One more day to normalcy

First day of the bar exam - check. Thank God I'm not taking it in a state with a three-day exam.

(For the non-lawyers out there: the first day of the exam, in my state, consists of 7 hours in which to write eight essays and two practice-skills tests, which are also essays, but longer, based on different stuff, and in a different format than the other eight essays. The second day is 7 hours of multiple choice questions. Aren't you sorry you didn't go into law?)

I wrote something for every essay, so that's something. It was a close shave for one subject, though, about which, it seems, I know pretty much nothing. Let me explain. No, there is too much - let me sum up. I rocked one essay (I think) and did pretty well on a second (though it got possibly a little over-involved). I'm pretty sure I identified all the relevant issues and made a reasonable stab at applying relevant rules on two more of the subjects. I wrote enough on the fifth and sixth essays to get some points, at least, and threw around a bunch of semi-relevant vocabulary on number seven. And then the last subject - well, I really did stare at the question for quite a long time, write about two sentences on each of the three parts, and call it a day. 

I would be panicking about knowing nothing about that last question (and am, somewhat), except that it's impossible to know how you did because you don't know how anyone else did. My state grades essays with a checklist and you get a point for everything you mention that they wanted/expected you to mention. So a given essay might be worth a potential maximum of, say, sixteen points. But the scores are then scaled, so if 95% of the test takers don't earn more than seven points, the earner of eight points is king. BarBri graded our practice essays by telling us both how many points we got, and what the mean score on the question was when it was given on the bar exam. Which is all very good and helpful and whatnot - if you're consistently getting way below the mean on the actual exam, that's probably a bad sign. That said, it doesn't give you much of a basis for evaluating your performance on the actual day.

(I have mostly managed to avoid post-portem-ing the actual questions, though I think a lot of people struggled with at least one of the questions I struggled with. And one of my classmates asked, "What was the deal with the [subject X] essay?" - to which I thought, how the hell do I answer this without one of us coming away from the conversation feeling awful?)

I think I did okay on the practice-skills tests, except that (as this post amply demonstrates) my default writing style is sort of rambling and expansive with convoluted sentences. In real life, I just edit that stuff out, but the time contrainsts of exams don't always let you do that. Plus, by the end of seven hours I was kinda fried, so I'm not sure how coherent I was at the last. (Some people get terse when they're tired - I get chatty.) 

Still, the goal is minimum competency, right? I'm thinking that my practice-skills tests were at least minimally competent. I seriously hope so, anyway. Essays? No idea.

So, yeah, I could have completely failed. Or not. I just can't know, and won't know until October. (Poor NLLDH - he thought results came out in August, and was horrified to find out we'll be in suspense until October.) 

The only consolation if I fail is that I feel like now, I have a MUCH better idea of what I should be doing and how I would more effectively study. It's sort of like how you feel after your first semester of exams - okay, that's what a law school final is like; now I know what it is, now I understand what I need to do next time. Now that I've taken (the first half) of a bar exam, I have a much better sense of what it entails and what I would need to do. (It's like the woman who was behind me in the line for the water fountain said to someone else: "Once you've done one bar exam, the next is much easier." Which isn't to say that it's ever EASY, of course. Not trying to suggest that at all! It's all relative.)

But anyway. Let's hope that if I do understand better, now, how to study for this exam, it's knowledge I never have to apply.

Comments

[Dr. Moonbeam]

Wow. I am SO GLAD I did not go into law, I must say.

Holding my thumbs for you!

[helenesch]

Congrats on having completed day 1 (and best of luck with the rest!) I have to admit, I feel anxious even reading your post and thinking about having to perform under that kind of pressure. But it sounds like your handling the stress really well! Maybe that's one way that three years of law school do "prepare" you for the bar...

[meg]

I hope you're kicking some serious ass on part two as I sit here and type this!

Will passing one state's bar be acceptable if you want to work in a neighboring state?

[loyal reader]

Are you hand-writing these essays?

[joy]

As I write, you're done! Congratulations! Have a most marvelous August reading NON-LAW BOOKS.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Thanks, all!

@meg, it depends on the state, and it varies a lot. There are a bunch of states that will admit you to their state bar without making you take the exam if you've practiced law in another jurisdiction for a minimum number of years (and often have met some other requirements). And then there are a bunch of states that make you take their bar exam no matter how long you've been in practice. (For instance, the one I will be moving to in 2012 - although I won't need to be licensed for that job, so taking that bar exam will be up to me. Everyone who wants to practice there has to take the actual exam.) It's not even clear that those states actually test any state law on their exams!

The glorious exception is DC, which will take anyone who is licensed anywhere else, at any time, without any minimum requirements.

(There are ways that you can get around the admission requirements to appear in another state for a given case, but they're temporary and limited to the case in question.)

@loyal reader - you can handwrite or you can use a computer. I used the computer because I never handwrite anything anymore, so knew that trying it this time would be super slow, cause a lot of pain, and render my handwriting illegible. But people do still choose to handwrite (I guess if either you hate computers, or you don't want to/can't afford the $100 fee to use one). There are caps on lengths in both formats.