This evening, my brother-in-law will graduate from law school (congratulations!) and will join the tens of thousands of law school graduates who have completed their law school education in 2011. While many of us think of a graduation ceremony as a celebratory event that marks the completion of a significant course of education, many law students view it as a study break. You see, for many law school graduates, graduation means taking a break from studying for the Bar Examination. There is no rest for the weary. The multistate portion of the Bar will be given this year on July 27, 2011 and state-specific exams are given over the next day (or two, if you are taking exams for multiple states). As a result, law students go straight from the fire and into the oven, starting Bar exam prep almost immediately after their last finals. That means a Bar prep classes in the morning and law school graduations in the evening.
Why do Bar prep courses start so soon after graduation? Simply put, failure is not an option; or at least it isn’t an option that you want to deal with. The consequences of failure can include the additional cost of Bar prep materials, loss of time, loss of self-esteem (yes, your friends and classmates do check the publicly-released list to see if you passed), some firms will not hire you until you have passed the bar, and you can lose your job if you fail. So the point is that you really want to pass. Is it easy to pass the Bar exam(at least in NY and CA)? Ask Kathleen Sullivan, former dean of Stanford Law School (the #3 ranked law school in the U.S.). Years after passing the Bar exam first time and after holding the position of Stanford Law’s dean, Sullivan took the Bar exam a second time so that she could practice in California. She failed (note: historically, 96 – 98% graduates of Stanford Law pass the bar on their first try – just a bit embarrassing for the dean!).
For most law school graduates, getting more than 25% of your first set of multiple choice Bar practice questions correct is a minor victory (the law of averages says that you should get 20% correct by just guessing on multiple choice questions that have 5 answer choices). That is a ways away from the 70% or so correct that students need to target to pass (assuming you receive an average essay score). Panic attacks and freak outs can occur as early as week one, are common in week four and are a constant in weeks seven through ten. There are usually three constant refrains Bar-studiers will hear from attorneys who have passed the Bar exam: (i) “If I can do it, you can do it”; (ii) “Think of the dumbest lawyers that you know – they all passed and so will you”; and (iii) “Don’t worry – work hard, study according to the plan your course gave you and sometime during the week before or two weeks before the test it will all come together and you will be fine.”
So, triathletes, how do you like being compared to a bunch of lawyers?
Having passed the Bar exam (I had good reason to freak out with four weeks left to go before the exam, but passed with flying colors, in the end), I trust the advice of my alum-teammates (even the advice I’ve received from the lawyers in the group). So to all of you law school grads, I’ll be thinking of you as I grind out the last half-mile of my bike/swim/run this summer. And what I’ll be thinking is, “better you than me.”
