A realistic study schedule for the Ontario bar exams

Most study schedules you will find are somebody's week-by-week plan presented as though it were yours. This one is a shape and the arithmetic behind it, so you can build your own version with your own reading speed and your own life in it.

If you have not already, do the page arithmetic in how long you should study, or let the study planner do it with your own reading speed and print you a copy. Everything below assumes it.

The shape

Whatever length you end up with, the plan has the same four parts, in this order.

1. First pass: read everything, slowly, once. This is the longest block and it will feel unproductive. You are not trying to remember it. You are trying to know what is in there and roughly where, so that later you can find it. Do not stop to master anything.

2. Second pass, with practice questions running alongside it. The second read is much faster. Its job is to turn recognition into recall, and the practice questions are what tell you whether that is happening. This is the most valuable block in the plan and the one most often squeezed.

3. Full-length practice under exam conditions. At least one complete paper, timed, in one sitting. Two if you can. Not for the score, but because a 4.5-hour paper is a different physical event from a study session and exam day should not be the first time you meet it.

4. A final week you keep deliberately light. Consolidation, weak areas, your index, and sleep. No new material. Candidates who cram new content in the last week arrive tired and it costs more than the content is worth.

Where practice actually goes

The single most common scheduling mistake is putting all the practice at the end.

It feels logical: learn first, test second. But a practice question in week nine that reveals a misunderstanding you have carried since week two is a discovery you can no longer act on. The same question in week five is a study instruction.

So: start practice as soon as you have finished a subject on the first pass. Not the whole exam, just that subject. Our subject quiz packs are built for exactly this slot, and the principle applies whatever you use.

Then, in the second pass, alternate. Read a subject, drill it, move on. What the drilling finds tells you where the second pass needs to slow down.

Sitting both exams in the same sitting

You are not obliged to. The exams run three times a year and you can take the Barrister, the Solicitor, or both in any given sitting.

If you are doing both, two things change:

• Read the shared material once. The first fifteen chapters of Professional Responsibility and the appendices are identical across the two sets. Read them early, during the Barrister pass, and treat them as done.
• Do not simply run the two plans end to end. Finish the first exam's second pass before the first paper, then use the gap between the papers for the second exam's second pass rather than starting it cold.

If the arithmetic says you cannot do both properly, sitting one is not a failure. It is the same licensing process either way, and it comes around three times a year.

What a week looks like

Less prescriptive than it looks, because the only fixed points are the ratio and the rest day:

• Five or six study days, not seven. The seventh day is not a reward, it is what makes the other six work.
• Reading in the morning, when comprehension is best, if your day allows any choice about it.
• Practice questions later in the day, partly because that is closer to a tired brain, which is the brain that writes the last hour of the exam.
• One longer session a week that runs beyond your comfortable length, building toward a full paper. More on why in the endurance post.

The short version

• Four blocks: slow first pass, faster second pass with practice alongside, full-length timed papers, then a light final week.
• Practice belongs mixed into the plan, not stacked at the end, because a finding you cannot act on is not worth much.
• Sitting both exams? Read the shared Professional Responsibility chapters and appendices once, and stagger the two second passes around the papers.
• Five or six study days a week, not seven.
• No new material in the last week.