“How Has No-One Done This Before?” Because It’s a Bad Idea

Arby’s recently launched Steak Nuggets—hand‑cut, bite‑size pieces of smoked steak seasoned with garlic and pepper—sold like chicken nuggets. You can order them as a 5‑ or 9‑piece with Hickory BBQ sauce, in a sandwich with Havarti and crispy onions, or over white‑cheddar mac and cheese. In the commercial, the narrator actually asks, “How has no‑one done this before?”

My answer, after trying them: Because it’s not a great idea.

And that's my bar‑prep lesson. When you catch yourself saying, “How has no‑one studied this way before?” the most likely explanation isn’t that you’ve found a secret shortcut. It’s that the shortcut doesn’t go anywhere worth going.

Novelty Isn’t Evidence

If a tactic truly works, it doesn’t stay niche. It gets copied, faculty start teaching it, providers bake it into their courses, and pass rates reflect it.

The bar world is ruthlessly pragmatic: good ideas become standard. When something hasn’t spread, there’s usually a reason. And it isn’t a conspiracy of people who “don’t get it.”

Before you reorganize your study plan around a shiny idea, give it a quick reality check. Ask yourself whether there is any evidence that it improves recall, accuracy, or timing for you; whether you can actually sustain it every day for a few weeks without crowding out practice and feedback; and whether it fits next to the core methods rather than replacing them. If those answers are shaky, keep the idea small and on the side rather than making it the main dish.

What the Exam Actually Rewards

The bar pays for transfer under time: retrieving precise rules and applying them cleanly to unfamiliar facts while the clock is running. You build that capacity the same way athletes build game fitness—by doing the thing you will be graded on.

Start each study day with a short burst of closed‑book recall so your brain practices pulling rules up without a crutch.

Follow that with a mixed set of MBEs that forces you to switch subjects the way the exam will; jot down how long each question takes and, more importantly, why a miss happened, i.e., was it a rule gap, a misread, or a trap choice?

Then give yourself a writing rep. On days when time is tight, outline an essay in 15 minutes to practice triage; on days with more space, write a full thirty‑minute response or work a short file‑and‑library task.

End by reviewing your work and writing a one‑sentence fix you’ll apply tomorrow. None of this is flashy, but it steadily turns knowledge into performance.

Try New Things, But Make Them Earn Space

Sure, curiosity is healthy. But over‑commitment to novelty is not. When you want to try a new approach, time‑box it to a week and protect the core pieces—daily recall, mixed practice, timed writing, and feedback. (After all, one week is about 10 percent of your post-graduate bar preparation time.)

Pick a single metric you care about, such as rule‑recall accuracy, MBE pace at a given accuracy, or a specific rubric category on essays, and see if the experiment moves that number.

Keep the dose small—about a hour a day in addition to your regular work—so you are testing a supplement, not swapping out the substance.

For example, if you like listening to rules on your commute, pair that with writing five of those rules from memory the moment you sit down, and then watch whether your misses on those topics actually decline over the next two weeks.

If the data says yes, keep it. If not, thank it for trying out and go back to what’s working.

Back to Arby’s Steak Nuggets

“How has no‑one done this before?” usually translates to, “Because the basics are better.” Arby's Steak Nuggets repackage steak without improving it. After tasting them, that was obvious to me. Many study gimmicks do the same: New shape, same substance, no better results.

The bar exam rewards steady, measurable work: recalling rules without help, applying them under time, writing clearly, and correcting course with feedback.

Keep your plan anchored there. Let any new idea earn its place by proving it helps, and let your results—not the novelty—be the reason it stays.