What Are Your Tales From the Bar Exam?

Mike
Jul 31, 2008 11:47 AM CST

After one day on the NY bar exam, one day of multiple guess and one day of NJ I was beat (I never understood how someone could pass NY but fail NJ until then - sheer exhaustion). I left the bar exam and headed to a real bar where my wife, who had taken and passed the bars the previous year, was waiting with shots for me and some friends. As we lived in the city, and didn’t have a car, we planned to take the bus to Port Authority and subway back to Brooklyn. No, no, said one of my friends - I have my car and there’s plenty of room. Cool. Until the other guys got in. All the way back to NY all they did was talk about the bar exam. And that nervous feeling in my stomach was getting worse. At one point, while we were on the Lincoln Tunnel viaduct, I contemplated jumping out of the car and seeing if one of the city bound buses would pick me up. As soon as we got into the city, I told my friend my wife and I decided to get dinner in Manhattan. I couldn’t get away fast enough. I passed NY & NJ as did my friend. No clue about our fellow carpoolers. The exam left me scarred for life - to this day, over a decade later, I still hate going to the Javits Center.

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MD
Aug 1, 2008 4:38 AM CST

23 years ago, after an LLM in NY and three weeks of BARBRI courses, I had to go home abroad for the funeral of my previous girlfriend who had tragically died.  When I returned, I was in no mood to study and missed most of the remaining classes.  Of course, I failed the exam and I steeled myself to take the January exam.  My firm (where I still work) did not hold it against me even though I had not really told anyone the reason.  But imagine my surprise when a few weeks later I saw my name in a (very) short additional “pass” list in the NYSBA Journal:  some unknown soul had complained about the grading of one answer, and had prevailed.  That was enough to change the outcome for me:  I had passed after all.  Who-ever it was:  Thank you!  Most of my clients don’t know how little I know… ;-)

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Patent Lawyer
Aug 1, 2008 6:14 AM CST

I was at the top of my class in law school, won many book awards, etc. Therefore, I wasn’t worried about the bar exam when I took it.

I was so un-worried about it that I decided getting drunk after the first day would be a good idea. I woke up at 6:00am the second day with quite possibly the worst hangover of all time.

I walked into the test room looking like a bag of male genitalia. Various friends saw me, laughed at me, and informed me that I would fail.

When I started the exam, the words began to swim. I couldn’t follow the fact patterns. I had to take notes next to fact patterns to even follow them. On top of that, I had to get up to puke in the bathroom several times.

I ate a little at lunch. It didn’t really help how I felt. I finished the test and decided not to worry about anything—when I discussed questions with smart friends, it seemed like I had all the same answers that they did.

I passed. I actually got a 165 on the multi-state (the day I took hungover). So the moral of the story is, perhaps, drinking isn’t so bad?

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BCL
Aug 1, 2008 6:28 AM CST

On my way to the second day of the NY exam at the Javits Center, I was pick pocketed.  Bar Exam seat ticket - gone, ID - gone.  I’d lived in NYC for four years, and of course that day had to be the day I was pick pocketed.  I’m half surprised I didn’t die of a heart attack on the spot when I reached for my wallet and there was nothing.  I was able to cry my way through the Javits Center security, but the fear that they may not let me sit was enough to rattle me for the morning.

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Richard J. Brickwedde
Aug 1, 2008 6:38 AM CST

My bar review course was just off NY’s Times Square.  Unfortunately, a month or so before the bar, I had walked through a poison ivy patch in my bare feet.  Not knowing why my feet and shins were itchy, I proceeded to rub it in.  I was living on west 66th street and exhausted all supplies of zinc oxide in drug stores between 72nd st and 34th st. in Manhattan.  I would spend my days with my feet elevated on the air conditioner and venture forth to the bar review course in shorts with my feet and shins gooked up wearing sandals whose straps were bound with gauze to keep from breaking the skin which was like wet tissue paper.  I knew what a freak feels like in NYC.  People just stared.

Then we landed a man on the moon the Sunday night before the monday start of the bar exam.  We had to stay up until they actually exited the lunar lander and took one giant step for mankind.  Unfortunately, the rumors that the bar exam would be delayed because of the lunar landing were not true, but I passed anyway.

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RAU
Aug 1, 2008 6:43 AM CST

During the evening of the first day of the Ohio bar exam last year I was in my hotel room trying to concentrate (studying for the next day’s MBE portion) and already having a hard time doing so because of a live band playing outside the hotel.  Soon it became even harder to concentrate when - in between songs - I heard some funny noises coming from somewhere around me.  When I started paying attention to the source of the “funny noises” I realized they were coming through a door connecting my room to an adjacent room.  Upon further investigation I truly ascertained what was going on next door.  Two ladies (not sure whether or not they were bar exam takers) were - let’s just say - having too much fun (please read between the lines).  The “fun” stopped about 10 minutes later and restarted about 45 minutes later.  Needless to say, I could not study for the rest of the evening but I managed to do very well in the MBE portion of the exam (the next day) and pass.

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Andy the Lawyer
Aug 1, 2008 7:07 AM CST

Taking the bar exam was easy.  The hard part was enduring the endless moment between opening the letter from the State Bar four months later, and reading it to learn I had passed.

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Ed
Aug 1, 2008 7:31 AM CST

Many years ago I was taking the Bar exam in DC because NY was not part of the multi-state at that time (I said it was many years ago).  During the last session of a very long day about 400 of us were in on of Georgetown Law’s largest lecture halls.  As it got closer to the end throughout the hall came highly audible grunts,  groans and comments such as “you have to be “s…ing” me”.  I found out why when I reached the next to last question.  It had to do with the “Rule in Shelly’s Case” and no-one could believe that the examiners would pull that one on us.

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Lynn
Aug 1, 2008 7:38 AM CST

Multiple “disasters”, natural and man-made, occurred when I took the second day of the NJ bar exam in July 1984 at Rider College, near Trenton.  When they went to start the afternoon session, they discovered that they had the wrong test booklets, so we had to wait for an hour or so for the correct booklets to arrive.  But that wasn’t all.  The power went out during that session.  Fortunately, the room we were in had plenty of natural light (I think it was a cafeteria), and this was before the days of laptops, so everyone just kept writing.  But we were in the midst of a heat wave (with high humidity), and, even with the windows open, the room quickly became a steam bath.  My brain was already fried from 2 days of the PA exam, and I thought I was going to pass out by the end of the session, but somehow I passed.

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Jade
Aug 1, 2008 7:48 AM CST

Mine is not exciting or anything, but I simply could not sleep the night before the bar exam. I was determined to be asleep by 10, but I had so much anxiety that I couldn’t. I had gotten a massage AND drank a glass of red wine… didn’t want to take any sleeping pills or I might oversleep. I spent the night tossing and turning and watching the clock until about 4:30 am when I finally drifted off. Fortunately my mind was so wired that I didn’t doze off during the test, but I was paranoid and stressed that’s for sure. As someone else said, I NEVER want to do that again!

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Michael White
Aug 1, 2008 8:02 AM CST

My experience was not hilarious or disastrous.  More like pathetic.  I took the California bar in 1996.  On day 2 (multi-state), I foolishly thought that using my lunch break time to get in a little studying was a good idea.  So I went out to the parking lot and sat in my car quizzing myself on whatever I was panicked about at the time.  But my biggest mistake was not studying in vain.  Rather, it was turning on the car radio while studying. 

This might not be funny or even interesting unless you know the song I’m talking about, but as I sat in my car, the song “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega came on the radio.  If you don’t know the song, it can only be described as that 90’s pop song where a female sings in a near monotone voice, and the chorus is made up entirely of “doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo….” etc.  If you do know the song, you’ll know that it’s one of the world’s toughest songs to get out of your head.

So, for the next two hours I was tortured with that stupid “doo doo doo…” running around and around my head while I answered multiple choice questions (no doubt due in large part to my chronic ADD). 

Anyway, it was literally driving me crazy, but there was nothing I could do about it.  So I did the only thing that a shrewd future lawyer could do to try to minimize the impact of the distraction on my chances of passing the bar.  At the next short break, I turned to the woman next to me and said “Hey, do you know that song ‘Tom’s Diner’ by Suzanne Vega?”

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I'm not really here
Aug 1, 2008 8:04 AM CST

My story really has to do with the aftermath of the exam.  Taking the exam was hellish enough, since, although I had applied to the First Department (NY lawyers know what I mean), I had to take the exam at Brooklyn Law (there wasn’t enough room in Manhattan in those pre-Javits Center days), and I lived in Jersey.
So after suffering through 2 days of a killer commute (car, train, PATH, subway) I wait for the results.  One fine autumn morning, on my way to the train station, I pick up the NY Times and see the THE LIST.  I go to the First Department column…and my name isn’t there.  I figure, maybe I’m on the Second Department list, since I took the test in Brooklyn.  No dice.  My train comes and goes.  I’m contemplating throwing myself under the next train, when I notice there’s another list. Those were the people who had passed, but hadn’t completed the residency requirement, and I’m on it.  HALLELUJAH!!!

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Erin
Aug 1, 2008 8:30 AM CST

New York, July 2003.  My roommate, not a bar taker, went on an extended vacation for nearly all of July, leaving me to study for the bar exam at home in peace.  I bought an air conditioner and created an incredibly warm, inviting space in my bedroom to study. 

All was going quite well until about 5 days before the bar exam, when most of Queens (where I live) and some other areas of the city, lost all power.  No lights, no refrigeration, no air conditioning, no warm water/shower.

Studying by candlelight was not the worst thing in the world.  No air conditioning, and not even a fan to move the hot air, thick with moisture, around in my apartment, was not fun.  But then it was the night before the bar exam, and still no power.  That meant, no warm shower and no alarm to ensure I woke up in time to get to the bar exam at the Javitz Center.  I arranged for 4 people to call me on my cellphone (which I had been taking a friend’s apartment in Manhattan to charge every other day) the morning of the bar exam, and set the alarm on my phone for early that morning.  I made it to day one fine, and got ready for day two.

At about 8:00 p.m. after the first day of the exam, I heard loud drilling and other machinery just under my window.  When I looked out, I saw it was a ConEd truck.  They were working on the power!  I was so excited - until I realized that they weren’t going to stop working.  I had earplugs in and an eye pillow over my eyes, but at 4:00 a.m. they were still working and I was still wide awake. 

Suddenly, at about 4:15 a.m., every electronically powered appliance and light in my apartment went on.  I walked through every room in the apartment, turning lights and tvs and radios off, and then settled in for less than 2 hours’ sleep before day two of the bar exam.

Four months later I got the news that I passed.  I was a little bummed, as I had spent so much time crafting - in my mind only - my lawsuit against ConEd for negligent infliction of emotional distress! (For those of you with the urge to write and correct me, I am well aware that my suit would not have succeeded! But a girl can dream, right?).

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Mom of two
Aug 1, 2008 8:48 AM CST

Finding out I was pregnant the last day of BarBri was a surprise. Throwing up nonstop over the last two weeks of cramming was counter-productive. Running to the bathroom to throw up AT the bar exam was scary, as I thought I would get kicked out for cheating. Getting a passing score was priceless.

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Albany deep freeze
Aug 1, 2008 9:23 AM CST

A Southerner in Albany in the dead of February, early 1990s. I took 2 days off from my judicial clerkship in the South to go sit for the New York bar before going to work for a Wall Street after the clerkship.
Albany is a cold place to be in February.
I had borrowed a set of the Bar-BRI books from a friend to study but otherwise knew diddly about New York’s many legal peculiarities.
The exam was on Tuesday-Wednesday or Wednesday-Thursday, I don’t recall which. (The Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, theoretically a day of fasting for many, which struck me as peculiar since this was just about the time that New York controversially rescheduled the summer bar exam because it coincided with an Hasidic holiday involving fasting that could put a handful of bar candidates at a blood-sugar deficit. The rescheduling meant that numerous candidates that summer were prevented from taking the dual admission option (like Mike in this post) in which everyone took the multistate on a Wednesday, and on the Tuesday and Thursday they could take both the New York portion and either Connecticut or New Jersey ... but I digress.)
The night before the first part of the exam, I fiddled around with the unfamiliar heating controls in my hotel room to warm the place up. Instead, I woke in the middle of the night with my teeth chattering. The room was freezing – as I figured out later, I had inadvertantly turned off the heat. Too befuddled to do anything about it I just shivered on until the pale dawn.
Word was that the pass rate for the February exam in New York was about 50% – the better students had already passed in July (as had I in a different state). We would be seated at tables for two, so the joke was that tablemates should get a good look at each other because one of you would fail. My tablemate introduced himself with the spooky question, “So, which time is this for you?” I honestly replied that it was my first. He said, “It’s my fourth time.” I couldn’t resist whispering just a teensy little “YES!!!” to myself.
Indeed, as luck would have it, I was the one who passed. Haven’t been back to Albany since.

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John E. Gotherman
Aug 1, 2008 9:45 AM CST

I passed the bar in Ohio in 1991.  I was a commisioned officer in the U S Air Force on active duty for two years between my 1st and second and third year in law school.  First year at Ohio State and second and third year at a law school which eventually became Capital University Law School, Columbus, Ohio.  Needless to say the I was worried about the long break in my law school education.  Since I worked directly across from the Ohio Supreme Court Walked across the street on the first day the results were available.  I gave the court employee my name and several minutes latter they said my results were not in the pile of exams on their table.  I assured them that I had taken the exam and a second search also failed to produce an exam for me.  Then the Clerk of the Supreme Court, siting a the rear of the room asked my name.  I told him and he said “I have your examination, you finished second and we are calling the news wires with the top two finishers. Here look at it”  All this took fifteen minutes or more.  All I can say is that I was happy to have passed.  I finished second to a Harvard Law School Grad who scored one half point ahead of me, as I remember it.  I blew a trust question. It was the only course I did not spend much time reviewing since I had just finished the Course with a good grade.  Forty seven years latter I still regret not spending more time to review trusts.

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d
Aug 1, 2008 10:02 AM CST

I was excited to have Prof. Chemerinski review Con Law for us during the BarBri course.  Who better to learn from?  We did a comprehensive review with the exception of the constitutionality of state taxation which he assured us would not be tested on the exam.  I memorized all of the case names and all of the myriad tests.  Comes the bar exam, what is the question?  Of course, the constitutionality of state taxation.  Thankfully just about everyone else also failed that question.  :)

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Vickie
Aug 1, 2008 10:19 AM CST

I took the Washington bar exam in the summer of 1990.  It was usually given in the Seattle area, where the bulk of the aspiring Washington lawyers live or work, but that year, it was being administered only in Spokane, a 5-hour drive across the state, because the Goodwill Games were taking place in Seattle, and there was no space to have the bar. In addition to hoards of very stressed-out people descending on the overtaxed and unprepared restaurants in Spokane simultaneously for lunch, thus making us unable to get anything to eat, there was a thunderstorm during the exam that took out the power for about 45 minutes just as an essay question was being distributed.  As we sat there in the dark, some exam-takers complained that other exam-takers had an opportunity to use the extra time to “think about the question,” because they had received it before the lights went out on the rest of us.  The proctors instructed us not to think about the question until the lights went back on.  Needless to say, this was an experience I didn’t want to repeat, and luckily, I didn’t have to.

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Sara
Aug 1, 2008 10:31 AM CST

The bar exam has been cursed for me.  On my first try in California I passed out during the MBEs and ended up in the hospital with a pituitary tumor.  I had thought I felt so awful from all the stress of studying.  Nope I really was very sick.

Second time I tried the bar was in Arizona.  My husband died 6 weeks before.  I decided to go ahead and take it anyway and on the first day I got in a car accident over the lunch break.  Luckily it was minor and I just swapped info and rushed back.  Amazingly I passed, but I swear I will never take anohter bar exam again.

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jackcatscal
Aug 1, 2008 10:49 AM CST

I took the NY bar a lot of years ago.  I remember on the second day seeing a few empty seats.  Word had it that at least one student had been caught by the proctors looking up answers in the law library one floor below. (I suppose that would make going through the NY bar character committee interview kinda difficult.)
The bar results would be later published in the New York Times.  (This was pre-internet.)  We knew when the results would come out, and there was a huge mob (word chosen carefully) at the NY Times building the night before waiting for the early edition.  I remember one over-anxious test-taker rushing up to a production worker and just grabbing the paper from under his arm.  I thought, and this will be a member of a respected profession?
Anyhow, I passed.
Flash forward 16 years.  I’ve just moved to California to take a new job, and I have to take the CA bar.
California has a policy that, if you’re a member in good standing of another state bar, and you’ve been practicing for at least five years, you can take the “attorney’s exam,” which simply means that they waive the middle day of the three.  Of course, that’s the multi-state day.  I think the theory is that you’ve taken and passed the multi-state before, so there’s no need to take it again.  Well, I passed the CA bar exam.  And, guess what, I took the NY bar before they adopted multi-state.  So, I’m admitted in three jurisdictions (includes DC) without ever having taken the multi-state exam.  Makes me feel good that I may have beaten the system.
One last thought—the California lawyers will have you think the CA bar is the most difficult bar of all.  Not so, IMHO.  I really thought NY was more difficult.  Of course if NY passes 70%, and CA only passes 60%, that may be a little academic.

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QJC
Aug 1, 2008 11:26 AM CST

As an aside, it may be that NY or other states have “harder” bar exams than CA, which is to say that their questions might be trickier.  Of course, to say that one question is tougher than another is very subjective.  What isn’t subjective are the pass rates.  Even if CA offers “easy” essay questions, the fact is that a higher percentage of takers fail that exam than any other.  Why?  Because, even if the questions are easy, the minimum pass rate is set so damn high that you have to give a pretty kickass answer to get by. 

So, if the NY exam is genuinely harder than CA’s, then one of two things is happening given that NYhas a higher pass rate: either the pool of NY takers is smarter on the whole than the pool of CA takers, or the threshold to pass the NY bar is set much lower than that for the CA bar.

Just my two cents.

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jerry abbott
Aug 1, 2008 12:28 PM CST

My first bar exam was California 1965.  My hadwriting was (and is) similar to that of a 5 year old.  So I took my portable Smith Corona to the exam room which was set aside for “typists.”  The room was filled wilth approximately 50 such typists most of whom had the new fangled electric tykpewriters.  In 1965 the California Bar exam was three rather tough days of essay questions - no Multi State multiple guess.  In the morning of the third day a power outage occurred resulting in panick among the “electric typists”  Many had no pen, pencil or nor “Blue Book” required of non typist test takers.  two exam monitors were in the room nd between them and others taking the exam on four pens or pencils were found.  The power outage lasted a full 30 minutes during which confusion was the primary theme.  The afternoon session in the “typist” room had only those 5 people with the old manual typewriters.  I never found out what happened to the rest.

In 1975 I took the Hawaii Bar Exam.  Again 3 days but now with the Multi State multiple guess session.  After having practiced in California for the ten previous years I decided to not take time off ofr a Hawaii bar review course.  The muliple guess session came as a complete surprise to me.  How can it be that all of lthe mulitple choice answers were correct?

Luckily I passed both.  My third bar exam took place on Saipan (Trust Territory of the Pacific at that time).  The exam amounted to an introduction to the chief justice at a local watering hole.  I passed again.

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LC
Aug 1, 2008 1:01 PM CST

I took the July Washington bar exam a number of years ago at the Maidenbauer Center.  At the beginning of the first afternoon set of questions we were interrupted by the very large Seattle earthquake (I think it was 7.1), that shook the entire building and moved furniture while the ceiling and lights swayed and rattled.  The sound was terrifying.  It was amazing to watch 300+ bar takers rush to the exits, several knocking over my friend Jack’s wheelchair (he was ok) in their haste, and many continued to write despite the proctors admonishing us to stop writing.  Many were reluctant to return fearing after-shocks.  Needless to say, I was shaking like a leaf when we began again.  The bar believed it was being considerate by adjusting everyone’s scores.  Unfortunately, I missed by 2 points and had to sit for it again.  Somehow it just didn’t seem right.

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DPG
Aug 1, 2008 11:07 PM CST

In 2001 I sat for the WA State Bar, after having failing it the previous sitting by one point.  I was living in Colorado at the time and so studied via a correspondence course.  On the last day of the exam, about half way through a slow, deep rumbling moved through the building.  Everything started to shake, and as the shaking grew worse someone screamed “it’s an earthquake, everyone get out of the building”

Obviously that was someone from Oklahoma who had never been through an earthquake, though a surprising number of people panicked and ran out of the building gibbering like idiots.  I would loke to say I was cool, calm and collected and went under the table like the folks in SoCal in the blurb above, but alas I was one of the panicked and fled the building.

Alarms were going off everywhere and we werte amazed by what had happened.  Everntually the shaking stopped and one of the proctors to the exam came out and told us to come back inside the building.  They started the exam again in the minutes, instructing us to put all our materials under our chairs and take some time to settle down.  We then took the rest of the exam with no aftershocks, though we were told that, if it happened again, do not leave teh building, go under the table, as probably the most unsafe thing to do was leave the building (apparently the windows can shatter and that would be unpleasant if you are near one.)

I will never forget the shaking and way the building was moving just as I was making a particulalry erudite point about adverse possession (I have since forgotten what that even is….) 

We were told at the end of the exam by the invigilator that the markers would all be made aware of what had happened and that consideraration would be given to the fact that we just sat through a 5.9 quake during the exam - nice of them I thought.

I received my results in due course and lo and behold, passed.  Of course I credit the quake for my result, as I am sure the markers gave me some leeway, but anyway, something to remember, and of course, a story to tell.

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TP
Aug 1, 2008 11:42 PM CST

I just finished taking the bar for the first time in CA. The girl who shared my table turned out to be a compulsive hair puller. The entire three days, she ran both hands over a particular lock nervously, shaking the hair from her fingers onto the floor every so often. Any butterflies I felt about the bar were nothing compared to that.

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