A mock bar is the closest available rehearsal of the real thing: the same length, the same number of problems, the same clock, the same fatigue. That makes it the most valuable single activity of the second half of a review year — and the most commonly wasted one.
The waste is always the same. The candidate sits the mock, glances at the score, feels something (relief, dread), and returns to reading. Nothing changes, because nothing was learned.
This article is about turning a mock into two lists and a week's work.
What a mock is for
Three purposes, in order:
- Rehearsing the pace. Twenty problems in four hours, twice a day, is a physical and procedural experience. Only a full sitting provides it.
- Exposing what you cannot produce. Not what you have not read — what you cannot write under time. The two sets are different, and the second is the one the examination measures.
- Testing your answer shape. A dozen varied questions, marked, is the fastest feedback loop available on whether your structure works.
What a mock is not for: predicting your result. A score on a mock is a measurement of a sample of questions, marked by you, on a particular day. It is not a forecast, and candidates who treat it as one either become complacent or despair — see how to measure readiness for better instruments.
Sitting it properly
The rehearsal value comes entirely from doing it exactly as the real thing is done.
| Requirement | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| The real number of questions (twenty for a subject) | Ten questions is a different exercise; the pace only bites at twenty |
| Four hours, unbroken | The fatigue of hour three is the thing being rehearsed |
| Started at the examination's time (8 a.m. or 1 p.m.) | Your body has a performance curve; find out where it is |
| Plain text box, no notes, no bookmarks | See the electronic platform |
| No pausing, no looking things up | The moment you pause, you are practising something else |
| Submitted at the bell, even incomplete | Learning what you can produce in four hours is the measurement |
One sitting a month from April, one a week from July. Not more: a marked mock consumes a weekend day and a half of analysis, and the analysis is where the value is.
Marking it in forty minutes
Do not mark it by re-reading and feeling. Mark it mechanically, question by question, against the rubric's three questions:
| Question | Mark | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | 2/3 | No conclusion; rule right, application thin |
| Q2 | 3/3 | — |
| Q3 | 0/3 | Could not place the doctrine (succession, reserva troncal) |
| Q4 | 1/3 | Answered (a), missed (b) and (c) |
Three marks per question is not a real score — it is a structured read. What it produces is not a number but a distribution of failure, and the distribution is the useful information:
- Whole questions at zero → knowledge gap. A study task.
- Rules right, application thin → you know the law and cannot use it. A writing task.
- Missing conclusions and sub-questions → routine errors. A checklist task, fixable in a week.
- Unfinished questions → pace. A practice task.
Four failures, four different repairs. A candidate who treats them all as "I need to study more" applies the wrong repair to three of them and spends the next month rereading what they already know.
The two lists
Forty minutes of marking produces two lists. Keep them short, specific and dated.
List 1 — the gaps. Doctrines you could not state at all. Each entry names the topic precisely and where to fix it:
Reserva troncal — the reversion and the four-year period. Read: Civil Code, arts. 891, 967–968; the lecture notes; then rebuild from memory. Target: 27 Oct.
List 2 — the habits. Structural errors that recurred across questions, counted:
Missed sub-question: 4 of 20. No conclusion: 6 of 20. Crossed identifiers: 2.
List 2 is the one candidates never write, and it is the cheaper of the two. A candidate with a 25% omission rate is losing roughly one question in four to a habit, not to ignorance — and fixing a habit takes a week, not a month.
The week after
The mock is only worth what happens next. The shape of the following week:
| Day | Task |
|---|---|
| Mon | Rebuild the failed topics from memory — the top three from List 1 |
| Tue | Two timed answers, in the areas the mock exposed |
| Wed | A short timed set (ten questions, two hours) with a focus on List 2 habits |
| Thu | The habit drill: ten questions where the only goal is to count the sub-questions and close every answer |
| Fri | Retrieval on the gaps; check the ones fixed |
| Sat | Nothing new. Rebuild the week's outline |
| Sun | Rest |
Then the next mock, in three or four weeks, and compare List 2 first. Habits should shrink quickly; gaps shrink slowly. A candidate whose habit list is empty and whose gap list is shortening is on track.
Where to get mocks
Three sources, with cautions:
- Past papers, assembled into a sitting. The most available option: twenty questions from one subject's past papers, timed as a sitting. The questions are the Court's; the marking is yours. Careful with suggested answers from older compilations — check anything doctrinal against the current text, since the 2027 cut-off is 30 June 2026.
- A review centre's mock, if you are enrolled: the value is in the marked return, so ask in advance what the feedback consists of. A mock returned with a score and no comments is only a rehearsal of the clock.
- Our own mock bar — six sittings in the examination's shape, with instant feedback on an answer while you write — exists for launch members; see the mock bar page. It is a rehearsal tool, not a prediction, and the same marking discipline applies.
Whichever source, the discipline is identical: sit it whole, mark it mechanically, write two lists, act on them for a week.
The mistake that wastes the whole exercise
Sitting a mock, seeing the score, and going back to reading the subject. It feels like a response — you have identified a weakness and returned to the material — and it is the least effective one available, because reading is the activity the mock already showed you can do.
The mock told you what you cannot produce. The repair is producing it: rebuilt from memory, rewritten under time, marked again. Anything else is another month of the same input, hoping for a different output.