Name the hardest topic per course tested on a bar exam.

For me it was Real Property by a wide margin, specifically future interests. The Rule Against Perpetuities is genuinely one of the most counterintuitive legal rules tested on any bar exam — the "fertile octogenarian" and "unborn widow" problems exist because courts actually had to deal with these scenarios and the common law rule is blunt.

What worked for me: I stopped trying to understand the RAP intuitively and just memorized the mechanical application. (1) Identify the interest. (2) Ask: is it certain to vest or fail within a life in being at creation plus 21 years? (3) If not, strike it. Most bar exam RAP questions are testing whether you can identify a class gift with a potentially unborn member, which automatically fails the RAP under the common law rule.

Many states have adopted the Uniform Statutory Rule Against Perpetuities (wait-and-see approach) or abolished the RAP entirely, so also worth knowing your jurisdiction's current rule going in.

Evidence is the one that trips people up in practice even after they pass the bar, because Federal Rules and state variants diverge in ways that matter. For the MBE, you're tested on FRE, but if you're in a state that hasn't adopted FRE wholesale, you have to maintain parallel tracks in your head for the written portion of your state exam.

The specific areas that tend to generate the most wrong answers in my experience: (1) the hearsay exceptions that require declarant unavailability vs. those that don't — easy to confuse under time pressure, (2) the character evidence rules in civil vs. criminal cases and the specific exceptions for sex offense cases under 413-415, and (3) the authentication requirements for electronic records and social media, which is increasingly tested.

For Contracts, the biggest trap is Article 2 vs. common law and knowing which governs mixed goods/services contracts. The predominant purpose test governs but the line isn't always obvious in a fact pattern designed to straddle it.