summer of bar review

The thing about law school graduation is that it's rather anti-climactic. Sure you feel a great sense of pride when you walk across the stage after three long years of discipline and sacrifice to be handed the most expensive piece of paper you'll ever own. But the feeling of accomplishment is fleeting, because you know that you aren't really done with this arduous process until you pass the bar exam. And this knowledge hangs over you like a menacing storm cloud through each champagne toast and every celebratory meal with family and friends.

So I'm now the proud holder of a Juris Doctor degree from a regionally renown law school, but I'm not a lawyer yet. No, the bar exam still stands between me and the practice of law. The bar exam varies state by state, since the Supreme Court of each state has plenary power over who may practice law in their jurisdiction. Most states these days utilize a standardized test of common law principles called the MultiState Bar Exam (MBE), and then throw some essay and/or performance questions specific to that jurisdiction to drag the ordeal out for an extra day. But not Louisiana; Louisiana is special.

Because of Louisiana's unique history, being a relative late-comer to the nascent United States and all, the civilian tradition of Spanish and French law permeate and distinguish the law of Louisiana from that of her 49 sister states. And so the Louisiana bar exam is unlike that of any other American state. For starters, the exam is the longest of all the states, with 21.5 hours of testing over a three day period. Also, it's mostly all essay questions, with a sprinkling of short-answer and multiple choice questions thrown in for good measure.

I'll be sitting for the Louisiana bar exam in July. So my life for the next two months will pretty much consist of nothing but learning Louisiana law. I'm taking the de rigueur Bar Review Course, which lends structure and guidance to my studies, with lectures six days out of the week for the next six weeks. After the course term ends, I'll have three weeks to continue to study the materials on my own, according to their schedule but without the lectures. (I'll be sitting for the Mississippi bar exam in February 2013, which means I'll be doing this all over again come the first of the new year.)

The first week of Bar Review was overwhelming. The second week wasn't quite so bad, but only yesterday did I come to the realization that this feat of memorization is indeed possible. Prior to this realization, I had been actively banishing fears of failure from my mind, but I lacked a firm conviction that I could indeed conquer this material and formulate a sufficient command of the law that I will be able to demonstrate my minimal competence to the bar examiners. (Thankfully, the bar exam tests for minimal competence, not maximum mastery, as is the case with law school exams.)

So I'm now genuinely confident in my ability to do this thing. And that feels good. Despite knowing how incredibly tedious the next several weeks will be, and how hard I'll have to work, I'm sure that I can do it. I just have to accept that the contours of Louisiana law will necessarily permeate my every waking thought, and I will become a living, breathing encyclopedia of legal knowledge. So it goes that, with this update complete, I must return to making of flashcards on the classification of property and the dismemberments of ownership.

2012: so far, so good

Busy. as. a. bee.

Enrolled in 12 credit hours (plus reading & writing time outside of class). Spend approx. 10 hours per week working at the CDC as an extern. Assist a professor 2-3 hours per week. Keep house and home from falling apart. Tend to hubby and critters.

Breathe. Stretch. Repeat.

I try to remind myself to savor the cool breeze of each jasmine-laden moment, because -- stressful though they may be -- they are fleeting. Soon the miserable heat of summer will be upon New Orleans, and I'll be in the thick of intensive Bar Exam Study. Then, with a little luck and plenty of moxie, come the cool breezes of autumn I'll be hard at work at my first Lawyering Job.

So it goes that, even though I'm constantly in a mad dash where I blink five times and it's Thursday again already, I'm trying to enjoy this these last Law Student weeks and days for what they're worth.

The Most Terrible Time of the Year

For a law student, exam time is a horrific thing.

First, there’s the sheer volume of law that you’ve spent all semester learning. You must review it, delving into every nuance, and thoroughly comprehend each and every twist and turn.

Second, there’s the pressure. Your entire grade for the semester rests on your performance on this one exam. Nevermind if you came to every class fully prepared, participated meaningfully in every class discussion, and read all of the optional supplemental materials; that doesn’t matter a whit. All that matters is how you perform on that exam, and if you have a momentary lapse of reason, or your mind goes blank in the exam room, that’s it. You’re screwed.

Third, there’s the inherent unfairness of the grading system. Law professors aren’t free to assign grades based solely on the merits of each exam response. No, instead their grade distribution must align with the school’s grading curve mandate. That is, only so many As may be given, only so many Bs, only so many Cs, and so forth. Which means that the professors frequently end up making arbitrary distinctions between papers on the cusp of two grades (A- and B+ for instance) just to comply with the curve.

All of that, combined with the fact that all this studying amounts to a major time suck, makes for an unpleasant experience for law students in early December and early May.

I’ve lodged these exact same complaints before, though, so I won’t elaborate any further.

But it has begun once again for me, and I can’t help but whine just a little. Classes are over, and crunch time is now.

So it goes that my days are spent in my study, at my desk, diligently studying legal ethics, health care law, business enterprises, and trusts & estates. I refuse to become a study zombie, though, so I allow myself stretching breaks and dog-walking breaks, and I get up early and get to bed at a decent hour instead of working late into the night. (Since my exams are at all at 9am, I don’t want to fall into a night-owl routine during my study period.)

And although it's unpleasant, I will survive. I will pass all of my exams, even if I don’t come out at the top of the class. Best of all, I only have one more exam period to live through before this law school business is a thing of the past. (Although this is a mixed blessing, because after graduation I’ll have bigger exam worries, like passing the bar!)

In the meanwhile, though, I’m going offline. No facebook, no twitter, no blogging, and no internet stumbling. I shall endeavor to focus on my exams to the exclusion of such distractions. Wish me luck.

the beginning of the end of law school

Time flies when you're a busy bee law student. So it goes that I find myself already halfway through the first semester of my third and final year of law school.

I remember the day I received my acceptance letter from Tulane. It was during the days of my laid back schedule: the spring of 2009. I had received a lot of rejection letters from graduate programs that spring. On the day the letter arrived from Tulane Law, I was home alone with the kitties when the mail arrived, and as soon as I read the word “congratulations,” I started imagining a life in New Orleans. Of course, I was still awaiting other admittance decisions, and I had no way of knowing what my final decision would be. But I knew that New Orleans was relatively close by, and that both hubby and I had an affinity for the city. And the thought of moving there and attending Tulane was absolutely thrilling. I skipped giddily through the house, announcing excitedly to the kitties that we just might move to New Orleans.

As it happened, that’s precisely what we did. Two years and many challenges later, I find myself beginning the end of my law school career.

For the entire academic year I’ll be working as a judicial extern at the Orleans Parish Civil District Court for class credit. So I’ve been in the courtroom instead of the classroom at least 10 hours each week, doing real legal work which has real consequences for real people. And that’s a whole lot more fulfilling than just working for good grades. (Although I’m still doing plenty of that, too.)

As far as classes go, I’ve made the strategic decision throughout my upper years of law school to take classes that interest me and which will give me a sound knowledge base for the areas of law in which I desire to practice, rather than taking only classes in subject matter which will be tested on the bar exam; I figure I can learn what I need to know to pass the bar outside of the classroom, and I’d rather have the in-depth coverage offered in a law school class for those areas of law where I’ll actually be working instead of just being tested once. So I’m enrolled in Trusts & Estates, Health Care Law, and Business Enterprises. I’m also knocking out my final graduation requirement: the Legal Professionalism course.

Apparently, law schools didn’t used to require law students to take a course in Legal Professionalism. The thinking goes that instituting this requirement might just result in fewer crooked lawyers out practicing in the world inspiring nasty lawyer jokes and committing malpractice. So now the American Bar Association has mandated that all aspiring lawyers take course in Legal Professionalism in order to obtain that J.D. (And, now 46 states also require a passing score on a nationally-administered Professional Responsibility Examination in order to be admitted to practice in the state. I’ll be taking that exam Nov. 5th.)

And that is why, along with the substantive law of intestacy, informed consent, and derivative actions, I’m also learning what it means to competently represent a client, why trust funds can never, ever be co-mingled, and other ways to avoid finding myself in front of a disciplinary committee someday.

I’ve heard it said that 3L year is an aspiring lawyer’s last opportunity to be a slacker (after 2 rough years of schooling and before 5-10 years of hard work in the Real World before getting a chance to relax and take it easy). But that’s not been the case for me. I’m still working hard, learning a ton, and running around NOLA like a mad woman, from home to school to work and back, barely getting enough rest during the week.

Despite the exhaustion and despite the dire job market, it does feel good to be a 3L. There’s a sense of invincibility, because I’m now too far along to fail in this law school endeavor. My GPA, while not at the Top of the Class, will earn me that J.D.; there’s no question whether I’ll continue apace and finish this thing. And while I don’t yet have a post-graduation job lined up, my success is no longer uncertain. I am constantly networking and doing good work with and for the benefit of legal professionals, making a name for myself in the legal community, and I am confident that I will not only find a job, but a job that I'll enjoy. Walking through the halls of the law school and studying in the library, I feel happily isolated from all the fear and doubt that the 1Ls and 2Ls are experiencing.

Which is a good thing, because it seems like it was just yesterday that I was a scared and shaken 1L, reeling from the mental hazing that comprises one’s introduction to the world of lawyering.

And that's your seasonal update, dear readers, for now it is time for me to return to my studies.

{This post brought to you by a cancelled class this morning.}

pro bono and a tangential rant

Pro Bono Publico: For the Public Good. That’s the literal translation of the Latin.

Usually shortened to pro bono, the phrase is now synonymous with free legal work above all else, both within the profession and to the public at large.

Most law schools these days require students to serve a minimum number of pro bono hours in order to graduate. (As it happens, my school was the first to introduce this requirement.) Generally, a student’s pro bono requirement can be met by doing a variety of tasks at a variety of organizations, so long as the work is uncompensated and law-related. Basically it’s legal community service.

At Tulane, the pro bono requirement is 30 hours. I was determined to complete this obligation before my summer session abroad and before my 3L year (which begins the week after I return home), so that I’ll have one less thing on my plate during my final year of law school. The way the timing worked out, I didn’t get to start my pro bono work until last week, and I just finished yesterday, which was less than ideal since it made our final weeks before the trip a little more hectic than the rest of the summer has been. Now that the obligation has been met, though, I’m feeling greatly relieved. (Not to mention super stoked about packing and departing in three days!)

For my pro bono service, I worked at the Lawyer Referral Service of the New Orleans Bar Association. It was a fairly easy job as far as I was concerned, because it required little of me other than a skill I perfected for 5 years at my paralegal job: fielding telephone calls, listening to folks describe their legal problems, and sending them to an attorney who can help them, if at all possible. So it wasn’t very difficult, even though it did require me to resurrect my Sweet Southern Girl telephone persona.

But I’m very pleased with the experience, because it demonstrated for me in a very concrete way the continued need and demand for quality legal services. There’s a Big Worry among my cohort of law students about job scarcity upon graduation, because big firms aren’t hiring at the rates they used to, but since folks continue going through the law school grind, there’s no shortage of lawyers. Of course this leads to increased competition across the board, but particularly in areas like government which used to be something of a safe harbor for law students without impressive GPAs. So there’s lots and lots of law students right now, all across the country, fretting about where and whether they’ll get jobs after graduating. And their worry is actually well founded, because the system which perpetrated $100k+ salaries for newly-minted lawyers is, IMHO, unsustainable.

The thing is that there’s no shortage of need or demand for legal services. (I knew this going into law school, and it’s the reason that I’m not worried about my prospects for enjoying a decent standard of living after graduation; it’s just nice to have been viscerally reminded of this fact during the course of completing my pro bono requirement.) Even still, most newly-minted lawyers are not equipped to meet any of this need or demand for legal services, because all they know about the law is from the classroom and their casebooks. Most law graduates simply lack the real world experience to walk off out of the classroom and into the courtroom if they hope to competently represent anyone’s interest.

And that’s tragic. The way I see it, legal education is severely flawed in many ways. It’s something I hope I can work towards changing once I get my fancy credentials, which I'm one step closer to having now with my pro bono requirement out of the way.

TraveLogue

Introducing: A New Blog! where our trip abroad shall be documented for posterity on the internets.

Click on over if you'd like to vicariously experience our adventure...

summer vacation, 2L version

Two weeks into my summer vacation, and it's feeling a lot more like summer than vacation.

Things were lovely for a little while: the last front of cool, feel-good air moved through New Orleans, which naturally led to picnicking and walking in the park. Hubby and I enjoyed a lovely date night downtown. I luxuriated in several days of post-exam-relaxation, sleeping late and generally doing very little other than watching the Netflix. I re-read a comforting familiar dystopian novel for fun and at my own pace. And even though I fought a little fever bug and played nurse while Hubby did likewise, it was a lovely respite indeed.

But then there were chores to be done, and plans to be made, and business to handle. Because even though I'm not actively a law student at this moment (attending class or reading cases) there's always business to be done relating to my chosen career path. And having a home means there's always chores to be done. So it's not feeling very much like a vacation any more, even though I'm not punching a clock or going to class. Meanwhile the warm temps and high humidity have returned to ensure that it is feeling very much like summer.

At least I have roughly another month to tackle things at my own pace before it's time to get back into student mode for summer school. Which will be very bizarre indeed, seeing as how I'll be physically on vacation from home at the time, studying international human rights law at the University of Amsterdam and living in a flat in Jordaan, Amsterdam.

Bizarre, but incredible. Even though I have plane tickets and passport in hand (and two homework assignments already!), it's still somewhat unbelievable to think that I'm going to study abroad this summer. I've never before left the US, and I've always been a non-traditional student. I'm not quite sure how it happened that I'm now one of those twenty-somethings heading off to spend 5 weeks in Europe.

But it's totally happening. This is going to be an amazing summer vacation, even if there is some summer school thrown into the mix!