My AI-powered bar review journey

On Jan. 7, the Office of the 2025 Bar Chairperson announced the results of the 2025 Bar Exams. Of the 11,420 examinees, 5,594 successfully hurdled the Bar Exam for a passing rate of 48.98%. In recent years, the passing rate has swung wildly: 72.28% in 2020-21, 43.47% in 2022, 36.77% in 2023, and 37.84% in 2024.

These numbers underscore a reality every bar taker understands: the Philippine Bar is among the toughest exams in the world. Aside from being the only professional licensure examination administered by the Supreme Court, it is purely essay based, spans an entire week with three full testing days in September, and demands mastery of political law, civil law, criminal law, labor law, commercial and taxation law, remedial law, and legal and judicial ethics.

BUILDING A TECH-ASSISTED STUDY ROUTINE
As an examinee preparing for the 2025 bar exam, I crafted a study plan that treated the Bar syllabus as my bible, following it methodically until I was confident that no principle, concept, or doctrine had been left untouched. What kept me up at night, however, was not whether I would put in the hours, but whether I would be able to retain and retrieve what I was studying when it mattered.

That was where artificial intelligence (AI) stepped in. Alongside the mental and emotional discipline that bar review demands, I decided to adopt a study plan built around a digital and tech-driven framework. AI became my constant, quiet study partner and personal coach that helped turn the overwhelming volume of readings into manageable, organized, and test-ready knowledge.

FROM SELF-MADE NOTES TO AI-GENERATED BAR DRILLS
I entered the review period with one major asset: my own personal notes from law school. These were my own distilled summaries of readings, lectures, and cases culled from my classes, organized in a way that matched the Bar syllabus, and reflected how I understood the law. Instead of experimenting with new reviewers, I turned my notes into the backbone of an AI-enhanced study system.

My process was simple but powerful. I fed portions of my notes into AI and ask it to transform them into bar-type review materials. A typical prompt looked like this:

Here are my notes for the topic “Refund of Erroneously or Excessively Paid Taxes under Section 229 of the Tax Code.” Please create bar exam style questions to test all relevant principles, rules, doctrines, as well as the amendments introduced by the Ease of Paying Taxes (EoPT) law in relation to this topic, which I will answer, and you will grade my answer afterwards as if you were a bar examiner. Give feedback on where I can improve.

The AI responded by generating essay questions, drills, question and answer sets, mnemonics, and memory techniques tailored specifically to my own summaries. It then evaluated my answers and pointed out gaps, weak reasoning, or missing legal bases. Instead of passive reading, my notes were transformed into an active testing engine with immediate, targeted feedback on how to improve.

Whenever a doctrine or provision felt unclear, I asked the AI to restate the rule in simpler terms and provide practical examples. Once the concept clicked, I then used AI to transform those same principles drawn from codal provisions and jurisprudential perspectives, into potential bar exam problems. Over time, topics that once felt intimidating became more familiar, understandable, and relatable.

All that work paid off when I finally took the exam in September. By then, I had answered so many AI-generated questions that very few issues felt completely new. The difficult questions I encountered in the exam all echoed patterns I had already seen in the AI-generated drills. The real advantage was not that the questions were identical, but that my mind had been trained to recognize the legal issues quickly and respond with clear, structured, and confident answers because of the timely feedback the AI provided after every practice response to the questions it generated. Because AI had forced me to apply the law repeatedly, I could respond calmly and methodically when faced with similar issues during the actual exam.

THE RESULT AND THE ROAD AHEAD
On the day that results were released, I deliberately stepped away from my devices and spent the day trying not to think about whether my name would appear on the list of successful examinees. My parents and siblings were the ones who called with the good news. What I felt most was contentment and relief that the months of intense preparation had done their work and that I would not have to repeat the bar review cycle.

One piece of advice I can give to the 2026 Bar candidates is to make use of technology in preparing for the bar. While AI is not a magic solution and cannot replace the discipline of reading codals or understanding doctrine, it is a powerful amplifier. It can convert personal notes into dynamic, adaptive reviewers; simulate the bar examination environment; and sharpen both retention and analysis. For me, repeatedly encountering codal principles and doctrines in question and answer format trained my mind to think and answer like a lawyer, to anticipate how examiners might frame issues, to structure answers properly, and to give responsive, legally grounded conclusions. Embracing both tradition and innovation allowed me to walk into the exam room not only well-read, but also well-trained to think, write, and respond like a lawyer.

Congratulations to all successful examinees of the 2025 Bar. I look forward to signing the Roll of Attorneys and reciting the Lawyer’s Oath with you, as we soon — and officially — become panyeros and panyeras in the profession we have all diligently prepared to join.

The views or opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Isla Lipana & Co. The content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for specific advice.

Jose Luis M. Yupangco is a manager in the Tax Services department of Isla Lipana & Co., the Philippine member firm of the PwC network.