Taking the bar exam is no easy feat—an understatement, I know. Sure, you’ve spent three years of law school preparing for this one major exam that stands between you and the career you’ve chosen. You have studied torts, civil procedure, criminal law, contracts, and constitutional law like it was your job. And, you paid a hefty price for a bar review course to ensure you were as equipped to pass the exam as you would ever be.
But, that’s not all there is to getting licensed. Before you can even take the bar exam, you have to apply for the privilege to take the exam. Yes, you heard correctly. And then, when you have taken the bar exam, you still have to apply to your jurisdiction’s bar.
In my experience, quite frankly, applying for the bar was almost as stressful as applying for and taking the bar exam.
Every jurisdiction differs, of course, but I have now applied for three different bars: Virginia, New York, and North Carolina. The process hasn’t gotten any easier. Here are some tips to get prepared for and crush your bar application.
[Read more…] about Before The Bar: How To Tackle The Bar Application
As a heavily overweight child, I struggled to participate in any physical activity like running. The mile run in middle and high school was a miserable experience. Pretty ironic considering years later I became a half-marathon addict and have run numerous half marathons, 5ks and 8ks.
I think it’s probably safe to say that the bar exam in 2020 was a bit of a disaster. So many news stories, headlines, and examples of the bar exam gone wrong. In several lawyer groups I’m involved in, there have been frequent complaints, disparaging comments, and outright arguments about the bar exam and its usefulness. Comments like, “Just let students apprentice!” or “I never learned a thing from the bar” are all too common.
For years I’ve run half marathons including the Philadelphia Half Marathon, Disneyworld Half Marathon, and Colonial Williamsburg Half Marathon. Each race has its unique challenges. Some have higher elevations. Some have flat courses, which surprisingly are challenging in a different way than hilly races. But, one part of running races remains the same no matter where the course is: tapering.
Growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money. In fact, my mom’s favorite saying is, “I may not have been able to give you a lot, but I sure taught you how to make lemonade out of lemons.” I didn’t have a lot throughout law school, either, so when it came time to prepare for my first bar exam ten years ago, I was a little shocked to see the staggeringly expensive cost of most bar prep programs.
I recently sat through a presentation on wedding planning. The presenter spent twenty minutes listing all the things that had to be done before the wedding, and then ended the presentation on the wedding day. Having been through my own wedding, I can say without pause, that the presentation left out a lot of information. There are so many things that need to get done after the wedding is over that nobody tells you about during wedding planning.