Law School Discussion

Here's another reason so many people fail the Baby Bar: Most of the people taking it are complete morons who don't belong anywhere near the law.

I don't think a pejorative term like "moron" is necessarily a fair or accurate way to describe those who fail the baby bar. Skill in any field is relative and people aren't morons simply because they aren't quite as adroit as others when it comes to applying the law to a set of facts.

However, there is truth in your statement. I've been maintaining this exact point for some time now, if trying to express it a little nicer. The reason the baby bar seems hard is because so many of the people who have to take it have already demonstrated that passing law exams gives them trouble. I've read some of the essay questions that appear on the baby bar. They look like ordinary law school essays to me. Nothing more difficult than the essay questions I faced with my first year final exams. It's all the same material. Contracts is contracts. Torts is torts. Crim is crim. It's easy if you know your outline and you've gotten some decent feedback on enough practice tests. There is no good reason to fail the baby bar unless you fail to prepare properly, you write at an elementary level, or you just can't think logically under timed constraints. My guess is that the majority of those who fail the exam do not prepare properly, or effectively. They haven't practiced writing about the law nearly enough. But most law students who passed their first year exams by a comfortable margin would have no problem passing the baby bar. It'd just be another exam to them. The BB's reputation for difficulty reflects only the perceptions of those who struggle to pass ordinary law exams to begin with.

Hi Nor-Cal. I attend a CBE school in Sacramento. My commute is an hour each way, but I work down there, so it's not like I have to make a special trip to get to class. Even though there are two ABA schools in the Sacto area, I never seriously considered either one, despite a solid UGPA from UC. The cost isn't justifiable when you're over 40. I spent four years in the Marines after high school, then another four years in college. For most of the past two decades, I've been forging a career in insurance underwriting, and at this point, the only meaningful prospect that law school holds for me is to get the license. Sure, I'd love to go to an ABA school, and after ranking very high after my first year, I toyed with the idea of transferring to McGeorge's night program. But the cost is ridiculous. Untenable. As it is, my CBE education is expensive enough, and like you, I have a mortgage. However, if I were 20 years younger, I wouldn't hesitate to apply myself toward getting into an ABA school. But at my age and station in life, the only goal is to get the license. I'm not going to be interviewing with local law firms when I pass the bar. Passing the bar will vault me out of the realm of laymen, regardless of which school I attend. There's a lot to be said for that. Granted, I'll never run my company's legal department, but my company has numerous in-house counsel who went to state schools. If you have expertise and existing contacts in a particular field, I don't believe having an ABA degree is quite as important as it is when you're 28 and you've never done anything in life but sit in classrooms. If the only thing on your resume is your law degree, then it should be the best degree you can get. On that point, I question some of my young classmates' decision to attend a state school. They're going to be at a disadvantage when they compete for jobs. (That said, my friends in class are all currently employed college graduates representing a wide array of fields of endeavor. They don't appear to be losing any more sleep than I am about their job prospects after graduation.) The fact is, as you get older, your ROI from having an ABA degree decreases. I don't see the point in saddling myself with exorbitant student debt 20 years into my career. I have no goal or interest in working for BigLaw. None. Just get the license. Once you've done it, you can say you've done it. And whatever rights and privileges that might attach become yours to cultivate however you can.

Wend3,
To succeed in law school takes extraordinary commitment. You're going to have a real balancing act on your hands between paying attention to your kids, paying attention to your husband, and paying attention to your studies. Not to mention making time for yourself. Especially in the beginning. And further, many of your friendships may begin to stagnate. This would prove to be the case even if you had only a 15-minute commute. Three hours a day in your car is an awful lot of time to kill with so many people pulling on you from all directions. That said, commuting doesn't have to be a complete waste of time. You can spend it productively by listening to law lectures and exam approaches. Still, sacrifices will have to be made on all fronts. Your younger kids will not have the attentive mom they want. Your husband will have to run family errands during and after work and monitor the kids while you're holed up in the den preparing for exams. Your studies will have to wait while you attend little league games or whatever. It'll be very tough to compete against the 20-somethings who have nothing to do but drink beer and study contract formation. I suspect the person who will end up sacrificing the most will be your husband. In the priority of interests, it's a natural thing to brush aside one's spouse when the children want attention. Only you can know your own situation, but his full commitment and support will be critical while you're in school. He needs to completely understand that he is going to be replaced by casebooks and "things the professor said" in your life. It'll be easy for him to feel abandoned, ignored, unappreciated and unimportant in your life. Law school is exciting and it's probably healthy not to let your own dreams fall by the wayside in the wake of having children, as often happens. But law school isn't necessarily all you think it's going to be. Here in my third year of study, the true result of law school is coming into focus. Coleridge said it the most eloquently: "A sadder and a wiser man he rose the morrow morn."

Just food for thought. Good luck.

Or, if you don't meet the physical requirements, exercise until you do. I used to run laps around my block with a backpack full of books to get ready before I enlisted. The hardest thing I had to do in Marine Corps boot camp was control my laughter at the sight of so many others huffing and puffing to do a few pullups or to run a few miles.

I realize this is an old thread, but it's worth a revival to balance some of the information posted here.

I'm a veteran. When I first enrolled in law school, I had connected with the other vets in my class by the second week. We all quickly learned who the other vets were, what branch everyone served under, and what MOS (job specialty) everyone held. Wherever life takes a vet, he or she knows who the other vets are. If you did not receive an honorable discharge after your tour of duty, you are not only not in the clique, but you're likely to be ostracized by other vets if they find out you were kicked out. But you know that already. My career began with an interview in a field I knew nothing about. The interviewer had also done a tour in the military and we spent a full hour doing nothing but swapping stories about our time in the service. He hired me on the spot. But if my interviewer had learned that I received less than an honorable discharge, he would have stopped talking about the military immediately, and my interview would have ended on the note that several candidates were being considered. I never would have heard from him again.

You have to seriously F up to get kicked out of the military. This is true even if the discharge was for something fairly innocuous like being gay or getting caught with a little weed, for which they had almost no tolerance when I served. If the Army punts you from its ranks for something that didn't involve moral turpitude or a violent crime, then it was your judgment that failed you more than your conduct. To illustrate, soldiers who want to continue being soldiers do not smoke weed on base or have sex in the barracks with each other. It's too risky. That said, those who in the past were given a general discharge for being gay probably have nothing to worry about, other than the homophobia that they might face anywhere. Attitudes have changed. But you'd almost have to walk in the door announcing your sexual preference in order to overcome the blemish of a general discharge. If the discharge was for any other reason except medical, you'll have provide details that are probably very regrettable.

If your interviewer never served, you may be able to conceal your service record. But if your interviewer ever served in any branch, you'll have a difficult hurdle to get over. And given the legal field's interest in an attorney's background, it'll probably be a tough thing to conceal without lying, even if the interviewer never served. Fortunately for you, most people do not serve in the military, so the failure to connect as fellow vets may not matter with every firm that gives you an interview. But a general discharge will matter to some of them, and it will absolutely matter if the firm is run by a veteran.