues and see which issues correspond to the facts. Instead of scanning and hoping to recognize something, you're working from a list of known issues.

Do the facts in this problem trigger a rule element of this issue? If yes, write about it and talk about the associated sub-issues. If not, move on without wasting time on irrelevant issues.

This way, you make sure you capture the defenses and exceptions and other sub-issues you may have missed by vibing through an essay. You're scraping together as many points as possible.

Also, notice the term "fact pattern." There are only a limited number of ways they can test you on. This is the biggest weakness of the bar exam. And just like there are fact patterns, there are "issue patterns" that come up over and over.

This is a methodical process. It doesn't rely on mere familiarity. You're following a system, not waiting for inspiration.

How to practice issue checking

The only way to get good at issue checking is to sit down with past essay questions and go through them methodically.

But you also need a list of issues. You could base it on the table of contents in your Barbri outline, or the NCBE subject matter outline.

Or if you want done-for-you a framework for organizing and checking issues in an essay, Approsheets issue checklists and flowcharts are built exactly for this.

"If you see X, then you talk about Y." It walks you through the shape of an essay by subject, so you have a structured checklist to run through rather than relying on what randomly comes to mind.

Here's also a real-time walkthrough of me issue checking an example essay:

This is how bar intuition actually develops. Not from reading rules and trying to memorize words on a page. From seeing the same patterns repeat across dozens of fact patterns until you stop needing to think about it consciously because the issue patterns have been engraved into your brain.

Brian is the founder and chief strategist at Make This Your Last Time, a patent attorney, and second-time passer of the California Bar Exam after figuring out what works and what doesn't. He's been writing about actionable and effective bar prep since 2014, helping tens of thousands of bar takers across the country pass the exam.