big sigh of relief
Congratulations. Here’s a beer and a law license.
Congratulations. One of the great moments in my life was seeing I had passed.
Congratulations, counselor!
Congrats! I don’t know that anything I’ve ever accomplished felt better than passing the bar. I don’t know how they do it in New York, but in my state there is a formal swearing in ceremony for all the new admitees. It’s worth it to attend. You get sworn in to all the various courts in your jurisdiction at the same time, get to meet the senior judges, all that good stuff.
I am in no way surprised, but congratulations!
Congratulations!
Welcome to the dark side of the For…I mean congratulations!!
Oh, and welcome to every party/night out for the rest of your life…
3 lawyer joke minumum.
2 people asking you for advice on something completely outside of your field of expertise, 1 of whom will get pissy that you don’t know the details of how he can prevent getting evicted.
Congratulations. What’s next, career-wise?
Well done, and congratulations!
Congratulations!
Amazingly, you are looking at that rarest of creatures: the employed 2009 law grad. 
I will be clerking for Administrative Law Judges in NYC’s central Administrative tribunal. It expect it to be varied and interesting work… I am thrilled!
Congratulations, Counselor! Well done!
Congrats on the bar passage and the employment.
Wow! That’s fantastic. Good for you!
That is awesome, congrats! I just got an email from a friend who also passed … with a job lined up as well. Happy for the both of you!
Yay!
Now if you don’t mind, could you tell me how you studied for it?
Did the classes you take in law school help, or is the material a lot different?
I used a Bar review course, which is basically universal in NY State. My law school strongly advises against going it alone and offers direct loans if you cannot afford it, as well direct loans if you cannot afford to take off work to study full time for at least a month before the Bar. The most popular program is BarBri, I disagree with their methods to some extent though. They have a lot of audio support materials, which is great if you are an auditory learner (I am not). Pieper is the other established program, it seems like people either love or hate Pieper. Pieper is big on mneomics and other “verbal” memory tools. He also uses a lot of statistical analysis to “predict” the essay topics. Some students, who might ahem be a tad lazy, get trapped by overrelying on Pieper Predictions. I used KaplanPMBR – PMBR has been a longstanding MBE review course, but starting this year they joined with Kaplan and began offering a Full NY Review program. I would say their particular strength lies in their extensive interactive online tests and diagnostics. Their review books are laid out in a way friendly to visual learners (which I am). Compared to BarBri, Kaplan is more self-directed and better for students who have a strong internal study plan and self-confidence. I believe all programs included at least one “test conditions” practice test, given at the Javitz Center (the actual testing site) about 10 days before the actual exam.
The Bar exam consists of 2 days of testing: the New York Bar, which tests on 12 topics of law including 5 essays, 50 multiple choice and 1 “MPT” a sort of practical writing test. , and the Multistate Bar Exam, which tests on 6 topics of law in 200 multiple choice questions (Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law, Evidence, Constitutional Law, and Criminal procedure (4th, 5th, 6th Amendment law)). The 12 NY topics include the NY law variations on the MBE topics plus Family Law, Wills/Trusts, Corporations/Agency/Partnership, Secured Transactions, Negotiable Instruments, and NY Civil Procedure. You’ll note that 3 of the 6 additional topics involve commercial/business/finance law.
Everything on the MBE is covered in classes taken in the first or second year of law school, and tested in a “general” way, sometimes nonsensically so - for example, every state has its own definition of, say “burglary” but according to the MBE there is a single official definition for “burglary.” At any rate, your basic required law school classes are generally very relevant to the MBE, the problem is remembering, in detail, something you learned 3 years ago. Your MBE score is worth 40% of your NY Bar Exam points.
One of the hardest things is keeping everything in its “stack” - the different rules to apply in the MBE and the NY Exam. So, in the MBE the owner of land owes different standard of care depending on whether the person entering the land is a trespasser, a person doing business, or a social guest. In NY, a landlord owes everyone “reasonable care under the circumstance.” Just one example of a case where you need to learn, memorize, and mentally separate rules into 2 different “stacks.” Under the intense and stressful conditions, it is very easy for the stacks to collapse into a jumble in your mind. The MBE is very tricksy, precious, and often includes NY or CA state answers among its “wrong answers” as these are the most numerous test takers.
Some law school classes are good for the bar - Wills & Trusts; Secured Transactions; that sort of malarkey. I took none of them, and still passed the bar. With a review course (BarBri here, VA bar) you can learn the stuff in the months befor ethe bar without the tedium of taking the ‘practical’ classes in law school.