Careerist columnist Vivia Chen is off this week.

The bar exam is a rite of passage. Since everyone who practices law has to take it and pass it, everyone knows what it's like and how it's graded, right? Wrong. A surprisingly large number of smart candidates don't.

I know. I've been teaching people how to pass the bar exam for two decades. With the Uniform Bar Examination just a month away, I've enlisted a group of veterans (aka retakers) to tell you what they will be doing or not doing the second time around.