Tums, Anyone? What About a Massage? Law Schools Vie to Offer Best Perks at Ohio Bar Exam
Back in the day, tailgate parties were synonymous with college football games. But some law schools now host similar events for freshly minted legal eagles facing a grueling bar exam followed by a worrisome future in a difficult legal economy.
In Ohio, eight of the state’s nine law schools and the University of Northern Kentucky all offered free food and extra perks to alumni taking the bar exam at Veterans Memorial’s North Hall in Columbus, the Columbus Dispatch reports. The tradition was started by Capital University Law School and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 2005 and quickly caught on.
While no one would admit this for the record, there was clearly a certain amount of competition among the schools to provide the best support to their law grads, the newspaper recounts. Ranging from Tums antacid tablets to massages (only Ohio State grads scored the latter), the perks also included box lunches and deli sandwiches in tents in the parking lot for some and, for graduates of the University of Cincinnati and the University of Toledo, catered meals in rented rooms inside the facility.
“Historically, people who took the bar exam ate lunch in their cars. I just think that’s sad,” says Joel Chanvisanuruk, a 2006 graduate of the U of C’s College of Law and its director of academic success.
