The FYLSX tests three subjects and nothing else. Peppercorn drills exactly those, from your own notes, in the formats the exam actually uses.
7 days of Complete free — no card, nothing to cancel. Covers 75 questions over 7 days; whichever runs out first, you pick a plan then.
The First-Year Law Students' Examination is 100 multiple-choice questions in three subjects: Contracts, Criminal Law and Torts. Ninety of them count — thirty from each subject — and the other ten are pretest items that do not affect your score. It is administered in June and October, with a morning or afternoon session to choose between and one set break.
You need a scaled score of 560 to pass, on a scale with a theoretical maximum of 800. Raw scores are equated across exam forms, so the number of questions you need right shifts slightly with how hard your particular form was.
Two things about that shape should drive how you prepare. There are no essays, so every mark on the paper is a multiple-choice mark — speed and elimination matter more than composition. And with only three subjects at thirty scored questions each, you cannot carry a weak one: on a bar exam with fourteen subjects a gap costs you a fraction of the paper, here it costs a third of it.
What that means in practice is that the FYLSX rewards a narrower skill than the bar exam does. There is no credit for a well-argued wrong answer and no partial marks for spotting an issue you then mishandle — you either pick the right option or you do not. Preparation that works is repetition against explanations, not essay drafting.
Paste your class notes, your outlines, your black-letter law. Peppercorn turns that into questions, essays and cold-calls on exactly what you have been studying — so you are tested on your own understanding of it, not on someone else's question bank.
One sitting, on the clock, in the shape the FYLSX actually takes — 100 multiple-choice questions across Contracts, Criminal Law and Torts. You find out where you stand before the exam tells you.
MBE-style questions with an explanation for every option, not just the right one. Most of what you learn from a practice question is why the answer you nearly picked was wrong, so that is where the explanation goes.
The FYLSX has no essay component, so this is not exam practice for it — it is skill-building for the bar exam that comes later, and for your own law school finals, which very much do have essays. Available on the track if you want it; ignore it if you don't.
Timed black-letter definitions. Essay marks are lost on vague rule statements more often than on bad analysis, and a rule you can only half-recall is one you will paraphrase.
Cold-call interrogation that keeps asking until the answer is actually reflexive. It is deliberately uncomfortable, which is the point — the exam will be too.
Everything is built from material you supply. Paste a Torts outline and the questions come from your Torts outline, in your professor's framing, rather than from a bank written for someone else's syllabus.
These are unedited output from The Drill on a Torts set — not written for this page. The explanations are what you see after answering.
A homeowner hired an independent contractor to repair a roof, specifying only the completion deadline and price, with no control over the method or means of the work. The contractor negligently left loose shingles on the ground, and a pedestrian walking on the public sidewalk slipped on them and was injured. The homeowner did not inspect the work during the project. The pedestrian sues the homeowner for negligence. Is the homeowner liable?
Answer: No — homeowners are generally not vicariously liable for an independent contractor's negligence, and no exception applies.
Peppercorn's explanation: the default common-law rule is that one who hires an independent contractor is not vicariously liable for the contractor's torts, because the hirer does not control the means and methods of the work. Leaving loose shingles after a roofing job is ordinary negligence, not an inherently dangerous activity, and no nondelegable duty — such as excavation near a public way, or handling explosives — applies to routine roof repair. Absent negligent hiring or retained control, the homeowner is not liable.
A homeowner, with reckless disregard for the truth, falsely told police he had personally witnessed his neighbour breaking into his garage at night. The neighbour was arrested and charged with burglary. The case was dismissed when the homeowner admitted under oath that he had fabricated the account. The neighbour sues. Which tort claim is strongest?
Answer: Malicious prosecution — criminal proceedings knowingly initiated without probable cause and with malice, terminated in the neighbour's favour.
Defamation is a real claim on these facts, which is exactly why the question is hard. Peppercorn's explanation covers why it is not the strongest one: the statement was made to police to instigate a prosecution, and the gravamen of the harm is the wrongful initiation of legal proceedings — so malicious prosecution captures the arrest, the charges and the legal fees in one claim where defamation would not.
A pilot suffered a sudden, unforeseeable heart attack with no prior symptoms, lost control, and crashed into a vacant warehouse. The owner sues the airline, arguing res ipsa loquitur because aeroplanes do not normally crash into buildings absent negligence. The airline presents unrebutted medical evidence of the cardiac event. Likely outcome?
Answer: the warehouse owner likely loses — the unrebutted evidence overcomes the inference res ipsa would otherwise create.
The trap is treating res ipsa as conclusive. Peppercorn's explanation makes the distinction: it creates only a permissible inference of negligence, and once a defendant introduces evidence of a plausible non-negligent explanation, the fact-finder is not required to find negligence.
Questions are checked by a second pass before you see them: answer keys that disagree with their own explanation are corrected, and anything that cannot be corrected is withheld rather than shown to you.
The State Bar requires it of students finishing their first year of law study in a J.D. programme at a State Bar–unaccredited registered law school, or through the Law Office Study Program; and of students without two years of college work attending a California-accredited or ABA-accredited law school. If you are not sure whether that describes you, the State Bar is the authority, not us.
On the Baby Bar track, yes — Contracts, Torts and Criminal Law, and nothing else. That is the point of the track. If you later move on to the full bar exam you switch tracks and the subject list widens; your Docket and history come with you.
Every miss goes on the Docket, scheduled tightest where you were least sure, so the next session leads with what you actually got wrong rather than what you felt like revising. Progress breaks accuracy down by sub-topic, so "Torts" becomes "negligence — breach, 0 out of 6".
Same features. The Pass is one payment with access scoped to your declared writing period, for people sitting once; the subscription is for studying year-round. You can start on the free trial and decide afterwards.
No. Peppercorn is an independent study aid. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the State Bar of California, the NCBE, or any law school.
Sitting the FYLSX? The Baby Bar Pass is US$225 one-time, no subscription — the full Complete feature set, ~6-7 weeks of access opening before your writing date, and a discounted retake extension if you sit again.
Studying year-round instead? Core is US$49/month or US$394/year, and Complete — every mode, prep content included — is US$89/month or US$854/year.
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Peppercorn's questions, model answers and outlines are generated by AI and checked by a second pass before you see them. They're built to be accurate and exam-realistic, but AI can be wrong. Use it to drill and stress-test your understanding, not as your only source of truth. Peppercorn is not affiliated with the NCBE, any state bar, the LSO or any law school.