It’s amazing to me to read about how the Internet has changed that magic moment of waiting for the envelope to a “Hit the refresh button” experience.
It’s a microcosm of the changes that electronic resources have wrought overall. Did you guys have to learn how to Shepardize cases? Is the art of digging through supplements and tracking down each “d” note to see how your perfect precedent might have been eviscerated by some future court a lost art?
This is one of the advantages of the articling system - you’ve been working in the office already for over a year, so there’s a good chance they’ll cut you some slack for just that reason. The only case I can recall of a friend failing the bar, the employer kept her on until she passed the re-write.
As for me, I got my results the old-fashioned way - by a letter in something called mail (don’t worry children, you don’t need to know how it works).
Then I beetled over to the Law Society offices, appeared in front of the exec officer, swore the oath of office and signed the rolls. They use the traditional nib pen that the Law Society has had since its inception, and give you a sheet of paper to practise on first, since not many people know how to use a nib. Then, you dip the pen in the ink, take a deep breath, and sign your name! It was one of the biggest moments of my life.
Then the exec officer typically lets you page through the rolls to see some of the notable names who have signed the roll: Premier Haultain, Prime Minister Diefenbaker, Justice Hall, and others. It comes over you that you’re joining a pretty elite group, and much is expected of you.
It’s the only time I’ve signed my name with all my degrees - it seemed appropriate. (When Mrs Piper signed the rolls a few years later, she noticed it and called me pretentious when she got home. 
)
It’s from a medieval French play about a court trial, so it seemed appropriate to use here, if somewhat pretentious. 
Technically, should be “Revenons” (“let’s come back to”), but “Retournons” (“let’s return to”) has become a common variant.
It’s actually worse than you imagine: generally, you find out through facebook that the results are up even before you get an official email. You can figure out who among your friends didn’t pass, because they didn’t post FB status about it (or else their status just says “fuck”)
Thanks Northern Piper that was kind of awesome.
But still, pretentious, right?
Spoons’ experience flags what is sometimes glossed over in the exuberance of signing the rolls (or the equivalent): the entire process of getting the law degree and passing the bar can be a very stressful experience, of at least four years’ duration. Anyone going into the process should be told about this, and the effect it can have on relationships.
No, not really. Most law schools have a first-year legal research and writing course that teaches the dead-tree method as well as electronic sources. But of course, we all learn pretty quickly that the electronic sources are usually faster and better, so we tend to rely on those.
Hell, being a lawyer period can be a very stressful experience. Ours is not a happy profession. See: “On Being a Happy, Health, Ethical Member of and Unhappy, Unhealthy, Unethical Profession.” http://www.vallexfund.com/download/Being_Happy_Healthy_Ethical_Member.pdf
Schiltz notes that rates of divorce, depression, alcoholism, suicide and so on for American lawyers are way, way above the baseline population. Ours is not a happy profession, folks - or rather, it wasn’t in the late nineties, when this article was written and the legal job market was still booming. Raise your hand if you think things have gotten better since?
On the other hand - if you manage to get a job you love - say, working for a legal nonprofit you believe in, or a public defender’s or DA’s office - there’s nothing like it. The legal profession is a giant and expensive lottery - but as they say, you need to play to win.
You needn’t worry - I’d go so far as it call it the very ne plus ultra of pretention.
Totally Agree!!!
Two years doing patent prosecution - totally boring and borderline unethical.
One year doing legislative work for the National Rifle Association - totally boring with the occasional funny story.
Five years (as of July) with the Public Defender’s Office in NoVA - I love it more and more every day. Don’t get me wrong, it is hard… but very rewarding!
Bricker - they made us learn how to Shepardize the old fashioned way for our first few assignments at GMUSL. No computers at all. But that was it.
Agreed. I’m certainly lucky in the job I’ve found, as it’s a good match for my interests and temperament.
Just how much of the Virginia bar do we have here?
In my case it went something like this
Results are up at 9 a.m. Finally managed to get some shuteye, at 7. Woke up at 8:59, and check, why yes the pass list is there.
CTRL + F “AK-84”, errrr sorry no hit. try again, and yep not there. Few more times and well thats that. By this time my mobile is ringing with delighted and delirious new barristers a group I am not yet a member of it seems. Annoyed, I go out of my flat. and go to a nearby coffee shop and take their largest breakfast and polish it off. Parents call and solomly tell them that yes, your son has failed. Back to the bloody flat, shower and change and take the train to Leicester Square and buy a ticket at the odeon for the evening show.
By now, its nearing lunch and I decide I have to go to school to get the full result, and find out what the next steps are. Go to the exam office and confirm once again that name is not on the list. As I am stepping out, the assistant call me in, and advise me that…
Takes deep breath as the memory can still years later cause uncontrollable rage
It turns out that while the assistant has no idea about how I actually did, he knows the reason why my name was not listed, the accounts office claims that I have outstanding dues. Oh, what dues? Go and check is the reply. I go there and inquire and discover
its been years, calm down
that yes indeed, there are some dues which I have not cleared. Specifically the printing charges. The school library charged us 5p per page for printing and we were allowed to overdraw by about 5 pounds. So how much had I overdrawn? 15p. That had come up and the computer simply did not add my name to the list automatically, whatever my result had been.
Accountant: Are you willing to make good your arrears?
AK84: hell yes, here a five quid note, keep the bloody change.
Back to exam office, ok I have cleared the dues, now tell me, did I pass. Exam office, sorry cannot tell, go to the IT room. I do so. And am promptly told that they cannot tell me until I can show I have cleared “all outstanding liabilities”. I tell the woman that all outstanding liabilities have indeed been cleared, and if she does not believe me, call the accounts office. This she does and after talking to nearly everyone in the office, she is satisfied that I have infact cleared my dues. She then proceeds to show me what she has … the pass list that had been put up.
At this point after having called into question her intellect and her mothers chastity, I storm out and am walking back to the exam office determined to sort out this mess and break some head (not necessarily in the same order) when I see the student union president walking by and he greets me and enquires after me. I tell him that I don’t know if I have passed, and he advises me to check the pass list. **&(&^%$#@(_). Taken aback he ponders over the quyandy and suggests that I go to the Treasury office. The Treasury office has to organise our graduation (known as the “call to the bar”) which is in two weeks, they might know.I go inside and ask the secretary if I have passed. “Check the pass list luv” she says. “Grrrrrr” ok, does she have the list of students down for call in two weeks. She does. And can she check who is down. She can. Well is Ak84 down?
YESSSSSSSSSS!!!
As it turned out two days later I got an email from the treasury office saying that I was down for the call and that my name was not on the list since I had dues and I had indeed passed, and to ensure that I was infact called to the bar, could I please make them up?
I win, whats my prize?
15p. You’ll need to call the Accounts office to collect it, though. They should have your name on the prize list, unless you’ve any other accounts in arrears.
I learned that I passed when I received an email from my old Law Review secretary, who had sent a massive CONGRATULATIONS email blast to all the alums she found on the posted results page. Bit anti-climactic, that, although I guess I wasn’t too worried anyway.
The worst part of the exam for me was that I was oddly hungry for some reason on the last day, so I ate two of the energy bar type things I had toted along as an afterthought, and which were apparently super-packed with fiber and I hadn’t been paying attention. Between breakfast, lunch, those two things, and the stress of the test, I spent the last two and a half hours clenching my buttcheeks in combined psychic and physical agony. Bathroom breaks afforded only temporary respite since all I really needed to do was let some gas go periodically, and I wasn’t just going to sit there farting the whole time – the bar exam is important, but the list of things important enough to make me shit my pants and keep sitting there for a couple more hours is short enough that I haven’t yet met a member – so I really had no choice but to focus as much as possible and hold on tight.
I have no recollection of what was tested on those essays, and I did very poorly on them. Thankfully not poorly enough to fail; that would be a pretty amazing story but I’m just arrogant enough that I’d be forced to tell it to everyone to explain my failure.
Quite a few apparently…
Thank you Jimmy. I needed a laugh after the day in court I have had today!
In the finest spirit of Arlo Guthrie, I got good and drunk the night before so that I’d look and feel my best when I went to take the test the next morning. Wasn’t a planned thing, honestly–I met a friend I’d not seen in a while for a few drinks. He’s in the hospitality/restaurant biz, and of course he knows the bartender at this little place who’ll hook us up with all the free wine we can drink, and then we go up to this little gay bar somewhere in midtown where my friend’s being a complete ass and I’m coming to the realization that, if I want to have any hope at all of getting through this thing, I’d better get my ass back to the hotel and crash. So I do. Wake up the next morning with no hangover–just one of those lucky times!, shower 'n go do what needed to be done.
While this was not exactly one of my more brilliant moments, and I came out of it as much by luck as anything, it does speak to one thing: By the time I got to New York to take the bar exam, I was pretty comfortable with it. I did the iPod Bar/Bri and pretty much followed the rules and schedule they laid out: I’d get up at 8 or 9 am, listen to the lecture and fill in the blanks, then put those notes into my own words–not exactly following their recommendations on how to do that, but after three years of law school I knew how to make an outline–and cram or do practice tests for the rest of the day. I’d put the books up at 9 or 10 pm and get a few hours of TV or whatever in before turning in around midnight. After… what was it, two months of this? I felt as ready as I was ever going to be, and actually didn’t bother studying during the final weekend–I knew what I knew, and a few more hours weren’t going to make the difference between passing or failing. To the extent that I had concerns, they were due to inadequacies in the material I’d been presented–this was the year with that new (and fairly awful) con law lecturer, and the professional responsibility material was lacking as well–poorly organized with lousy fill-in-the-blank notes. (I know, I know; cry for us.) The numbers were on my side with con law–I knew it well enough to rock the MBE, and there hadn’t been an essay on it in years. But professional responsibility had been on every essay section for years and years, and this was the first year with the new RPCs. I was dreading that PR essay, and when the day came… it wasn’t there. I double and triple checked the essays on the second half, and couldn’t find it. Sometimes luck is on your side, eh? Aside from that, the bar exam itself was just doing the IRAC work–compared to the murky, shades of gray fact patterns I’d worked in law school itself, the bar essays were refreshingly straightforward, black and white situations. Kinda fun, in a logic puzzle sort of way. d&r!
Finally, finishing the MBE early was a little bit of fun all by itself–I was seated fairly near to the front, and finished in probably an hour and a half or so. Felt a whole lot of eyes on me when I took the long walk to the back of the hall and out into the light of day… After, I crashed for a few hours–for all it went smoothly, it was still an exhausting experience. Didn’t party too hard that evening, since I had an early plane to catch–plus I kept narrowly missing my friends when I tried to hook up with them.
Looking back, it was a bit of a charmed experience. Wouldn’t want to do it again, mind you–the chances you’ll see me practicing in, say, California are very slim!–but it wasn’t as bad for me as it is for some.
I took the Indiana Bar in 2008 and the Illinois Bar this summer. Passed both times. For both, I just ordered the Bar/Bri state-specific books and used law school supplements for the Multistate portions of the Bars. No way I’m taking out more loans to pass the bar exam. Studying wasn’t too bad. Work during the day, and just read for many hours a night, with the week or so immediately preceding the exams taken off for your standard “Oh. My. GOD! What’s a holder in due course!?!?” panic. Except this summer, I had to go back to work a couple days before the bar exam for a one-day jury trial (I’m a public defender).
Both times they were two day affairs. The first day consisted of essays, the second the MBE. Both times, I walked into the exam the first day feeling ok but ended the day drinking in despair. Then the next day I would take the MBE quickly, figuring I could just retake it in February. I was the second person finished with the MBE in Indiana (and got to go home early; huzzah) and the first done in Illinois (where I stared at the walls for about two hours).
Two anecdotes: In Indiana, a girl came running into the bar exam an a hour and a half after it started, tears streaming down her face. I don’t know if the rules allowed her to still take the exam. Poor girl.
Two weeks before the bar exam in Illinois, I had to update my application to note that a client had made a disciplinary complaint against me, even though it was dismissed without investigation. As the subpoenaed witness failing to show up for a deposition isn’t really an ethical failing on my part. I’m still angry about that one four months later.
Took the NY Bar in 2005. The hardest thing about it was the temptation of the toy convention going on next door.
I passed the bar but never made it through this process. Paperwork too daunting (they need to know every single place and every single job I’d ever had?! From homelessness to transiency to semi-permanent status, there was no way I’d get it right). Okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it did seem more involved than getting into law school in the first place–and that includes both under- and post-grad applications.
I still have my MPRE and Bar passing certificates. One of these days I mean to start a thread asking if it’s worth it to join the Bar. Part of me feels I should, but damn, those forms are something else.
(ETA: I write/edit/manage policy documents for the UN–I didn’t mean to imply I’m practicing without a license.)
Rhythmdvl, When I was trying to decide between NY and MA (yes, I could have taken both, but I wasn’t that masochistic) I had a look at their applications. The moment I saw the paperwork requirements for NY, I decided I was going to go with MA.