Happy one month anniversary (give or take)

Shit, so I guess a month ago today we were trying to come to terms with what was, by all accounts, a particularly nasty and brutal rendition of the bar exam. My concept of time is incredibly warped at the moment. On one hand it feels like it was a year ago, but it also feels like I just finished typing the last PT yesterday. Blonde Blogger recently pointed out that our friends over at the California Bar just released the questions from the exam. I have absolutely no interest in looking at them. I know that if I do, the few remaining hairs left on my head will immediately fall during the course of what would doubtlessly be a monumental panic attack.

I've really tried to push anything and everything bar related out of my mind, sometimes I think about it and experience a brief panic attack, but I've been surprised at how successful I've been at not thinking about that horror that was the bar. I know that as May 25 draws closer that its going to gradually become the only thing I think about. In some ways I'm glad it still aways off, at least I can try to pretend that perhaps the most important day of my perhaps brief legal career is still too far down the road to really care about. Anyway, just want to wish everyone a happy one month anniversary.

Weird

Bored at work today, so I decided to check out some of my old haunts during the bar including Travis Wise's group on Yahoo dedicated to the CA Bar. Kind of crazy, and more than a little weird, to read threads about making study schedules now for the July bar. God help them all.

What next?

Bif, in the comments for the preceding post, asked me what I am planning to do if I pass or fail the bar. This is a question that I have been giving a lot of thought to during the last couple of weeks and one that I will address over the next couple of weeks.

I’ve addressed touched upon here and there, but never hit head on. To make a long story short, I’m about 99% sure that I’m going to ditch the law and pursue a career in another field. This issue is highly complicated for me and is something that I will attempt to unravel over the next couple of weeks in this blog. It would be a lie to say that failing the bar had no impact on this decision, as it most certainly has. It’s too early to say whether or not I am viewing everything through the prism of bar failure and in the context of the long hard slog that is waiting for my results at the end of May.

I am beginning to think that maybe failing the bar might be the best thing that could have happened to me. Had I passed the bar, I would be more or less stuck in a career trajectory that increasingly holds little interest to me. Even before failing, I had pretty much grown to detest the law with the type of passion usually reserved for lima beans and a certain Texan currently occupying a big white house. I robotically marched into law school armed with a certainty bred sometime in middle school that I wanted to be an attorney. Now, I’ve been able to research and look for jobs that I might actually enjoy and may end up paying more than law.

Anyway, to answer Bif’s question, I am taking the next couple of months before results come out to aggressively look for a non-law job. If I find something I like then I’m going to run with it and forget about law. If I find something, discover I don’t like it, but pass the bar then I can use law as a back up. If I don’t find something outside of law and pass the bar, then once results come out I’ll throw myself wholeheartedly back into the law track. I think what I’m really trying to say (massive hangover seems to be killing any clarity at the moment) is that I don’t want to be caught with my pants down. There is no way I will write the bar a third time, so if I don’t pass I want to be sure that I have something lined up ahead of time so that I'm not left scrambling when results come out.

Riding the waves of panic

I'm amazed that it took this long to happen, but I finally had my first encounter with panic vis-a-vis my performance on the bar. It came out of the blue this morning, and it took me a couple of moments to regain my composure. I don't know if I want May 25 to hurry up and arrive or if I want it to stretch on forever so that I don't have to deal with what might happen if I don't pass. Either way, it looks like the next couple of months are going to be a fairly miserable.

The curse of the JD

Going into law school, I bought into the conventional wisdom that you can pretty much take a JD anywhere outside of the law. Now, nearly a week into my non-law job search, I can honestly say that having a law degree is a very mixed bag, and in many ways more of a curse than a blessing.
The short version is that I've been warned repeatedly that although many employers will look favorably at my JD, most will be wary of hiring me (or any other newly minted JD) as I am both over and under qualified for pretty much every non-law job out there.

I'm under qualified because I've spent the last three years in law school and thus do not have the only thing that seems to count at this stage in the game, actual experience. This puts me at an obvious disadvantage as most of my peers, who did not go to grad school, have 3+ years of actual work experience. Although I have considerable experience working in a variety of legal and political/public policy settings, I do not have any experience working in the business world, and am thus at a serious competitive disadvantage.

I'm also over qualified because I have an advanced degree, so that many employers will typecast me as either an arrogant blowhard/know-it-all or as someone who is looking for the type of compensation that reflects my JD but not my actual experience. Thus, many employers may view me as potentially being an expensive headache before bothering to conduct an interview.

In light of this problem, I think there is really only one approach I can take. I'm only going to apply for entry-level jobs and then stress my willingness/desire to start at the bottom and work my way up. I don't mind doing this as long as I believe that a given job has the potential for rapid advancement and compensation. Hopefully this approach will work.

Bar Recap

This has been kicking around the Internet for a little bit, but in case you haven't seen it, here is an excellent recap of the February Bar. Biff at Becoming a Lawyer had the original post.

A braver sould than I

Una donna fantastica just posted her exam postmortem. I've gone back and forth on whether to do the same, I haven't thought too much about how I did or didn't do on the bar or what issues I think I missed, but this is probably the result of sheer avoidance on my part and ongoing feelings of disconnect between myself, the bar, and the real world. I guess at some point I'll most likely follow her lead and post on the pitfalls I think I fell into, but for the time being I'll tip my had to those who have had the courage to face the bar head on.

What???

This has got to be a joke (or the product of an enterprising hacker), but when I tried to go on JDJive this afternoon, I got the following message.

JDjive.com Domain Name is for sale.
Ebay

Apparently, the starting bid is 25K...

The (non-law job) hunt begins

Starting to take stock of what exactly I can do with my law degree besides actually practice law (regardless of whether or not the miracle occurs on the 25th of May). During my second year I used my Westlaw points to buy a book on jobs for lawyers who don't want to practice law anymore (the exact title of the book escapes me, something along the lines of "fleeing from the law." I discovered that the book was filled with nothing but platitudes and self evident advice such as: make a flowchart diagramming your interests, determination is the key to success, and follow your dreams. After 20 minutes or so, I decided that the book utterly worthless and then put it to better use as a means to maintain the structural integrity of my bed frame.

Nevertheless, I went to the library today and found a copy of a different book entitled, "What Can You Do with a Law Degree." After another 20 minutes of skimming this book I came away even less impressed then the first book. Basically it seems that I'm pretty much confined to the following jobs outside of law: school teacher, some sort of government job, and consulting.

Although I'm sure that I would love being a school teacher (I really miss summer vacation) and might even find it rewarding, I know that there is no way that I could pay down my student debt with the pittance that teachers make. Also I have no desire to go back to school, so this is clearly not a viable option. Working for the state government is also not an option as I know there isn't enough money in the world to make me move to Sacramento so that I can bake to death while pushing papers up and down the bureaucracy. I had previously given some thought to moving to DC to work in government, but am not particularly anxious to leave the Bay Area. Again, student loans are a huge hindrance in pursuing any noble ambition to pursue a career in the public sector. So I guess that leaves consulting as the only viable choice from the book. Don't have a particularly solid understanding as to what exactly consulting entails, but I do know that there are hundreds of consulting firms in in my area, so maybe I'll investigate this angle further.

And you thought we had it bad here in California...

Studied Ignorance has a great post on the "horror" that is the North Carolina Bar Exam.

Privacy and "the Google"

This story was kicking around JDjive yesterday, but I finally got around to reading the actual story today. To make a long story short, a female Yale grad was badly smeared on an anonymous law message board, which she believes resulted in her getting a total of zero offers after 16 interviews. More info on the story can be found here. Heated discussions on the issue can be found in the comment sections here and here.

Aside from the legal issues concerning defamation and internet chat rooms/boards, I think the issue lurking behind the scenes of this story (i.e., how the lack of privacy on the internet may directly affect one's job prospects) is extremely important, and is only going to grow more so as employers increasingly begin to troll face book, myspace, the google (to borrow a Bushism), and the blogosphere before making hiring decisions.

Junky Limbo

Other bloggers have alluded to it (here, and here) but, now that more than a few days have elapsed after finishing the bar, I'm struck about how numb I still feel. I feel like I'm sleepwalking through most of my days. I'm really tired, want to sleep all the time, and feel like I'm coming down with, or off from, something. I'm also having a really hard time relaxing and am not sure what the hell to do for fun. I was really looking forward to reading, going to the movies, and generally catching up on all the things I've missed while living, breathing, and dreaming about the bar. But, now that it's over, none of these things have seemed particularly appealing. Its been nice to go out and get wasted without feeling guilty, but thats about it. To use an imperfect metaphor from Trainspotting, I feel like I'm in junky limbo ("too ill to sleep, too tired to stay awake..."). Obviously I'm not craving to redo the bar, but I do feel stuck in limbo between the high wire act that was the run-up to the bar and the aftermath of what was an extremely stressful and time consuming event.

I guess these feelings are inevitable after having devoted every waking moment to the bar for nearly two months, still I don't remember feeling this worn out and dazed after the first bar. Ive been surprised at how little I've been mulling over the individual questions or stressing about whether or not I think I hit the right issues, nevertheless I can still feel the bar lingering in the background more or less affecting everything else I do. It's weird to feel letdown after living through such a shitty experience for the second time. I know that this will dissipate over time, but I'm very much looking forward to the near future where the bar, either directly or indirectly, doesn't dominate everything I do or feel.

Time flies when your're having fun...

Can't believe that one week ago today I was sweating through the corporations essay trying to make up a plausible sounding rule for share holder agreements.

From the department of stupid questions...

Currently, my least favorite question is, "so, do you think you passed?" I think this is a stupid question, and infinitely more rude than its slightly less irritating cousin, "how do you think you did?" At least the latter allows for more wiggle room and the opportunity to give noncommittal answers such as "who knows," and "I guess I'll find out in May." Although I provide similar non-answers to the first question, it still pisses me off. I doubt these questions will irritate me as much in a couple of weeks. My frustration probably has more to do with the fact that the asshats who are currently bugging me to predict whether or not I passed, are the same idiots who insisted on asking all sorts of irritating questions when I found out that I had failed last November.

Time warp

At about this time last week I was stressing about what to pack, stressing about whether or not I had studied enough, and generally as stressed as I've ever been. Now, one week later, that all seems like a somewhat distant nightmare.

My concept of time is completely fucked right now, I feel like I'm still walking around in a daze. I'm glad to be done, but have no idea what I should be doing with myself. I sleep constantly during the day, but can't seem to sleep in past 6:30. I ended up going in to work this morning after not knowing what else to do. Now that I'm sitting at my desk, I'm regretting this decision, but figure I'll stick around long enough to restart the clock from my 6 week leave of absence so that I'll get paid soon, and then leave early.

Time to get drunk!!

Congratulations to everyone out there who just finished the bar!!! Hope you all have a relaxing while managing to forget about the last three days. Time to go get drunk and put this last week behind me.

The future of this blog

Now that I can't blog about taking the bar, I'm planning to write about what happens next. I haven't run across too many resources that detail what happens to people after they write the bar a second time, and I'm hoping that many of the other bloggers out there who've all been doing a fantastic job of detailing the run up to this last bar continue to blog in the future. I'm not sure what's going to happen next, and I don't know how failing will affect my future job prospects, but I certainly plan on blogging about what does happen as I move forward.

Enter the real world

Now that the bar is done, its time for me to start facing a variety of issues that I've been able to put off until now. I have a job, but barely. My firm has been going through a significant period of instability, and so I'm not sure what I'll be walking into when I go back to work sometime next week.

Also, I've been giving a lot of thought to abandoning law as a career. On one hand I'd say that any feelings about wanting to drop the law are currently influenced by the misery that was the bar. But it is something that I've been giving a tremendous amount of thought to over the last 6 months. I'll post more on this later, but the short version is that in light of the instability at my firm, and the fact that I can't say for sure whether or not I passed this time, I want to make sure that I'm not caught with my pants down in May when the results come out.

If either my firm collapses, or I don't pass, I'll need to find a new job ASAP. I need to start paying down my loans, plus I don't think I want to practice law bad enough to go through another bar, with new subjects, and go further into debt during the process. More importantly, I've really started to despise the law. I never got into it during law school, and although I like the actual practice of law, I don't think I'm driven by an overwhelming passion to pursue this career choice at all costs.

Accountability

I was going to compare Sakai's predictions to what was actually on the test. But decided that this was a stupid idea since they tested the all but three subjects (give or take) and so anyone could say that they predicted the test with some degree of accuracy. So I decided to only look at his "less likely" category.

Less Likely

• Contracts (really the only one he was right about)
  
• Torts (he may have predicted a nuisance issue, not sure though)
  
• Corporations (whoops, guess he didn't see the SH agreement question coming either?)
  
• Wills and Trusts (at least he was right about trusts)

I don't think there is a more dubious business than predicting exam test subjects.

Day after part II

Not sure how I feel about the exam. I felt pretty good about the last one, but those feelings were obviously unreliable. This exam was significantly more complicated, more or less managed to test the majority of subjects, and definitively demonstrated the Bar Examiners willingness to play mind games and fuck with us.

The prevailing wisdom going into the exam seemed to that anything but the First Amendment was fair game for Con Law. Same for Wills. I think most people expected a full Community Property question, with maybe a minor cross-over with something else. But except for the widows election doctrine, it was pretty much a full-blown Wills question. Apparently several people somehow managed to treat the entire question as a pure CP, don't know how they managed to do that if true. Coming out of the second essay section, I heard more than a few people complain that they had over relied on Sakai's predictions and had totally fucked themselves in the process.

I still hold to my theory that we were better off with a difficult bar exam as it gives us a little more latitude to miss minor issues, but I won't be surprised to see a very low pass rate out of this one. On the other hand, the California Bar has been under increasing scrutiny for the low pass rates, so they may recognize that the exam was particularly nasty and adjust the scores accordingly.

In the end I'm cautiously optimistic, I was significantly more prepared going in to this one, and feel that I may have made up some ground on the third day, but I guess I'll have to keep my fingers crossed until May.

The day after part I

Woke up early this morning and couldn't shake the feeling that I was still stuck in the middle of the bar. Couldn't get back to sleep, and have no idea what the hell to do with myself today. I think its going to take me a couple of days to unwind from this repeat experience.

Shell shock

Don't feel particularly relieved or anxious, just utterly numb. Today was significantly better then Tuesday, have no idea how I did.