Internal evidence in his posts suggested so.
On further review, I don’t believe this guy is Beryl. A certain similarity of thinking and writing pertains, but Beryl never used emphatic devices to that extent. Still, I’d never hire either of them, even only to write a nastygram to my landlord.
Well, the letter is dated May 2005 and Beryl’s last post was in September 2003, so he had over a year and a half to… what’s the opposite of mellow?
Jesus Christ, did he get the Time Cube guy to do his website?
Fester? Ramp up? Build to a fever pitch?
Or rather, to do his writing?
Ferment?
AND A FANATICAL DEVOTION TO THE POPE!
I’ll come in again.
Wait a minute, wait a minute…what kind of a person (older than, say, high-school-age) refers to a multiple-choice exam as “multiple guess”?
Also, he has zero understanding of statistics. Check out his comments about “regression”.
What a maroon. But a highly entertaining one.
Go crazy? -ier?
DON’T MIND IF I DO!!!
Some lawyers I know do this too. They like rigorously architectured writing, so there are lots of A. B. C. a. b. c. I II II i ii iii… plus sections, subsection, subsubsection subsubsubsections… So anyway, they decide they need to emphasize the headings for the lowest level, so that’s italicized. The level above that is bold. The level above that is bold italic. The level above that is bold italic underline. The level above that is bold italic undeline caps. And so on, and so forth, until you end up with a 18pt small cap bold italic underline 3d with little sparklies. Plus, they indent every level of bulleting, of which they nest several, so in the end the subsubsub bulleted text starts 6 inches from the lefthand margin. And then I get to try to put the doc in a 2.5" column layout. 
Bricker, you’re onto something here.
It sure does seem like our wandering paranoid alright.
Yup, that sounds like our friend all right.
More fun than a Beryl of monkeys, and just as apeshit.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh yeah, now that’s someone I’d want arguing for me in a court of law.
(Couldn’t one just retake the exam next time?)
What is a pass for the California bar, anyway? The letter-writer suggested 1436 (or whatever) was significantly higher than his corrected 1310 (or whatever). What’s the actual pass mark?
1466, see my post above.
1390-1466 puts you in something called phased grading (2 stages).
If you fall below 1390 you are an automatic fail. If he was close enough to the high 1300s that evaluating his essays might have gotten him more points he would have gotten 2 more evaluations.
However, he could a) also have received lower points than the imputed ones he got b) we were told people rarely get a pass after going into phased grading so it’s in your best interest to make it above 1466.
It is:
If I remember correctly, the bar divides the test scores into three groups: clear fail, maybe, and clear pass. I’ll take anu-la1979’s word for what the cutoff points are, because I have successfully blocked it from my mind. If you score below 1390, you fail. Do not pass go, do not collect a license. If you score above 1466 (I guess), you pass. Swear your oath and get your bar card. If you score between them, your test is sent for a “second read” and regraded. Same results. So if you’re in the “maybe” zone, you could go through a second and a third read to determine whether you pass. You could fail (i.e., be below the clear pass line) on your first read, again on your second, but be above it on your third and so get your license.
The bar is set up with three different kinds of tests: short essays (six of them), two performance tests, and a multiple choice test. On the first day, you do three short essays in the morning, and a performance test in the afternoon. The second day, you take the multiple choice test (I think it’s 200 questions in the morning and 200 in the afternoon). The third day is a repeat of the first.
What we were told is that most people fail (barely) their essay and performance test sections, but do really well on the multiple choice, so that when the scores are added together, you pass. And, notably, if you pass, they never tell you your score or return your exam booklets to you, so you don’t know if you passed by a point or by a gazillion points.
I feel this guy’s pain, but really: that whole conspiracy thing about the non-accredited schools. Didja think that maybe their pass rates were lower because the caliber of student is different? I guarantee you that if you look at accredited law schools, you’ll see that the better schools in general have higher pass rates than the third and fourth tier schools. Doesn’t mean anything, because everyone is on their own in taking the test, and it’s as easy to fail if you’re Stanford as it is to pass if you’re Southwestern – if you study and understand the material.
Wait, wait, to pass the bar you have to write succinctly? At what point in a lawyer’s career is this valuable skill discarded? When they start billing?
Eh, I’m just kidding. Good luck.
Actually, section headings are an entirely different thing. I go down to several different levels of headings, with typographical differences for each.
However, these types of laywers use mutiple types of emphasis within one paragraph of text. It is about as jarring as the linked text.
I have no idea of who "Beryl_Mooncalf" is, but it seems like he’s long gone from here, thus a PITing of him is in rather poor taste, no matter how much of a jerk he was while here.