The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

Well, I was right: I did very nearly pass the bar exam. I needed a 1440 (out of 2000) to pass; I had a 1400. I don't even have the inclination to beat myself up for it, it's all too aggravating and mystifying. Like why is it that I did 15 points worse on the MBE this time around? Particularly given that it was my second experience with it, I didn't feel as shellshocked by it this time around, and I'd actually studied more for it this time than last. It makes no sense, and thus concerns me for going forward. After all, if studying more seemed to undo me, exactly how do I fix that?

Because I'm going to do it again, and I'm obviously going to have to study for it. I can barely remember this crap at the moment, so I'll have to stuff my head with it all over again. Which is a disgusting prospect. I want to stuff my head with actual, practical law, not this garbage. I feel like I'm being asked to do the mental equivalent of being forced to eat nothing but McDonald's for the next two months. Yeah, it won't actually kill me, but I'd be much better off if I instead consumed something more nourishing.

So I will do a bunch of practice MBE questions, even though I fear the entire MBE may be a moving target (I felt like the summer and winter administrations were quite different, and I'm not sure the BarBri and PMBR materials I have to work from necessarily correlate to the MBE's current form). I also will do more practice essays this time around and see if I can up those scores. They were nearly high enough, but not quite given the MBE score I got this time around. I'll be interested to see my answers again, assuming I get them back. (I'm having trouble parsing the letter from the bar on this topic, where the first sentence indicates that you won't get them back and the second sentence indicates that you will.) I know I punted some issues on the First Amendment question and confused some defenses for the criminal law question, but I thought I wrote a model essay for wills, although judging from my score apparently the bar examiners didn't agree...

Back in February as the test neared I'd wished I had had one more week to study, and on retrospect I also wish that I'd done more practice essays, but otherwise it's hard to know how to improve now since I didn't feel, and the results also don't bear out, that I'd completely screwed something up. Perhaps I'd just been too cocky, having passed NY and NJ, and didn't quite apply myself with a sufficient sense of panic. I think I might be able to achieve that this time though, as I really don't want the California bar exam to be the white whale that haunts me for the rest of my life.

So the efforts are underway. I booked my hotel the night I found out about the results, and this week I'll register for the test. Also this week I'll begin studying in earnest. I've tracked down some materials for the new subjects that they'll test on, and next I'll work out a study schedule. I'm going to still work while I do this, which is a tough call, but I can't afford, mentally and financially, not to. Simply having income reduces lots of stress, so in that way it will actually help my studying, and my work is becoming increasingly interesting and I would feel extremely disappointed if I didn't get to do it. Instead I'll cut back my hours and cut back my projects. For the most part, for the next few weeks I'll just be reviewing 30,000 pages of documents, which should be perfect...

Edit: Geez... According to The Recorder (May30, 2007), only 36.8 percent of the people who took the exam passed. I'm sure I'm in some distinguished company, with some future law school deans or attorney generals... But what's really weird, last July 51.8 percent passed. What is going on?