Good night and good luck...

Much has happened in the year since I drunkenly stared at the phrase “…is not on the pass list” on my laptop. Congratulations to those of you who don’t find yourself similarly situated tonight. But to those of you who likewise find yourselves in the same position I found myself in, I hope that this blog is of some use to you as you begin the process of picking yourself off the mat and start contemplating what steps you will take moving forward.

Now that I’m able to look back on the experience with a degree of hindsight and distance (If you read this before you check your results I hope you don’t feel that I’m fucking with karma) the following are a few things I wish I’d known in the aftermath of failing.

From experience, I know how easy it is to beat yourself up over the results. I felt stupid, isolated, depressed and found it virtually impossible to talk to any of my fellow classmates who passed. It wasn’t until I joined a few study groups and met a few others who had failed (all with topnotch credentials) that I realized that the bar is not in any way shape or form an intelligence test. Just know that you are not alone, failing the bar is not easy for anyone and no matter how isolated you may feel there are literally thousands of equally well qualified and intelligent individuals going through the exact same emotions that you will likely feel should you not pass this time around.

To be sure, weeks after learning that I had failed were nothing short of miserable as I was left to ponder the prospect of having to relive what had previously been the three shittiest months of my academic career. I also wanted to go postal on anyone and everyone who felt compelled to recount inane anecdotes concerning about the bar or ply me with innumerable questions concerning whatever it is caused me to fail. But life does move on and things will get better with time.

Fortunately, once I started studying for the February exam I found that I was able to block out much of the embarrassment and misery associated with failing as I began to focus on how not to turn my experience into a trilogy. To be sure, studying for the bar the second time pretty much sucked, but as much as I hated the material, studying was infinitely better than wallowing in my misery.

In the midst of the agony associated with failing, it was hard not to view failing as nothing but a blown or wasted year, and in some ways, I still feel this way. I was also very worried that failing the bar would be akin a millstone hanging around my neck preventing me from progressing with my career. Fortunately, after a shitload of interviews, I feel that I can safely put this fear to rest. To be sure, I’ll never work in biglaw, but my law school grades had already taken me out of the running. Few if any employers seemed to give a shit about the fact that I’d failed. I was asked about it a few times but the questions were always easily disposed of and were usually part of the inane thread of interview questions along the lines of what did you learn from the experience etc.

I sometimes wonder how I’ll look back on the past year in the future. After re-reading some of my posts today, much of the angst expressed feels more like distant background noise than anything. Concerns about whether or not I did enough MBEs, how irritating fellow bar takers can be, the weird after affects of taking the bar and the agony of waiting for results a second time have been replaced by more mundane worries such as how will I ever pay off my private student loans and am I hitting my billables this week. Life does truly move on, time heals all wounds and all that bullshit but I doubt I’ll ever be able to wholly forget my experience with failing the bar.

Since this will almost certainly be my last post, I want to thank my fellow comrades in arms who shared their experiences going through the strange trip that was the bar by blogging, commenting and/or emailing, it was nice to know that I wasn’t the only one struggling through a particular subject area or combating the inevitable burnout during the doldrums in early February. To the few of you who stumble onto this site in the future, I hope this site gives you some encouragement that you’re not alone and that the shittiness of failing will eventually pass. The bar is a giant crap shoot and nothing more than an evil hazing ritual that has no bearing on one’s ability to practice law and/or have a successful career. I still believe that there is a special place in hell reserved for the evil minions responsible for creating the bar and for the equally malevolent assholes who bilk thousands of law grads each year by playing on the fear and anxiety that naturally flows from rolling up three years of law school into three hellacious days of meaningless essays, performance tests and multiple choice.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings, best of luck to you all.

Good Luck

Best of luck to everyone starting the endurance challenge better known as the bar tomorrow!

Squirming in front of the silver screen...

Watched the movie Little Children this week on Netflix. Obviously, movie reviews are largely outside the purview of this blog, but the movie included a story line, involving a character who was studying to take the bar for the third time, that hit a little too close to home. I have to say that the movie more then adequately captured the embarrassment, feelings of dislocation, and general disconnect that comes with failing the bar. It was also somewhat cringe inducing to re-live the experience through the character. The movie was otherwise okay, but it was interesting to see the topic of failing the bar sort of addressed outside the narrow confines of the legal community.

Notes from the other side

[note: I’m on deadline at work so please excuse the million typos and syntax errors]

I haven’t posted since bar results due to a seemingly never-ending stream of work, personal, and a various other commitments.

It was hard to overestimate the absolute feeling of relief that came after learning that I had in fact passed. I didn’t feel joy, or elation, just absolute and utter relief. I spent the long weekend sleeping and adjusting to a life without the 800 pound gorilla that was the bar that seemingly loomed over and influenced every aspect of my life for the past year.

I want to congratulate everyone from the bar blogosphere (and everyone else) who passed, but more importantly, to those who failed express my deepest condolences. I still can’t shake the unmistakable feeling that in the game of chance that is the bar that it just as easily could have been me considering the horror of having to re-take the bar while any of you could just as easily be viewing life from the other side.

A few quick notes on what I believe I did right the second time around. I tried as honestly as possible to sit down and assess my weaknesses and then figure out what I needed to do to strengthen them. I also wholly abandoned BarBri’s methods and went back to square one.

I kept up with the paced program the first time but had the feeling that I was merely going through the motions for the sake it. I dutifully handed in my assignments, attempted to cram through whatever outline was assigned for the day, and tried to pay attention in class as much as possible. Unfortunately, this ran counter to the various methods that had successfully took me through law school and I think in the panic inducing environment that encompasses the run-up to the bar I failed to adequately sit down figure out what I really needed to work on, and what I could let slide. I’ve never been one to take much away from lectures, I wish I did, but my brain just doesn’t absorb much from them. I learn by reading, synthesizing outlines, and practice. Unfortunately, the lectures themselves are long and strangely exhausting. By the time they were over for the day, I was mentally shot and perhaps not at my best when it came to actually learning the material and the gamesmanship behind the bar.

After getting my results from the first bar, I knew that the essays were my biggest weakness (I won’t reprise my rant about BarBri’s graded essay assignments, you can read it here) and planned my study schedule accordingly. I didn’t want to drop the cash for another review course or become a professional sperm donor to pay for a tutor, so I created my own self-study schedule and tried to stick with it as best I could.

I spent almost no time learning the law, and instead religiously wrote out as many essays as possible. I cherry picked some of the tips from Adachi’s Bar Breakers series (if anyone lives in San Francisco and wants to buy mine, drop me an email), but for the most part I practiced using IRAC with as many headers as possible until it became close to second nature. As the exam drew closer I stopped writing full essays and tested myself by outlining the issue and writing out the rules for the issues I spotted before checking to see if I had hit them. I don’t think I knew the law as well the second time, but I did feel much better about the essays going in.

I did next to next to nothing for the MBEs, and perhaps averaged 20-25 per day. I did well enough the first time (139) to make a calculated risk to focus on essays and hope that my MBE score would more or less hold through.

The PTs worried me in that I bombed one and aced the other. I ended up taking John Holtz’s PT workshop and give it a qualified recommendation. I felt his system was unworkable, but believe that the true value of the workshop lay in the shear number of PTs that he forced us to go through. I came out of the workshop feeling that I had a much better understanding of what the examiners actually look for when grading the exam. I found Honigsberg’s approach to be useless and thus would recommend Holtz if you are concerned about the PT.

In the end I don’t think there is a magic bullet when it comes to studying for the bar. There isn’t a secret method, obscure book, or magic tutor that will get one through. Although BarBri works for many, it didn’t work for me. I think, for me at least, going back to basics and figuring out how I learn best and then building a schedule to accommodate my strengths and weaknesses was the key in getting me through the bar the second time.

I don’t know how failing the bar will influence my career moving forward, or how I will look back on the past year down the road. But what I do know is that failing the bar was emotionally devastating, a financial disaster, and a total waste of a year.

Thank god

Drip, drip, drip

Took off work and have been pre-gaming (i.e., drinking) for a while. Have spent more time staring at my laptop then I'd care to imagine. Could definitely do without this wait.

Agony

I'm starting to believe that even a bad result would be better then the agony of watching this day inch ever so slowly towards 6pm...

What else can I say...

So it looks like the train wreck that has been my 3+ year journey from law school neophyte to wizened bar exam failee may or may not come to a close tonight. Either way, this has been one strange ride.

Although I may post later this afternoon, I just want to take this opportunity to thank my fellow bloggers for sharing their experiences moving through this mess. The total lack of information out there for those who find themselves having to repeat the bar is stunning. Until blogs, there was nothing that cataloged with any degree of depth just how isolating and emotionally devastating failing the bar can be. To be able to read how other people were dealing with this never failed to help keep things in perspective. Finally, a big thank you is in order to the readers who managed to stumble onto this blog and for everyone who took the time to write comments and emails over the last couple of months.

At this point all I can say is that I’m wishing everyone in the California bar exam blogosphere - readers and bloggers alike - nothing but the best of luck tonight!

Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst

Studied Ignorance posted earlier on the issue of checking results alone or with others. Personally, I’m going to go with a plan similar to hers, with a few minor variations.

For the first time in months, I re-read my posts written immediately after failing and was instantly reminded of just how miserable that evening was. Although I did prepare for potentially bad news by getting fall down drunk, this did little other then somewhat mute the general shittiness of the evening. But as bad as the evening was, I think it would have been much worse had I elected to check results with a group.

I have a friend who got together with his study group to have drinks and check results together. Unfortunately for both him and the group, he was the one present who failed. Needless to say, it turned out to be a pretty shitty evening for him even though the group did everything they could to console him, and keep their celebrations to a minimum.

Tonight, I’m going to pack my survival kit for tomorrow, largely consisting of hotel size bottles of scotch, a pack of smokes, a bottle of Tylenol, and an energy bar. I’m guessing that my tolerance for the real world (i.e., work) will be exhausted by lunchtime, at which point I’m going to develop a sudden case of stomach flue, and then proceed to the nearest outdoor bar where I’ll pretend to read a book, chain smoke, and hope that the afternoon passes somewhat quickly.

I've been dreading the momentary pause that comes after hitting the submit button but before the the results page appears for far longer then I'd care to think about. Whether I pass or fail, I'll call my parents, and then send a text message to the few people I know who also took the exam. Either way, I'm guessing that I'll have the mother of all hangovers on Saturday.

Wearing thin

A commenter from the last post pointed to two of the more irritating questions that I’m sure we have all been getting as Friday rapidily approaches:

Damn straight about it being a crapshoot. That's my standard response for all the a-holes who ask "How do you think it went? Did you feel better than last time?" (I love a lot of these people but am ready to take swings at them when they ask me those questions.)

To what should be a running list of banned questions and/or comments I’d add “are you nervous,” and that class of anecdotes invariably involving someone’s uncle who had a cousin who had a friend who failed three plus times only to end up making millions as a dog bite attorney, or some shit like that. I’m also growing tired hearing the endless tidbits of trivia involving the former dean of Stanford, JFK, Hillary Clinton, Antonio Villaraigosa, or any other public figure who previously failed the bar.

I realize that it must be extraordinarily hard to relate to a relative, close friend, or whomever concerning something as arcane and obtuse as failing the bar. I always try to give the most noncommittal answers possible when placed in a corner and forced to talk about the bar. I know that 99% of the questions, comments, and unsolicited advice are probably made with the best of intentions, but whatever level of patience I once had for these naïve, albeit, well meaning questions is wearing awfully thin at this stage of the game.

Tension

I feel neither worried nor excited, just tense. Someone once said that tension is anticipation and uncertainty, I think this sums it up perfectly. Too much water has passed under the proverbial bridge for me to feel any other way. I can’t be excited, because according to the game of chance, you can't be certain that you passed, and indeed would be foolhardy to claim, much less believe, that you had in fact done so.

I do feel a glimmer of optimism that the stars might align this time around and grease my entry into official attorneydom. I did feel better prepared both in terms of mastery of the content, but more importantly, that I had a better understanding of the exam behind the exam, or what the examiners actually look for. I came out of this last examine feeling that I wouldn’t be surprised to find that I eventually had passed.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if I failed. I feel like I sort of sleepwalked through the first morning. I feel like I hit all the major areas, but am unsure to what degree I might have merely shuffled through them. I found the MBEs more difficult in relation to last year’s exam, but chalk this up to aftermath of the PMBR infringement lawsuit that likely forced the NCBE to re-write their questions. I felt that the third day was my best by far. By sheer dumb luck, I had spent a bit of time the night before going over the subject areas tested in July just to cover my ass in case they re-tested anything. I guess I got lucky, but I’m not sure that this was enough to make up for two decidedly lackluster evidence and corporations essays.

As far as I’m concerned, the PTs could go either way. I didn’t exactly feel like time was on my side during both afternoon sessions and thus have no idea how I did, or how well I might have hit whatever issues they were looking for.

My biggest fear concern the fact that my computer fucked up several times during the exam. Although they reassured me repeatedly that my exam wouldn’t be composed of a ream of unspoiled blank pages, I have about as much faith in the exam software support and bar exam personnel as I would in trying to watch Bush try to manage his way out of a paper bag.

So, I feel that weird nervous energy that can only come from waiting for the end result of what, in my mind at least, seemingly amounts to a giant crapshoot.

The waiting game

My second countdown towards results has been nerve wracking as hell. Sometimes the days pass quickly, on others I feel like I’m waiting to learn if the State Bar of California has decided to grant my clemency application or whether they’ll use me to blow through a few fuses with Old Sparky.

Obviously things could be much worse - I’ll spare you the Honigsberg-style lecture on how we could all be born in a malaria infested, war-torn country without arms or legs and forced to walk uphill both ways... Nevertheless, its been hard to cut through the waves of panic and dread to think of anything but the 25^th of May. I’m sick of the waiting game, sick of the bar dominating virtually every facet of my life, and ready to move on and away from this shit once and for all.

What Legis said...

Legis recently responded to my questions below concerning job prospects after multiple attempts. If you haven't read the post, much her blog, I highly recommend doing so. Its a welcome addition to the otherwise total lack of information concerning how failing may, or may not, affect individuals in our positions moving forward.

Student loans run amok

Don’t know if any of you caught this, but yesterday the New York Times wrote an article about private student loans and culinary schools. These passages jumped out at me:

[W]ould-be top chefs face a challenge that most lawyers, engineers or nurses do not: few jobs in their chosen field pay enough for them to retire their student loans. As a result, as many as 11 percent of graduates at some culinary schools are defaulting on federal student loans. The national average for all students last year was roughly half that, at 5.1 percent.

* * *

Many of the schools offer two-year programs where the total tuition and supply costs can reach $48,000. Only a slice of that is covered by low-interest federal loans. For example, the most that students in two-year programs can currently borrow in federal loans is $14,125.

So many of them seek money from banks that are usually recommended by the school. The terms on some of these private loans can quickly get a young person with little borrowing experience into financial trouble.

Mr. Park said that when he and his mother met with a financial-aid counselor at the school, they were told that his payments on his private loan, from Sallie Mae, would be about $250 a month. But his first bill after graduation was for more than twice that, said his mother, Elise McClain, an English professor in Florida. They twice requested payment deferments while he looked for a job but when they began repaying the loan, both his principal and his monthly payment had risen again. The balance is now $46,198.88 at just over 16 percent interest.

The private student loan industry is practically begging for regulation. The fact that some of them are charging 16% interest on tuition towards a career that pays so little is totally insane. I’m all for making money, but certainly not on the backs of students at 10-16% interest...

A few things I've been wondering about

During the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how failing the bar might affect my future career and/or job prospects moving forward. I don’t know if it fades in importance after a couple of years or will always loom somewhere in the background.

I’ve also been giving a lot of thought to what might happen if I fail this time, but ultimately pass on the third try. I have a hard time imagining that a firm would give me the time of day, much less hire me, if it took me three times to pass, and thus I question whether taking the bar a 3^rd time would be tantamount to throwing good money after bad. I wonder how the average hiring partner/office manager responds when confronted with two equally qualified individuals but where it is obvious from the face on one of the resumes that one of the applicants has failed the bar one or two times. If passing after the 3^rd attempt would basically kill any chance of a decent job, then I don’t really see the point of putting myself in the position to compete for the triple crown.

It’s really shocking how little information there is concerning what happens to individuals such as ourselves one, two or three years after failing. I tried calling law career services at my school to ask them some of these questions, and was blown away by their total inability to answer any basic questions. It was pretty clear that they’ve never really thought about any of this, or if they had, couldn’t give a shit about it.

I’m really curious if anyone out there has any comments, ideas, or anecdotes. I know many might ask why I’m bothering with these questions before learning whether I passed or not. This is a fair question. I think right now the only thing that is keeping me moderately sane is trying to address these questions before they become actual issues.

The hell of it all...

I have no idea how I’m going to react if I fail. On the other hand, I have no idea how I’ll react if I pass. I doubt I’ll be overblown with joy, more like exhausted relief. If lady luck doesn’t shine my way, I'd like to think that I be able to follow Legis's extremely healthy attitude after recently learning that she didn’t pass. I've excerpted a portion of his recent post.

Unfortunately, it’s happened again. No pass. Today I wasted absolutely no time. About 20 minutes after the results came online, I checked my results then immediately reapplied online, ran to the bank to notarize my application slip, ran to the post office to mail it priority mail, ran to the computer store to get my secret weapon, and ran back to work. All in under one hour.

I know that I felt more confident going into the last exam than I had in previous times because I now know the drill and I felt the time was coming close. But I hadn't really done the work to prepare. Now I've got my steady nerves and a resolve to really do the work.

***

No more days off for this thing. I'm taking three days to take the exam - that's it. I'm going to save my vacation time for a real vacation this year. Because by then I will have earned it. I can finally be proud of myself. And I can move on to perhaps a new career.

But first I have to get this summer overwith.

I don't know if I'll be able to share Legis's grit and determination on this one. In fact, I'm pretty sure I won't. At any rate, I guess I'll find out how soon enough how I'll end up handling whatever news is waiting for me on the other side of the Cal Bar website.

A wasted year?

I think the scariest/worst aspect of failing the bar is the sheer amount of time that is wasted as a result. At about this time last year I was skating through a bunch of bullshit classes that I knew even less about then, than I do know. I was getting ready to graduate, to enjoy my two days of vacation between the end of law school and the start of PMRB, and was generally trying not to think too hard about the eternal boredom and monotony that I knew would be my 6 week journey through BarBri.

I have to say that it feels like some sort of sick joke that I’m less than 10 days away from my 1 year PMBR anniversary, and that I will have blown an entire year of my life alternatively studying, waiting, obsessing, dreaming, and thinking about the bar before I actually find out whether I passed this time around. With the exception of infancy, I don’t think I’ve ever accomplished less over the course of a year in my life. I’d love to be able to say on some sort of meta level that I’ve learned a lot about myself during the past year or some bullshit like that, but the reality of it is that the only things that have changed is the calendar, my bank account, and probably a bunch of other things that are too depressing to think about. Maybe in 10 years I’ll look back on this whole experience and be able to laugh, or extract some pearl of wisdom from this whole ordeal, but from my current perch I fail to see how this can be seen as anything other than a blown year.

This entire experience has been one never-ending string of humiliation, gut-checks, and frustration. One very astute commenter wrote, "[t]his hell is not something I would ever wish on anyone, even my worst enemy. Wait, lately that seems to be me." I really couldn't agree more.

Attack of the phantom fees

I recently began the painful process of paying down my private loans. Needless to say, it has been a thoroughly frustrating experience. Like most lenders, my lender doesn’t actually service my loan so I have to deal with this company based somewhere in middle earth (i.e, the Mid West) that makes it virtually impossible to get a living breathing person on the phone. When I do manage to actually talk to someone, the person clearly has no idea about anything remotely related to loans.

The other day I got my statement and was horrified to see that my principle was actually increasing. I pay enough each month so that I should expect to see my principle decrease each month. After three frustrating phone calls, and three incredibly obtuse and nonsensical answers to my questions about why my principle keeps going up, I finally got a hold of someone who, in all likelihood, will probably be fired for making the mistake of telling me that the loan service company had added a “one time service fee” of over 700 dollars. I specifically remember choosing my private loan provider based on the fact that they charged zero fees for servicing the loan. Naturally, the hapless customer service rep was completely unable to point to a single provision in my loan documents that gave them the right to charge any fees much less 700 freaking dollars. Its bad enough that the interest rate on my loan is starting to look more and more like a credit card, but to tack on an additional 700 bucks from which even more interest is going to accrue is fucking killing me. I’m also pissed at how many conversations I had to have with assorted loan flunkies before someone managed to get around to telling me about the presence of this mystery fee. I can’t imagine an industry, especially in light of the massive student loan kickback scandals, more deserving of serious regulation and oversight.

T-Minus 23 days and counting...

I guess we're finally on the home stretch for bar results. I don't know about everyone else, but bar results are about all I can think about at the moment. I haven't quite found the right non-law job I was hoping to find, thus the issue of whether or not I pass is becoming more important. I'm also starting to have rather vivid nightmares about the bar exam itself, as well as pretty nasty flashbacks back to that horrific evening last November when I found out that I didn't pass the first time. I'm really dreading checking to see if I'm on the pass list on the 25th, and can only imagine how slowly the next 3 weeks and change will drag along.

Like a bad song...

I have very mixed feelings about the fact that there are 36 days until results come out. I think it's still too far away to care all that much about, on the other hand, I'm starting to get sick of the occasional flashes of dread whenever something bar related pops into my head. It's been kind of like getting a bad song stuck in my head, it eventually goes away but its definitely something I can do with out.