Someone in a Facebook group asked me to share my study schedule after I mentioned passing, so here it is. This is designed for someone with full-time work and family commitments — about 1-1.5 hrs/day.
Weeks 1-2: Foundation
- Read through the official AK Bar - Alaska Bar exam content outline (free download from the certifying body's website)
- Take one baseline practice test to identify your starting weak spots — don't stress the score
- Begin the AK Bar - Alaska Bar Exam practice tests on PracticeTestGeeks focusing on core concepts
Weeks 3-4: Deep Dive
- Work through each topic area systematically — don't skip the ones that feel obvious
- For legal & attorneys-specific terminology, use flashcards (Anki is free and excellent)
- Complete at least 2 full-length timed practice exams
Weeks 5-6: Scenario Practice
- Focus on scenario-based questions — these make up 40-60% of most AK Bar - Alaska Bar exams
- For each scenario question you get wrong, write out WHY in your own words
- Review AL Bar - Alabama Bar Exam and AR Bar - Arkansas Bar Test content if your exam covers multiple subjects
Weeks 7-8: Final Prep
- Take a full timed practice test every other day
- Only review weak areas — don't re-read entire study materials
- Stop studying 24 hours before your exam. Sleep and hydration matter more at this point.
This got me from a 62% baseline to a 87% on my final practice test, and a passing score on the real exam. Feel free to adapt it for your situation!
What do you think about condensing this to 4-5 weeks if I can do 2-3 hours per day? I have a test date that's sooner than I'd like and trying to figure out if I can make it work.
Great breakdown. One thing I'd add to Week 1: look at the score breakdown from your baseline practice test — not just the overall score. Most AK Bar - Alaska Bar exams are weighted by domain, and knowing which domains carry more weight changes how you allocate study time.
The Anki flashcard tip is something more people need to hear. I have a AK Bar - Alaska Bar deck with about 200 cards covering all the key terms and formulas. Doing 20 cards/day during my lunch break added up faster than I expected.
This is gold. Saving and sharing with my study group. The "stop studying 24 hours before" advice is underrated — I bombed an exam once because I crammed until midnight and couldn't think straight in the morning.
I'll be honest, I almost bailed around week 5. The material felt endless and I wasn't retaining anything, so I took a day off and came back to it with lower expectations. What actually helped me was drilling specific topic areas instead of trying to review everything at once. For contracts I used the ak bar/questions/alaska contracts and commercial law practice questions and just did 10-15 at a time when I had a spare 20 minutes.
It's not glamorous advice but consistency beat intensity for me. Some weeks I didn't hit the 1.5 hours and I just moved on instead of trying to make it up. You're going to have bad study days, that's just part of it. Keep going anyway.
Quick update since a few people asked -- I'm finishing up week 5 and just hit 71% on a full practice set this morning, which honestly surprised me. I'd been hovering in the mid-60s for two weeks and was starting to second-guess the whole free-resources-only approach, but something clicked this week.
I'm planning to sit in late July so I've got about three weeks left to keep pushing that score up. If you're following a similar timeline you'll probably feel the same dip around week 4, just push through it.
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