Twelve months before the examination, the temptation is to start reading. Reading is the activity you know, and starting it feels like beginning. But a year is a long project, and the first fortnight is better spent on five decisions that determine whether the other fifty weeks work.
Decision 1: read the two documents
The Bar bulletin and the syllabus for one subject. Not summaries — the texts.
The bulletin gives you the schedule, the format, the weights, the cut-off, and the rules about what is examinable: 5, 8 and 12 September 2027; twenty essay problems per subject, each worth 5% (two-question problems 5% combined); a weighted general average of 75% to pass; laws and jurisprudence as of 30 June 2026; main-opinion doctrines only. See the 2027 Bar Examinations.
The syllabus gives you the boundary of what may be asked. Read one subject's coverage end to end, without studying it.
Decision 2: pick the plan
Not a plan in the abstract — a written one, with hours that match your life, and phases with deliverables. The twelve-month plan is a template; the important part is that the hours are honest. A 30-hour week planned by someone with a job fails in November, and a failed plan costs more than a modest one kept.
Write it down. One page: phases, subjects, weekly shape, and the two fixed appointments — the daily retrieval block and the weekly timed paper.
Decision 3: start with the heaviest sitting
Remedial Law and Legal and Judicial Ethics is 25% of the result, examined on the last afternoon, and the subject that decays fastest without use. Starting there is not arbitrary: it is the largest single weight, and it is the one that is hardest to rescue late.
If you are strong in procedure, start with Civil Law (20%) instead — but start with one of the two heavy sittings, not with the subject you enjoy.
Decision 4: install the retrieval habit now
Twenty minutes a day, from the first week. It is the smallest item in the plan and the only one that compounds.
The form: close the book, write or say what you studied yesterday, check, note the misses. Then, once a week, test something from a fortnight ago. That is spaced repetition in its simplest form, and it is the difference between a year of reading and a year of knowing — see spaced repetition.
Decision 5: arrange marking
The one thing money reliably improves. A person, a group, or a service that will read your answer and tell you what was missing. Arrange it now, in the first fortnight, before you have written anything to send.
Why now: because the value arrives from week four onward, and because arranging it later is how a year passes without a single marked answer. See choosing a review centre for the questions to ask.
The first fortnight, as a list
| Day | Task |
|---|---|
| 1 | Read the bulletin, once, slowly |
| 2 | Read the syllabus for your starting subject; write the map |
| 3 | Write the plan: phases, weekly shape, two fixed appointments |
| 4 | Set up the outline files: one per subject, syllabus-tagged |
| 5 | Arrange marking — ask two people, or enrol |
| 6 | Take one timed sitting in your strongest subject (a baseline, not a verdict) |
| 7 | Rest |
| 8–14 | Begin: the first block of the heavy subject, plus the daily twenty minutes |
What not to do in the first fortnight
- Buy a library. Four reviewers is four ways of not finishing one. Start with provisions and the free sources — a reading list for the Bar.
- Plan to catch up later. The first month is the cheapest month; a deficit carried into March is a permanent deficit.
- Start eight subjects. Two at most, one of them heavy.
- Tell everyone. The year is long; the people who need to know are few, and public commitments produce a different kind of pressure from the useful kind.
The measure of a good start
At the end of the first month, three things should be true: the heavy subject has a map in your own words, the retrieval block has happened at least twenty times, and you have written one timed answer and had it marked.
If those three are true, the other eleven months have something to build on. Nothing else done in October matters as much.