The Day I Took the Bar Exam: Lawyers share their trying times
The bar exam is a high-stakes event for any lawyer. But demands stemming from the world beyond the legal profession can further wreak havoc on this extremely stressful event. In the past year, the stakes have been raised during bar exam administrations by a tsunami and a candidate’s heart attack.
The ABA Journal is collecting bar exam stories recounting the day our readers took the bar exam—and something else extraordinary happened. We’ll be updating this regularly.
What’s your story? Email [email protected].
Kathy Smith. (Photo by Emerson Smith)
‘I just kept writing and swatting’
It was July 1975 when I took the bar exam in Columbia, South Carolina. My husband had taken me to a movie the night before, and I was feeling fairly relaxed the morning of the exam.
The bar exam was given in the South Carolina Supreme Court building, and tables had been brought from storage in the basement for us to take the exam. At that time, we wrote our answers to essay questions in Blue Books.
To my surprise, termites began to crawl on my table and my Blue Book. But I just kept writing and swatting until the exam was over.
Yes, I passed the bar exam, and recently, I celebrated 50 years of being a member of the South Carolina Bar with my class of 1975 at the University of South Carolina.
—Kathy Smith, of counsel, Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, South Carolina bar exam, July 1975
Lisa Parker Gates. (Photo courtesy of Lisa Parker Gates)
This too shall pass
I thought I was pretty chill when I finally arrived at the test site to take the bar exam. I was well prepared. I had studied hard. I was ready. That’s why I was shocked when I opened the exam booklet and saw that my exam questions were not written in English.
What language was this? Strange characters swam in front of my eyes. Was this Russian? Did everyone get the wrong exam or just me? Should I say something or wait for someone else to point out the error? What I thought was about 10 minutes passed while I continued to stare at the moving, foreign letters on the page.
I finally looked behind me at the clock on the wall. It had been about 10 seconds since the exam started. I blinked, looked back at the exam and found everything in order and in English. I had simply had a very short, very intense panic attack. It passed, and so did I (the bar exam, that is).
—Lisa Parker Gates, associate vice president and senior associate counsel, Rasmussen University, 1999 Illinois bar
Jeannie Andresen (right) at graduation with friend Tiffany Shockley. (Photo courtesy of Jeannie Andresen)
Baby bar
It was the May 2015 bar exam at Shriners in San Antonio. I heard complaints that the air conditioning might have been going out, but I was almost 10 months pregnant—so I was always hot. I made it to lunchtime on Day 3. Three more essays to go, the end was in sight. On the way back from lunch in my friend’s brand-new Honda Civic, my water broke.
I asked my doctor if I could just stay and finish the exam, that I would sit on a towel or something, and I could bite through any labor pains. Unfortunately, the doc said no due to safety reasons.
I argued with the exam proctors because they initially would not let me go back inside to remove my laptop early. Fortunately, the sloshing and soaked status of my clothes and shoes convinced them I was not lying.
Forty hours of labor later, my daughter was born. I asked the Board of Law Examiners if they would grade my exam in its current state. But because I never got to officially “submit” the exam, I was advised it was incomplete and not gradable.
I passed the next bar exam in February 2016 with flying colors and was sworn in with my infant daughter in hand!
—Jeannie Andresen, income partner, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, Texas bar, May 2015
Krystal Moczygemba O’Connor as a 3L in law school. (Photo by Jana McCord)
Lights out
In July 2021, Texas was one of the few states starting in-person testing back up after/during COVID. That was definitely a draw after the horror stories about remote testing.
Sitting in the large conference room with everyone spaced out felt overwhelming and official and exciting, but also safe. The first day, about an hour into the Multistate Performance Test, all of the lights in the conference room went out. There were no windows, no lamps, no nothing. Just 200 or so test-takers sitting in a dark room with their computer screens illuminating their faces.
I briefly thought that the poor people taking the exam by hand in the front left corner didn’t have a computer screen for them to see their exams or the answers they were writing, but I couldn’t be worried about them and kept going.
Then the lights began flickering—on and off, on and off, on and off—which was much more distracting and nerve-wracking. After about 15 minutes the lighting finally returned. The proctors never mentioned anything to us, not when the lights went out, when they flickered, or after the exam was over.
Nothing was going to get in the way of us completing that exam. We just kept our heads down, literally and figuratively, and ploughing through.
—Krystal Moczygemba O’Connor, assistant professor, St. Mary’s University School of Law, Texas bar, July 2021
Susan Smith Bakhshian. (Photo courtesy of Loyola Marymount University)
Minty freshness
I’ve seen a lot of candidates over the years. One applicant wanted to have a couple of Altoid mints during the exam and knew they were against the rules.
So, she tucked two or three mints into her bra, not realizing she would be nervous and start to sweat … and that the mints would melt and burn her skin.
I have never looked at mints the same way since then.
—Susan Smith Bakhshian, director of bar programs, Loyola Law School
Rodney Smolla robes his daughter Erin as she graduates from Duke Law School. (Photo courtesy of Rodney A. Smolla)
Daddy-daughter day
When I moved to Delaware to become dean at Widener Delaware Law School, the only way I could be admitted to the Delaware bar was to take the exam. I already was admitted to practice 1979 in Illinois, and I’ve been a very active academic and litigator my entire career, but Delaware is notoriously one of the hardest in the country.
As it turns out, my daughter Erin Malone-Smolla had graduated from Duke University School of Law and would be taking it at the same time.
I found it all quite challenging, in part because I had forgotten a large part of what I’d learned in law school four decades before, and in part because of the huge embarrassment I would have suffered as dean of the Delaware Law School if I turned out to be unable to pass the Delaware bar.
My daughter did a lot to cajole me to put in long hours at night after I completed my “day job.” I’m happy to report we both passed.
—Rodney A. Smolla, professor, Vermont Law and Graduate School, Delaware bar, July 2016
Victor Li and his parents. (Photo courtesy of Victor Li)
Alarming
It was the summer of 2004, and I was in beautiful Albany, New York, to take that state’s bar exam. All of the out-of-town kids had to go there, so we basically took over the city for two days. In fact, there’s a big horse race that usually takes place later that week, so Albany hotels really count on that one week in July.
Anyway, we were all sitting in the basketball arena downtown (it was called “The Pepsi Arena” back then, but is now known as “MVP Arena”). It’s actually a pretty historic venue. Frank Sinatra opened the arena with a concert in 1990 and Ric Flair won the WWE Royal Rumble in 1992. I took my bar exam there and by the end of Day 2, I felt like someone had repeatedly rammed my head into a ring turnbuckle to the beat of “Fly Me to the Moon.”
During the exam, we had a fire alarm go off. It was pretty loud—it is a large arena after all—and the noise definitely got under my skin. So we all glared at the proctors (as if they had anything to do with what happened). Finally, after a few moments of silent staring, we picked up our pencils and went back to our Scantron sheets. That’s life!
And yes, I passed.
—Victor Li, assistant managing editor, ABA Journal, New York bar exam, July 2004
Kate Kelleher. (Photo by James Kelleher)
Now, do it in cursive
The bar exam software on my laptop froze five minutes before the exam started, and they couldn’t fix it in time. This was either the first year or one of the first years they let you take the bar on your laptop versus writing by hand. I had taken all of my law school exams by computer and prepped for bar exam essays on the computer. At the last minute, they basically said there’s nothing they could do, and I had to handwrite all my essays! Everyone in the conference center was staring at me. I passed, but my hand hurt so badly that night—ha!
—Katie Kelleher, senior associate general counsel, American Bar Association, Illinois bar exam, February 2007
Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.
