Memoirs of a Bar Examinee

[ohstacey]

Appreciate it, nupe.

Thanks Cahow.

I have to get this out of my brain while it's still floating around in here.  Day 1 done.  Local day.  All I can say is..."those sneaky little rat bastards!"  Without boring folks with the details, on the very first essay they ended up asking a question on this obscure subject that had not been tested since the February exam in 1997.  Rat bastards two times!  Who knew?  But...I didn't even trip. I took it on the chin like a champ and started BS'ing about whatever I knew that was somewhat-quasi-relevant.  With any mercy, I got "a" point on that stupid thing.

I only hope and pray that the rest of my exam answers made up for that first one, cause after that first one it was:

NY Bar Examiners: 1
Burning Sands: 0

LOL


Gotta go get the brain ready for MBE mode.  Later folks.


EDIT: BTW, about 2 hours into the exam this cat started crying in front of his laptop which had a blank screen, and then about a half an hour later cat stood up, packed up his stuff and walked out of the Jacob Javits center.  Straight up.

DAAAAAAAAAAAAYUMMMM to the bolded.  :'(

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

I was one of the lucky ones who didn't have a problem with the laptop (thank you Lord).  I couldn't imagine having a problem with that thing.  This is not the time to have glitches in the matrix.

MBE day down.  I feel somewhere between so-so and decent.  Knew some, didn't know others, praying about the rest.

New Jersey tomorrow and then I'm going to get "friggin' wasted, duuuuude"

[derkaiser]

EDIT: BTW, about 2 hours into the exam this cat started crying in front of his laptop which had a blank screen, and then about a half an hour later cat stood up, packed up his stuff and walked out of the Jacob Javits center.  Straight up.

Blank screen meaning his laptop crashed, or blank screen as in the dude sat there for a couple hours without writing anything?  Or could you tell? 

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

Blank as in the guy didn't know what to write.  My buddy from NYU had a better view than I did. 

Come to think of it, there were noticeably quite a few empty seats today from people who just didn't come back.

That first question was a mother.  I think they threw that on there intentionally just to mess with our heads.  It was on a topic that had very low probability of being tested. I had to flip forward to the other essays just to get my bearings back, and then when I was ready, I attempted to deal with the first essay as best I could.  Made the best out of a bad situation.

 

My husband is taking it right now, and I am totally stressing about it.

We set 7 alarm clocks so that he would definitely get up on time.

Good luck everyone!

Did the same thing.  Well, not 7 but I definitely have multiple alarms set for 6am.  I even used my cell phone alarm just in case there was a power outage.

[slacker]

I decided to ditch my laptop at the last minute and handwrote everything. I didn't hear of anyone having tech issues, but I was ok not depending on my personal increasingly undependable laptop.

Overall, I thought the IL essays weren't bad. The MBE did my head in, though.

[smujd2007]

THANK YOU JESUS IT IS OVER!!!!
I just got home after day three of the Texas Bar Exam.  I really don't know what to do with myself at this point.

I didn't type.  I haven't heard of anyone having trouble with their laptops where I took the test.

As for me, day one, I felt okay.  Procedure and evidence and the MPT.  Not perfect, but I feel alright. 

Second day: MBE.  I felt pretty good in the morning, but the afternoon whipped me.

Third day:  Essays.  Sands, I think, like NY, Texas put an exam question that seemed impossible at the beginning.  It was a highly tested area, its just that the way that it was phrased led people to think that it was a lot of different things that it wasn't.  I guessed on one part, think I figured the other part out pretty well, and kept it moving.

Also, when I felt myself getting discouraged on any of the three days, I stopped took a deep breath, and wrote: "It is already done in the name of Jesus" somewhere in the test booklet, and kept it moving. 

The only thing I ran out of time on was the MPT.  I still managed to complete it, but it just wasn't the best writing sample in the world.

Now . . . the waiting starts.  November 2?  Pure torture.  That's more than 3 months. 

I don't know what to do with myself now.  Take a little time to breathe and then start looking for gainful employment I guess . . .  studying for the bar and not working will make you broke.

   

[jd06]

Congratulations to smujd and all those who ran the gauntlet this week.  smujd2007, I enjoy reading your comments - always thoughtful.  I was similarly situated last summer.  Had the JD in hand, finished the bar exam, and woke up the next day back in the real world in a panic 'cause I didn't have a job.  Just bear in mind that the hard part is OVER.  Don't know where you are re the job search, but be diligent and you'll likely find a firm that'll take you on as a clerk and let you transition into an associate in November.  Took me about six weeks but I got there.  Congratulations again!  It only gets better from here.  Really.

[smujd2007]

Yes, I feel relived that I finished the exam.  I had one friend who withdrew, which kind of hurt my heart.   

It was a stressful week.  Its been a stressful summer.  I just pray that I got 675!!!

JD06--Yes. Probably about the middle of next week I will start looking. . . .I need to update my resume--haven't done that since April!  I am sooooo broke.  Down to the last few hundred dollars of my bar exam loan. The part about that is that I could take a part time temporary job and keep looking for permanent work until the bar--one of my previous employers would be happy to have me back part time until I get bar results--but I want to keep looking too.  Plus, since I think I want to do some kind of government work, they normally require you to have your barcard already, so the part time job might not be such a bad idea.  It will all fall into place in due time.  Thanks for the encouragement.

Congratulations to smujd and all those who ran the gauntlet this week.  smujd2007, I enjoy reading your comments - always thoughtful.  I was similarly situated last summer.  Had the JD in hand, finished the bar exam, and woke up the next day back in the real world in a panic 'cause I didn't have a job.  Just bear in mind that the hard part is OVER.  Don't know where you are re the job search, but be diligent and you'll likely find a firm that'll take you on as a clerk and let you transition into an associate in November.  Took me about six weeks but I got there.  Congratulations again!  It only gets better from here.  Really.

[Nowhere Man]

Congrats to all of you. I was thinking about yall!

[Burning Sands, Esq.]

Good look SMU and slacker.  We are done with that *&^%!  I wanna say any way it turns out for me, I'm not taking that bar exam ever again in life.  That was a STRESSful 2 months.  On day 2 I woke up with a full out headache and a stomach ache that was strangely similar to how I have felt during the few times in life that I have actually experienced a bad hangover.  AND I DIDN'T EVEN DRINK ANYTHING!  WTF??  My body was causing it's own stress and physically hurting as a result of the stress I was experiencing. 

Break down for New York and New Jersey:

Day 1:

Attempted to sleep the night before.  Not so much.  Up at 5am, hit the train by 6am, got there by 6:30.  Stood in line forever.  Bar exam started late, somewhere around 9:30 or something.

50 New York Multiple Choice questions:  who knows.  I didn't really care.  I thought about them for maybe 1/2 a second and then picked an answer and kept it moving. Got done with them in about 50 minutes and then started on the essays.

Essay 1: Commercial Paper/Crim Law (writing a bad check).   
Comment: Of the 13,000 people who took the NY bar exam this summer, probably less than 500 actually wasted their time over the past 2 months actually studying commercial paper.  And writing bad checks is a crime, but not exactly what we had in mind for a so-called criminal law/procedure essay.  Oh well.  Made the best of it and kept it moving like you said.

Essay 2: Torts (Tortious Interference with a Business Contract)/NY Practice (summary judgment)
Comment: had the New York definition of Summary Judgment memorized. Almost got excited when I saw a question asking for it.  In fact I stopped reading the essay and typed out my definition for summary judgment just to get it down on the screen and then went back to reading the essay.

Essay 3: Wills/Trusts
Comment: not much to say here.  Classic NY bar exam essay.  I think most people were prepared for this one.

Lunch break.  Studied my outlines in my car strategically parked across the street and made an attempt to eat a sandwich sorta.

Essay 4: Family Law
Comment: Yet another classic NY bar exam essay.  Most people got this one too.

Essay 5: Corporations/Professional Responsibility
Comment: They asked about the dissolution of a closely held corporation, which thank God, I had memorized the black letter law for.  I poured all of my knowledge of corporations out on that essay.  Left no stone unturned.

MPT:  We got an appellate brief to the federal court in opposition of a summary judgment motion or, in the alternative, to stay making a decision and remand to a Tribal Court located on an Indian reservation on a very very very narrow issue of law.  Completely bananas.  I'm like SMU, barely finished.  It seriously took me about 30-45 minutes just to actually READ the damn thing, and then another 15 minutes to come up with some point headings that sounded somewhat decent. Then I made my arguments to the court and tried to conclude.  I was on my 3rd argument when they called the 15 minutes remaining announcement.  Wrapped it up and called it a day.


Day 2:  MBE

Those questions were...uh...not exactly representative of what we've been practicing for MBE or BarBri.  My study partner and I completed the red book in its entirety, and I even went back over the red book and did questions over again just to make sure I had them down, and then we dipped into the blue book and I still didn't recognize the majority of the questions that they asked on the MBE we just took.  I knew some questions, I had no clue on about the same amount, and the rest I just pray about.

Day 3: New Jersey

7 essays on the MBE topics plus civ pro.  A walk in the park compared to New York.

Essay 1: Torts
Comment: a small fact pattern concerning a dram shop statute and liability of various parties in a bar room fight.

Essay 2: Crim Law
Comment: at least Jersey, unlike New York, actually asked us about real crim law and crim pro topics.  There were some warrant issues up in there, some burglary, some larceny, some entrapment.  You know, traditional crim stuff.

Essay 3: Constitutional Law
Comment: some simple due process and equal protection issues.  I had so much to write I had to stop my self and move on to the next one.

Essay 4: Property
Comment: A simple conveyance with a mortgage issue.  Not much to say.


Lunch break

Essay 5: Evidence
Comment: just remember to start any and every evidence essay with the words "in order for evidence to be admissible it must be relevant."

Essay 6: Contracts
Comment: had some classic UCC stuff between merchants going on.

Essay 7: Civ Pro
Comment: they left it vague so you could have either talked about personal jurisdiction, which I started to do, or diversity jurisdiction, which I ended up writing about.  Either way you were fine I'm sure. If I had been on computer I would have talked about both, but when you are hand writing, there's only so much you can put on there.





That's it. 

Done with two bar exams. 


I don't know what to do with myself either.  I've already had about 4 henn & cokes.  I'm sure more are coming.