Some Early Reactions to the Bar Exam

Many of the other people who took the bar exam with me last week are now on well-deserved vacations and have an entire month of relaxation before beginning work again.  I, on the other hand, am back working.  The joys of being a practicing attorney.

 

I don't know whether I passed or not, though I feel much less confident about it this time than my previous, successful, attempt several years ago.  Looking back (and ahead to planning for a potential retake in February) I have a couple of observations:

1. Work gets in the way.  I worked very long hours every single day for 21 days straight prior to taking the bar.  Although I wouldn't attribute a nefarious intention to my sudden, insane schedule, I can't think of a worse way to spend the month leading up to the exam.
2. Client letters of recommendation can be a not-so-subtle way to restrict young lawyers from admission by examination.  If a state offers both admission by examination and by reciprocity for lawyers in other jurisdictions, they can have separate applications.  Requiring letters from two clients who are willing to speak regarding a young attorney's legal representation is unlikely to lead to relevant information because most attorneys who do not seek admission by reciprocity (where available) lack sufficient legal experience (i.e., they have not practiced law for five of the past seven years).  They are unlikely to have much, if any, direct client contact.  Moreover, they are unlikely to have their own clients.  As a result, such a requirement requires a young attorney to (a) tell the partners with whom they work that they are taking another state's bar exam (a prospect that will either discourage potential applicants or provide employers who are inclined to protect their investments with notice such that they can pile up a significant amount of work on an individual at a time that would make it very difficult for them to pass; and (b) require that those partners tell their clients that an associate is considering taking another state's exam (a daunting prospect because many people believe that if you [and your peers] are happy at your current position, you would not take another bar exam.)  In short, there is a high probability that it will discourage applicants and make the test more difficult for examinees and the likelihood of acquiring materially useful information is relatively low.
3. Studying early and often is the key for experienced attorneys for states with state-specific essays.  In some states, the bar exam is a combination of multistate materials (the MBE, the MEE, or the MPT) and broad essays about either a basic subject (i.e., contracts, constitutional law, etc.) or a single, detailed essay about a topic that all lawyers should be familiar (i.e., the state's civil procedure rules).  In other states, a substantial portion of your score is based on state-specific essays on less common subjects (wills, trusts, mortgages, etc.).  In such jurisdictions, a substantial amount of studying is required in order to give yourself a fair chance of passing.  (You could pass with minimal studying but your chance of passing doesn't make passage more probable than not unless you study the state's law in detail).  But the rub for experienced attorneys is that you will invariably have come across at least one issue in the state-specific portion of the exam that you have researched the living daylights out of in your current state.  Murphy's Law dictates that the new state's law will be substantially different once you get past the broad principles.  So you have to study enough to force your old state's law from your mind when you see a question that begs for it to come to the surface.  This is difficult.
4. Finally, don't let the stress get to you too much.  You'll have your "esq." no matter what happens.  But, on the other hand, do not allow your colleagues' success in taking a second bar exam to let you overinflate your own prospects.  And just because you passed it once does not mean you will be similarly lucky the second time through.  Be honest about what portions of the original exam you probably did the best on (to the extent you don't know for sure) and study accordingly.

With all of that said, I'm starting to study for the February 2009 bar exam.  For the next month, I'm going to take it easy and do 20 MBE questions a week and read a subpoint from a state-specific outlines.  I know that it's early and there's a danger of overload.  But, I didn't study for most of the days leading up to the July 2008 exam, so I can't claim that I'm worn out.  Moreover, if I preserve what is in my head now and can add anything to it over the next six months, I will be in tremendous shape to finally get this out of the way in February at the very latest.  If I find out that I passed the July exam, then all is not wasted:  I am a lawyer after all and should know most of the materials in the BARBRI outlines anyway.