An Ode to the Bar Examination

Tuesday morning, a mass of anxious human existence seven thousand strong filled the Javits Center for the honor, the privilege of sitting for the New York bar exam.  I have been hesitant to write about preparation for the bar exam for fear that my negative tendencies would make every post some predictable complaint after another.

But here's the thing: putting aside the chaos and supposed magnitude of sitting for a bar exam, I had fun taking the bar.  Like the LSAT and like most of law school, the bar has no real relationship to the practice of law.  Still, take away the high stakes, and it's really just problem solving and opportunity to actually learn (and write) black letter law for once.

Certainly, it isn't all fun.  The preparation can be mind-numbing, but even that was in many ways more rewarding than some of my basic law school courses--which I hope to discuss once I have recovered some sleep.  The actual bar examination is an exercise is combatting anxiety, incompetent proctors, and strangely inconsistent rules and regulations.  Further, my inability to keep down food while test-taking left me utterly starving during the three days in which I took the New York and Massachusetts bar examinations.  (Why two?  Why not!)

Everyone I've spoken with since the exam is over has congratulated me on this "feat," asked whether I'm "relieved" it's over with.  All my buddies' status updates reference drinking all the legal knowledge of them.  Me?  Like the drama of law school, I feel like miseries of the bar exam is much more hype than substance.

From one perspective, a bar examination can be a colossal amount of fun. Any exam is, at a basic level, an opportunity to show off one's capacity to work out puzzles. Most exams have a rigid curve, a rigid benchmark for excellence. This is where the high stakes of an exam come from. But the bar is a very different beast. It is, I've been constantly reminded, a minimum proficiency exam. There are none of my once-beloved "A"s to be found. The ability of everyone else in the room is irrelevant--there is no curve to be set.

The high stakes surrounding the bar examination come from the ostensible desire to formally enter into the practice of law, the two months of non-stop prior preparation, and certainly, the tens of thousands of dollars worth of education and hundreds in fees spent simply to sit for the exam. However, if one in any way enjoyed learning law, the bar exam is really just a big game.

 Each new question brought a smile to my face, as my mind raced to figure out if it was a property question I might comprehend or some contracts question wherein there was no hope. Facing an obviously important issue I knew no legal rule for, I made up my own rule based upon my personal sense of justice, chuckling to myself as I imagined a poor grader sifting through my ideas of what good faith in a contract meant.

By the time the Massachusetts bar exam was over, I was raring for more. Hopped up on caffeine, pounding back Tylenol and generic Tums like candy, I would have happily flown even to California for more! Bring on every jurisdictions, I say!

I imagine most people would find this attitude perplexing. More bar? More legal regurgitation? The way I see it, I will never, ever again possess so much legal knowledge as I do right this moment. For the past few weeks, everywhere I look I see contracts and crimes. I dream of secured transactions and strict liability. A day later, my outlines gone, I can already feel it slipping away. Soon most of it will go to rest in the part of my brain that remembers logic games, calculus, and complex chemistry.

Obviously, should the painful boom hammer fall on me this November and I pass neither bar, I will be singing a different tune.

Everyone assures me that if I will always be able to look up or relearn everything once more, but the reacquisition (and in this case re-reacquisition) of knowledge is seldom as enjoyable as learning it the first go around. So I am sad that my bars are done, not relieved. There is nothing to congratulate me on either: I completed two minimum proficiency examinations.

And, as I imagined, any satisfaction I may have at being "done" with my legal education is dwarfed by the sense that my station in life is utterly precarious at the moment. For one, I need to rid myself of my increasingly bulbous gelatinous shape.  After the bar, I found myself picking at roasted corn and lettuce leaves with a surprising amount of relish.