I'm not going to sugarcoat it: I failed the Montana bar exam in February 2024 and again in July 2024. Both times I scored in the 260s when you need a 266 to pass. After that second failure I basically took two weeks off and felt sorry for myself before getting serious about figuring out what I was actually doing wrong.
The biggest shift came when I stopped treating every subject equally. My MBE scores were decent — consistently around 65% on practice sets — but my essay performance was killing me. Montana still uses MPT and MEE components, and I genuinely did not understand what graders were looking for. I found a solid MT BAR study guide that broke down the essay rubric in a way my commercial course never did, and I started timing myself brutally. I also worked through every MT BAR practice test I could find from the last five years.
Third attempt was February 2025 and I passed with a 274. Honestly came down to essay discipline more than anything else. Happy to share my full breakdown if anyone's in the same boat — especially around Contracts and Real Property, which destroyed me the first two times.