Bar exam advice

I can't believe it has already been a year since I took the bar. Time sure flies when you have a baby...

Right now (this very minute), dozens of my law school friends are frantically squeezing in their last few days of bar prep. They are stress-eating and pounding caffeine, poring over outlines, reviewing essays and taking practice MBEs, hoping that they have "done enough." They are having test-anxiety nightmares, afraid that they will forget everything that they have learned in the past two months as soon as they sit down and open the first page of the exam. Like hundreds of other law students across the country, they are questioning their intelligence, their decision to attend law school, and their sanity.


For all of these students, I have this advice:*


-People will tell you to relax. This is impossible. If you try to relax, you will feel guilty that you aren't studying because you know that other people out there are studying. If you try to relax, you will start to make lists in your head of all the things you still don't know well enough to write an essay about. This will stress you out even more. Don't relax. 


-For each topic, make sure you have a sense of the big picture. There is no possible way for you to fit every rule, every element, every factor into your brain. If you work on the micro-details of one subject, your brain will jettison important information about other subjects to make room. What matters is the big picture. For each topic, make sure you know the broad strokes - things that will appear in an essay on that topic, no matter what the subject is (e.g. intent in a Criminal Law question or negligence in a Torts question). From there, you can add the rules and details, but the big stuff is the most important. 


-Remember, it is impossible to address every issue in an essay. The test is intentionally written so that you can't get "all" the points. One hour is way too short. It's more important for you to identify the big stuff and write about what you know. Don't worry about leaving things out, because you inevitably will. This is normal.


-Remember that you can bomb one section and still pass the test. First off, when people say they "bombed" part of the test, generally speaking they just wish there were things they had done better. Even if your mind goes blank, you can still piece together some intelligible drivel about some aspect of the question that remotely deals with the area of law that you think is being tested. It's what you have practiced doing for the past three years. Regardless, remember that the test is cumulative. If you don't do as well on one section, but do well on another, you won't necessarily fail. What matters is not letting a sub-par performance in one section bring you down mentally or emotionally on the next. If you don't do as well on one part, pour your energy into the next part to make up for it.


-Finally, leave it on the field. People always used to say this when I played high school sports, and I have found it to be helpful advice regarding the bar exam as well. Put everything you have into the test, but when it's over, let it be over. As soon as you leave the exam, you will think of an issue on an essay that you missed. You will finally remember that random rule for that MBE question. You will realize that you left off a heading in your performance test, or that you forgot to run spell check on your last essay. No one comes out of the exam thinking that they aced it. The worst thing you can do to yourself is spend the four months after the exam beating yourself up over things you cannot change. If possible, you must immediately forget everything on the test, and everything that you wrote. Trust me, it's better that way.


In these last few days, there is nothing that anyone can say or do that will make you feel like you are fully prepared. Just remember that in a few days it will all be over, and you can return to real life again - you can get back on Facebook, watch television, spend time with friends, go out for drinks... and not feel guilty that you aren't studying. Hopefully that, if nothing else, will get you through the next few days. No matter what, GOOD LUCK!

*Disclaimer (of course there is a disclaimer): This advice is based purely on my own experience and in no way constitutes a promise that following this advice will ensure that you pass the bar, or even that you will feel better about taking it. Mostly this is just for peace of mind.

Interviews

Job interviews are always a difficult balancing act. You have to seem eager but not desperate. Energetic but not frenetic. Friendly but not prying. Intelligent but not know-it-all. Confident but not obnoxious. Relaxed but not unprofessional. All of this while trying to look comfortable in a suit and sensible heels.

Although I have been working in my at-home job for a startup company, I have still been looking for legal work, which has led to a series of job interviews. I have found that being a parent presents a new set of balancing in the job interview process. My resume, which was extremely strong in law school, has a  six-month gap post-graduation. I know that in the current economy, which NPR constantly reminds me is very bleak for lawyers, a post-graduation employment gap is not unheard of, yet I still am painfully aware of the gap when I go in to interviews.

I struggled mentally over whether to bring up my child in the interviews. Having a baby is a perfectly honest and reasonable explanation for why I did not work for six months. In fact, it is a point of pride for me that I took the bar at eight months pregnant, and passed on the first try. I could use this as an opportunity to demonstrate my tenacity, my commitment, and my willingness to compromise personal comfort and sanity in the pursuit of a goal. Being a parent also comes with daily tests of patience, problem-solving abilities, and teamwork.

Legally, I know the interviewer cannot ask me about my parental status. Being a parent should not make a difference in their decision of whether I am a suitable future employee. However, I know that if I bring up the fact that I have a ten-month-old baby at home, it will raise a series of unspoken questions: Will this employee have to leave work to pick up a sick child from daycare? Will her work product struggle if she is up all night with a fussy, teething baby? Will she have to pump at work? Will she have another baby and have to take maternity leave in the foreseeable future? Again, none of these questions should have any effect on the decision that is made, but in the back of my mind I wonder whether it does. For better or for worse, the legal field is still somewhat behind the times and is still not as family-friendly as other professions. If I am compared to another comparable candidate, male or female, who is not a parent, will my status make a difference?

It's a tough question. In the past few weeks, I have had interviews where I mentioned my son, and other interviews where I haven't. In both cases, I left the interview questioning my decision - I was faced with instant regret either way. Either I regretted talking about my son and discussing matters outside of my resume and qualifications, or I regretted not talking about him and missing an opportunity to "explain the gap."

Perhaps the answer is that I am over-thinking the matter. As an interviewee, it is my job to convince the interviewer that I am objectively the best candidate. Period.

Balance

Wow. Working at home and staying at home with the baby is tough! Essentially, I feel like I am working two forty-hour-a-week jobs simultaneously. Over the past month, I have been working on finding a good balance between being a good mother and homemaker, and being professional and responsible in my job. It's definitely not easy.

For example - during my over-the-phone first-day-of-work orientation, I both changed a dirty diaper and nursed my baby boy, all while receiving instructions from my brand new bosses. Once I was given assignments, I learned that I get my best work done while my son is napping, or after his bed time. When he is awake, I can do small amounts of work, but it is much less efficient because I am busy being a good mom. I make sure that I play with my boy and keep him engaged, feed him and change him, hold him when he cries, and sing him silly songs to make him laugh.

At first, it was incredibly difficult to do. There would be days when I would get a lot of work done, but felt guilty that I had not paid enough attention to my son. On other days, I was great with the baby, but I didn't do as well at my job as I would have liked. On most days, I went to sleep feeling guilty that the sink was filled with dirty dishes, that laundry hadn't been done, that the house wasn't vacuumed, or that the dog didn't get a walk. I felt like a failure.

Little by little it got better. As I became comfortable with my job, I became more efficient and was able to get more work done in less time. As my son got older, it became easier to play with him and entertain him and he became less demanding. (Side note: when he started crawling, things got tricky all over again! It's really tough to type and chase a kiddo across the carpet at the same time). I definitely still feel overwhelmed at times, and certainly go to sleep some nights without doing everything I needed to do. However, I don't feel like a failure any more.

I know this isn't permanent. I am still looking for other opportunities, and I do want to get a job outside the house, using my law degree. But this works for now.

Job Update

I thought it over, and I ended up taking the non-law job. I am a huge proponent of pro-con lists, and the "pro" list outweighed the "cons". Simple balancing. Hopefully I made the right choice...

Though this made me wonder what the "right" choice is? If my goal is to make oodles of money as a successful attorney, well then this might not have been the right choice. If my goal is to be a supportive wife and mother, then working from home is likely the right choice. At least for now. It's interesting how the "rightness" of a decision is completely relative and dependent on the context of the situation.

I also was comforted by the thought that this decision is not "make or break." I know that I can always take a different job and resurrect/launch my legal career at a later time. Moreover (and I know it's trite), but I know that my little boy won't be little forever, so I should enjoy the time that I have with him right now. [I swore I would never say stuff like this before I had a baby, but I suppose I have turned to the dark side...]

Anyway, I hope that I'm able to balance working at home and child care at home. More to come soon. I start work on Wednesday.

To work or not to work?

So I have been out of commission for the past few weeks, but for a good reason. I have been offered a job as an editor for a startup company. It is certainly nice to have the offer, particularly in this economic climate, but now I am torn.

Cons:

-The job is not remotely in the field of law

-It pays a lot less than a law job would pay me

-Risks associated with work at a startup company (various)

Pros:

-I haven’t received any calls about law jobs, despite the resumes I have been sending around

-Some money is better than no money

-The job will allow me to work from home for a period of time

-(on a related note) The baby refuses to take a bottle right now, making the idea of daycare difficult

-This would fill the resume gap

Based on these considerations and conversations with my husband, I’m leaning towards accepting the job… My main misgiving is that by taking this non-law job, I am hurting my chances of getting a law-related job in the future. I know that many of my fellow graduates are still searching for jobs, so I’m definitely grateful to have a job opportunity at all.

Mostly, I wish that making adult decisions wasn’t so tricky. And that the job market was better. But mostly the thing about decisions.

Wonder

We recently took the little munchkin on his first trip out of state, to visit his grandparents and great-grandparents. Before we left, my mother called me, concerned that she didn’t have the plethora of toys, books, bouncers, play mats, and other assorted baby-entertainment items that we use on a daily basis. She was worried that while we stayed at her house, the baby would have nothing to play with.

I assured her that this was not a problem. Right now, everything in the world is new and exciting to my baby boy. He is fascinated by bright lights, color contrast, and anything that makes noise. This means that on most days, the lamp in the playroom is more interesting to him than I am. And if there is sun shining in through a window, I have pretty stiff competition for my son’s attention. He is so bright-eyed and alert, taking in colors and shapes and activities in the room that I don’t notice because I have seen them hundreds of times and they have become painfully banal.

This made me think about routine. I definitely consider myself a creature of habit. I love having a predictable daily schedule and planning my weeks in advance. It would take about a month before I grew tired of eating the same thing for lunch every day. Though dull, I generally don’t consider this a bad thing. However, I realized that in my complacent day-to-day routine, I have stopped seeing the wonder in the world. I’m not sure when this happened exactly. Somewhere between the ages of six and twenty-six, I started looking at the world as an adult. I rarely hear a new word, or see a new object, or do a new activity. I look at the same furniture in the same rooms, the same trees and cars outside, the same faces, without actually seeing them. My brain knows what is there, and it skips on to the next thought.

A few years ago, the Washington Post published an article on a social experiment, wherein a world-class violinist played Beethoven on a three million dollar violin in a Metro station in Washington DC. The busy adult commuters hearing the music generally breezed past him, with only a few people stopping briefly to listen. However, most of the children who passed dragged their feet and turned their heads, straining to hear the violin music as their schedule-driven parents tugged them along. The adults hurried past, hearing without hearing the amazing beauty in front of them. I would like to think I would recognize such an amazing talent and performance if I heard it on the street, but more likely I would be one of the adults scurrying along, oblivious.

Thus, it was wonderful to take my baby to my hometown, and watch him experience my home state for the first time. He was too young to understand what he was seeing, but he did know that everything was fresh and exciting and new. This time, I tried to stop and appreciate my home, my parents, my city, my friends, just as my son did. I listened to the music, I tasted the foods, I walked around my old neighborhood, really experiencing each without permitting my task-master brain to rush on to the next obligation or concern. It wasn’t easy.

It’s tough to detach from the day-to-day requirements of adulthood, but every once in a while, it is good to hit pause and look around with fresh eyes and appreciate the wonder.

Rejection

One of the biggest challenges I face during unemployment is the constant rejection. The media (both social and otherwise) provide almost weekly reminders that there are few jobs available in the legal field. The number of law school students and graduates is increasing, yet the number of available jobs is decreasing, both due in part to the difficult economic climate. People who have no jobs and want more money are taking out loans and going to school, hoping that by the time they graduate, jobs will be available. End result: the job market is flooded with brand new lawyers who have mountains of debt but cannot find a job. Effect: rejection.

I have (unfortunately) found this to be all too true. I send out several resumes a day and am called to interview maybe once every two to three weeks. I took the bar in July, passed it in November, and have still been unable to land any paid legal work. I have many friends in the same position who have approached this problem in a number of ways. Several of them have hung a shingle and are starting their own law firms. Several are patching together part-time and contract work until they can land something permanent. Some are doing volunteer and pro bono work, hoping to create a network that will lead to paid employment. Many have returned to school, hoping (again) to put off the job search until the market is better. Personally, I have used this time as an extended “maternity leave.” Giving birth and raising a child is a viable explanation for a resume gap (to some extent).

I write this post not to complain, but simply to make observations about rejection. Part of the difficulty my colleagues and I face is that we have largely never faced rejection before. Law schools for the most part are filled with the top performers at the top schools from around the country. These students took the hardest classes in high school, earned top grades in college, aced their LSATs, and beat out hundreds of other candidates for positions in their law school classes. Most of them have never failed a class, have never been told they cannot do something, and have never been rejected (at least professionally) in their lives. Suddenly, these academic superstars are being told over and over again that they do not fit the requirements of the position, or that a better candidate has been found, or (worst of all) are not receiving any answer whatsoever.

This can be soul crushing for those uninitiated in the art of handling rejection. I certainly had a tough time dealing emotionally with this. I did everything I was supposed to do during law school – joined the clubs, earned the grades, learned the law… and none of it seems to be good enough for the few employers who do claim to hire recent bar passers. At first it hurt. I wondered what I did wrong. Tweaked my resume and cover letter. Began to question my career path. Started to doubt myself and my abilities.

However, self-doubt and negativity will not get me hired. All I can do is improve my resume, continue searching for work, improve my network, and (depending on schedule) begin working on pro bono or contract work until full-time opportunities present themselves. Instead of obsessing about my inability to land a job, I should be focusing on the positive aspects of my life: I was fortunate enough to pass the bar on my first try. My husband is able to support our family financially during this period of my unemployment. I am blessed to spend precious time with my son during his formative years – time that I know I will appreciate later on when he is not a baby and doesn’t need me like he does now. And on a fundamental level, I have food, clean water, a place to sleep, my health, and a wealth of loving and supportive friends and family.

It is so easy to get caught up in a spiral of self-doubt triggered by rejection, causing a complete loss of perspective. I believe that with an attitude shift, changing nothing else, I will be able to weather this flood of rejections, staying focused on the positive, and hopefully will come out the other side with a job and a renewed sense of self-worth. Until then, I continue the search and hope for the best.

Making it "official"

When someone asks me what I do for a living, it always makes me pause. Some would say that I am an attorney because I graduated from law school, passed the bar, and have been sworn in to my state bar association. However, I don’t yet feel like an attorney. I do not have a job, have never represented a client, and am still too nervous to even give out unsolicited legal advice. Usually I end up answering the question with an overly-long description of my status as a law school graduate… bar admittee… applying for jobs… bad economy… student loans… and it trails off into nothingness as the asker smiles politely and mentally regrets having asked me the question.

This made me wonder, when will it be “official”? When will I feel confident enough to answer this question without hesitation? Will it be when I pay my first round of bar dues? When I am hired by a law firm or government organization? When I have my name on an office door, or on a business card with a company logo? When I earn my first paycheck? When I first speak on the record? When I submit my first brief? Win my first case?

These questions made me think of my very short-lived teaching career. I was fresh out of college with a degree in Classics, having never taught a day in my life. My junior high school alma mater offered me a teaching position despite my lack of teaching degree and experience. I found myself on the first day of class, 7:30 am, petrified, with dozens of pairs of adolescent sleepy eyes blinking up at me. I had prepared for this class for hours, creating meticulous lesson plans, mentally running over my introduction and the major points of my lecture, and creating handouts for class time and homework. Despite this prep work, I felt completely unprepared and inadequate, certain that my students would see right through me, or would hate me, or (worse) would ignore me.

I suspected that the middle schoolers could smell fear, so I put on my bravest face, took a deep breath, and dove into my memorized introduction monologue. I know I spoke too quickly, that I stumbled over a few of my words, and that I probably said some things that made no sense. However, I survived that first lesson, and by the end of the week, I felt like I was well on my way towards earning the title of “teacher” despite my lack of experience or credentials. The lesson that I learned was “fake it till you make it”, which served me well that first exciting, frustrating and terrifying year of teaching.

I applied this lesson a few months ago when my son was born. The nurses handed me a wiggling, screaming, messy bundle and congratulated me on becoming a mother. At that moment I felt overwhelmed and exhausted and nothing like a mother, but I smiled and thanked them and introduced myself to this new foreign creature. I figured I should act like a mom, and the truth would soon follow, as it did with the teaching job. After the first few uncomfortable weeks, filled with frustration, poop, crying and constant checking-for-breathing, I finally felt confident saying that I was a mom.

So maybe the answer to my “attorney” quandary is that I need to fake it until I make it. If I represent myself as an attorney, maybe volunteer or do pro bono work, and continue to seek full-time employment, then the truth will follow and I will become the attorney I am pretending to be. Fingers crossed.

How to: Pass the bar while pregnant

This past July, I sat for the California bar exam, having just graduated from law school. I was particularly nervous taking this exam because I was also 31 weeks pregnant. I had intentionally timed the birth of my child so that I would spend most of my pregnancy as a law student, would take the exam during my third trimester, and then would have the baby between the bar exam and the receipt of the bar results. Everyone told me that I was crazy.

When conducting research (of course) beforehand, I found that there were very few resources for pregnant women taking the bar. Most of the available websites had women asking questions about it, or stating that they had passed/failed after taking it pregnant, but very few actually discussed the process. For the other crazy pregnant women out there who plan to take the bar, or for like-minded women who are considering it: here is my story.

1. IF POSSIBLE, CONSIDER THE TIMING

Granted, not everyone has a choice in the timing of their pregnancies. In my case, part of the baby/bar planning included reliance on biology and a lot of dumb luck. My husband and I wanted to have a baby some time after law school graduation to ensure that I would graduate on time, but before I was too far into my burgeoning legal career. I also didn’t want to study for the bar during my first trimester, when I knew I would probably feel the crummiest, or too close to my due date. Based on the calendar, I pinpointed four possible “conception” months that fit these criteria. We were extremely lucky and ended up getting pregnant in the first of the four months. This happened to be right at the start of my final 3L semester.

I also lucked out in that my first trimester was pretty tame. I felt constant nausea for the first three months, but never threw up (thank goodness). I found that being a 3L was quite conducive to first trimester pregnancy, in that I was only in class two to four hours per day, and was able to nap as needed when not studying… or studying… or studying. I also scheduled my classes so that I didn’t have any finals (seminar + trial advocacy + clinic). Spring semester passed without incident, and I graduated in May.

2. STUDY VERY HARD

I chose to take a commercial bar prep class to prepare for the exam. By the time the class started, I was in my second trimester. It was extremely tough to force myself to wake up every morning to head to bar class. Every day for two months, I knew I was faced with a full day of bar lecture/frantic note-taking, outlining, practice tests, essay-writing, and general stress. I felt sorry for my poor baby who was able to hear every word of the bar lectures in utero. All of the websites and pregnancy books recommended that expecting moms “take it easy” and “de-stress” during this time (yeah, right).

To get through the tedious two months of studying, I had to establish a solid routine. I went to the gym before the lectures four days a week. Although I was told not to run by my doctor, I got in thirty minutes of cardio and continued to lift free weights. Exercise gave me a burst of energy before the four-hour lectures and helped regulate my weight gain, which in turn kept me energized. I also packed a full day’s worth of healthy snacks so that I never got too hungry, which would have distracted me while studying. As the baby grew and my stomach shrank, I learned that I needed to eat a small snack every 1.5 to 2 hours or else I would be too distracted by my growling tummy to sit through practice essays.

The best thing I did during the pre-bar months was taking practice essays and full practice tests. One of my major concerns for bar day was that I would not be able to sit through the three-hour sessions because of my shrinking bladder. My prep course assigned a massive number of practice essays, and I approached each one as a “test-day” scenario. I set a timer and spent exactly one hour per essay, making sure that my bladder was empty and stomach was full at the start. I learned that I could push my bladder to a maximum of three hours, if need be, which was comforting.

The test studying was a marathon. Every day I worked from about 8 am to 9 pm with breaks for gym, meals, commute, doctor’s appointments, and occasional time spent with friends. After the first week or so, I settled into the grind, counting down each day until the days of the tests. I followed the study schedule given to me by my bar prep program, though I cleared several hours a day to focus on just memorizing rules until I was comfortable enough with the wording that I could pour them onto the page without having to waste time thinking about it. Everyone had different approaches to studying, but I did what worked best for me during law school, hoping it would help when I sat down to take the bar.

Near the end of the study period, I was sporting a pretty sizeable baby bump. My fellow stressed-out classmates gave me such looks of sympathy as the days and weeks progressed – several people stopped me to say that whenever they were overwhelmed, they just reminded themselves that I was doing the same thing, but pregnant. My response to people who asked me “how do you do it?” was that I had never studied for the bar un-pregnant, so I didn’t know anything different.

3. APPLY FOR TEST ACCOMMODATIONS

The best advice I can give to potential pregnant bar-takers is to apply for test accommodations early. The state bar (at least in California) requires a series of forms filled out by the test-taker, the tester’s doctor, and the tester’s law school in order to request accommodations. The forms have to be submitted to the accommodations department, then they make you wait for about a month, then you receive notice of their decision. I turned mine in right before their deadline, and I didn’t receive their decision until the week before the test. I called them every day for a full week. Bottom line, send it in early.

I was granted all of my requested accommodations, which were access to food and water, and seating near the bathroom. I debated asking for extra time to take the test, but was worried that I would be denied. Ultimately, I gambled on my bladder and did not ask for extra time. It ended up working out for me, but I am also a very fast typist, so I was able to finish my essays in the allotted time.

4. REMEMBER THAT IT IS JUST A TEST

By day one of the bar exam, I was 31 weeks pregnant and very large. At the start of test week, I started to have difficulty sleeping at night – partially due to the test anxiety and partially because of the pregnancy. After studying every day for two months, I was completely spent and exhausted and (honestly) terrified that I hadn’t done enough to prepare myself. I also felt that I could not possibly stuff another rule into my oversaturated brain if my life depended on it.

My best friend and I rented a hotel room for the three nights of the test. This ended up being an incredibly wise decision, because it allowed us to focus completely on the exam and avoid commute time and husband-related distractions. The only downside of this was that the entire hotel was occupied by nervous test-takers, so there was no escaping the constant reminder of the bar exam. We kept to ourselves to avoid the nervous energy of others, even taking the stairs to avoid being caught in elevators with people who would stress us out.

The first day of the exam was the worst, due to fear of the unknown. My friend and I woke up far too early, packed our bags, then headed downstairs to sit outside the locked doors of the test center with the other early birds. Once we made it in the doors, checked in, found our seats, and fired up the laptops, I was hit by a sudden wave of anxiety. My vision started to blur and I felt incredibly dizzy. I wanted to go to the restroom to splash water on my face before the exam began, but I had to stop on the way to lean against a table because I was worried I would pass out and fall down (I double-checked with my ob/gyn at lunch to make sure I was physically OK to continue the test).

Fortunately, the feeling passed before the moderator finished reading the entrance instructions. I was able to focus on the first set of essays, and completed all three without needing to take a break. After the first day, the remainder of the testing sessions passed without incident. In each section, I experienced exhilarating moments where I knew exactly what was being asked and was able to articulate it flawlessly. In each section, I also experienced stomach-dropping moments of panic where I didn’t recognize the issue being tested, didn’t remember the rule, or questioned my approach to the question or topic. Each day I left, sure that I had failed at least one part of the test.

5. TRY NOT TO OBSESS WHILE WAITING FOR RESULTS

Ultimately, I survived the eighteen hours of testing. I focused on doing my best, writing everything I knew, filling the test time, and not dwelling on the sections that had already passed. After that, it was all up to the graders.

The four months waiting for results are extremely difficult for every test-taker. During the first week after the exam, I remembered the essay questions but could not remember a word I had written, which led to heart-stopping panic that I had left out something crucial, or had missed the point of the essay altogether. This passed after about a week. Fortunately, my little boy was born about two months after the exam, which helped the remaining grading time pass quickly. In November, he sat on my lap while I checked my results (I swear my heart stopped for a second while the website loaded), and I learned that I had passed. The first time.

For those of you thinking about taking the bar pregnant: it’s extremely tough but doable. For those of you taking the bar pregnant: good luck!