The Pinky Toe Lesson: Small Problems Don’t Stay Small

I recently broke my pinky toe.

It’s the kind of injury that feels almost comical to even say out loud. A pinky toe? That’s barely a toe. It’s the bar prep equivalent of thinking, “It’s just one small issue. Surely it won’t matter.”

So I did what a lot of smart, capable people do with small problems: I ignored it.

I broke it on Dec. 21, 2025. At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal. I could still walk. I could still function. I told myself it would “work itself out.” I didn't get it examined until this week.

Fast forward almost a month later. Small problems rarely stay in their own lane. When something small is off, your body compensates. You start walking differently without even realizing it. One tiny adjustment becomes a habit. Then that habit becomes strain. Then, suddenly, it’s not just your toe. You're feeling it in your foot, your posture, and yes, even your knee. 

Knee pain: That's the more significant problem I'm dealing with now. 

And, in a way, that's a good bar prep analogy.

Bar prep is full of “pinky toe” moments: Things that feel minor, manageable, not worth slowing down for. But the exam has a way of turning small inefficiencies into big consequences, especially when they repeat over and over across dozens of questions and hours of testing.

Here are five “small problems” that don’t stay small for long:

The first is running just 2 to 3 minutes over on a 30-minute essay. In the moment, it feels harmless, Maybe you’re writing a strong answer, maybe you’re “almost done,” maybe you just want to finish the thought. But if you do that on five essays, you’ve quietly borrowed 10 to 15 minutes from that last essay that is designed to take 30 minutes. And on the MEE, that’s not “a little short.” That’s the difference between a complete answer and an answer that ends mid-analysis. A few minutes here and there doesn’t disappear.

The second is skipping MPT practice because it doesn’t feel urgent yet. The MPT is easy to postpone because it’s intimidating, it’s time-consuming, and it doesn’t feel like memorization work. After all, the examiners give you all the law and facts you will need to answer the question. So people tell themselves they’ll “get to it later,” they’ll “watch a video about it” and call that progress, or they'll simply read sample responses to get an idea what solid responses look like. But the MPT is a performance test. You don’t improve on performance tests by reading about them. You improve by (as the name suggestion) performing them. Skipping MPT practice may not feel like a problem early in your prep, but in February or July, it can become painfully obvious when you sit down with a task memo, a file, a library, and a clock that does not care how confident you feel.

The third is not reading the explanations for multiple-choice questions, especially the ones you got right. It’s satisfying to see “correct” and move on. But “correct” doesn’t always mean “correct for the right reason.” If you guessed correctly, used the wrong rule, or got lucky between two answer choices, you didn’t actually learn the tested concept. Instead, you just escaped that question. And the bar exam may test that same concept again, just in a slightly different outfit. Skipping explanations is like walking on the broken toe because you can—until the compensation catches up to you.

The fourth is letting “I know this subject” turn into sloppy rule statements. A lot of examinees can develop the rule “in their head,” especially in subjects they’ve studied more. But recognizing the rule mentally is very different from being able to articulate it on paper—clearly, completely, and quickly—for a grader who has to score perhaps hundreds of answers. Graders can’t award points for what you meant or what you knew in your head. They award points for what’s on the page: clear, accurate rule statements and analysis that applies those rules to the facts. When you cut corners because you “basically know it,” you start writing vague rules, incomplete elements, and mushy standards. That gap might not sting when you’re answering multiple-choice questions because you can sometimes recognize the right answer without ever writing out the full rule. But on essays, it shows up immediately and drains points from otherwise solid answers.

The fifth is treating logistics and endurance like they’re “future problems.” The bar exam is not just a knowledge test. It's a full-day performance event, two days in a row for many jurisdictions. If you don’t practice under realistic timing, don’t build stamina with longer sets, don’t stress-test your routine, and don’t think through exam-day basics (sleep, meals, breaks, pacing), you’re essentially hoping your body and brain will magically cooperate under pressure. That’s the toe-to-knee problem in bar prep: A small oversight at the beginning becomes a big problem when fatigue hits and decision-making starts to slip.

The frustrating part is that the fix is usually not dramatic. It’s not about completely reinventing your study plan. It’s about noticing the small misalignments early and correcting them while they’re still small, before they start affecting everything else.

So, remember: A broken pinky toe feels small ... until it doesn’t. Bar prep works the same way. The biggest gains usually come from fixing one small thing at a time—consistently—before it turns into a bigger problem.

Don’t wait until your “pinky toe” becomes knee pain.

Handle it now. Your future self will thank you.