When I registered for the Barrister exam, I was working about 45 hours a week in finance. Everyone’s first question was the same: are you going to take leave? I couldn’t afford to. So I studied for both Ontario licensing exams the way thousands of articling students and NCA candidates do every year — around a full-time job. Both passed on the first attempt. This is the honest version of how.
The decision: quit, reduce, or work around it?
It is a genuinely live question in 2026, especially for NCA candidates whose savings are finite and articling students whose “study leave” is limited to seven days per first attempt (added to the end of the articling term). My framework was simple: if your job has predictable hours and quiet evenings, work around it. If your job regularly detonates your evenings — deal closings, trial prep, busy season — either reduce hours formally or accept a longer timeline. The one option that does not exist is pretending your job is quieter than it is.
My actual weekly schedule
| Day | Study block | What I did |
|---|---|---|
| Mon–Thu | 7:30–9:30 pm (2 hrs) | Reading the materials, in chapter order. Phone in another room. |
| Friday | Rest | Non-negotiable. Burnout is the real enemy, not the exam. |
| Saturday | 9 am–2 pm (5 hrs) | The long block: practice questions, then later full timed practice exams. |
| Sunday | 10 am–12 pm (2 hrs) | Review of the week, index fixes, planning next week. |
| Commute | ~45 min/day | Audio review and flashcards — found time, not scheduled time. |
That is about 13 scheduled hours a week, plus found time. Over eleven weeks, it added up to roughly 140 hours for the Barrister exam — comfortably inside the recommended range, without a single day of leave until the final week.
What I got wrong
- I started reading before I had a system. My first two weeks produced beautifully highlighted chapters and zero retrieval skill. If I restarted, week one would be index and tab setup, not reading.
- I did my first timed practice exam too late. I waited until week seven, discovered my lookups were far too slow, and spent two anxious weeks fixing a problem I should have found in week three. Do a diagnostic practice exam early, even if you bomb it.
- I told my employer late. Articling students: tell your principal your exam dates months ahead. Study leave and lighter weeks are easy to arrange with notice and awkward to arrange without it.
The honest trade-offs
Working while studying costs you two things: social life (mostly recoverable) and slack (not recoverable). When my sister visited in week eight, I lost a Saturday and it took ten days to feel caught up. If your life has no slack — new baby, sick parent, crunch season at work — build a longer runway instead of a tighter schedule. Twelve gentle weeks beat eight brutal ones, and the exam does not award extra marks for suffering.
And if you are an NCA candidate weighing whether to keep working: the calculus above is yours too, but add buffer for unfamiliar Ontario content. The candidates I know who struggled were not the ones with jobs — they were the ones with jobs and JD-grad timelines.