American In Sydney

She Passed the Bar!

The Bar is a funny word. To most people the word means a place where they serve alcoholic beverages, play music, and card you because you don't look a day over 18 when you're really 27+(not speaking from personal experience - of course not). To others it means something that can hurt i.e. a man walked into a bar - ouch! (okay fine I'm not that great at telling jokes). However, to a smaller group of people who are stereotyped to be sleazy black-hearted people who will do anything for a buck who run our legal system(you may know them as lawyers or barristers, esquires, JDs, you know Tom Cruise in the Firm), "bar" is the scariest word known to them. It's the test that will determine whether or not they are worthy of dropping the word "lawyer", or giving out business cards when they say "call me." What can be more impressive when that business card says Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe or any other law firm with three names? It's a test that they are already studying for after they've taken their finals at law school and the reason why no law student really celebrates his/her graduation.

For the 2.5 months after graduation, all law students disappear from the face of the earth to their computers and BarBri classes in preparation for the July multi-day exam. Most people figure that the new graduates are off traveling before work starts. No, their eyes are tired from the millions of pages they need to read, their skin pale white to the point they look sick because they have been hiding from the sun, and their hands crippled into a position where they're holding a pen or curled from typing on the computer. All this in preparation for a full 2-day exam - more if one is taking more than one state exam.

The exam, the bar, simultaneously meaning 2 days of hell. They say you can only bring pens and pencils, a computer if you're lucky. In a world where we don't really write using one hand, these students have had to train themselves to hold and write with writing implements. You can't bring anything - no cell phone, maybe your lunch, but otherwise just yourself and your pen/pencils. For a whole day you're scribbling and reading, sweating, and regretting the fact that you slept for 20 min the night before instead of reviewing your tort notes or trying to remember the criminal laws that you had crammed for 2 days because you didn't take the class at school - you start swearing under your breath, when you realize everyone else is too. During your breaks (even though it's a break, you realize that no one is talking), you go running to the bathroom where if you're a girl, the line will already be flowing out of the bathroom into the hall - you curse the engineers who thought they were being equitable by giving the boys 4 stalls and the girls 4 stalls - we all know that women need at least 4 times that equal the boys in turnover. You quickly learn that if you want to eat lunch, you need to be eating lunch while standing on line to the bathroom. Doesn't sound too sanitary. By time the test is over for the day, it's 6 pm. You've been at the test site since 7:30. Your hand is cramped, your brain fried, and your eyes pretty much closed. You want to go home and rest, but there's at least another day ahead of you of the same thing. Do you study? Do you rest? Do you eat? Questions for the test taker.

The bar is over. But is it? Many students take a 2-month vacation until they start work. They travel the world, they find an apartment and move to get ready for work. But the bar is still fresh in their mind. They start working at their firms who pretend that their new hires are "lawyers" when they really know that if the person doesn't pass the test, they're no longer worthy. Maybe if you have a nice firm, they'll help you prepare for this nightmare again in a couple of months in February, if you don't tough luck. New hires are constantly reminded that their careers with the firm depend on the bar, and it seems that the firm has more fun threatening the hires with "if you pass the bar" than actually working them to death - no, that will come after you are a real lawyer. There is this continual stress that won't go away until the results are released.

Some states like to ease this pressure by letting the people who took the test wait 2 months and release the results in late September, soon after one has started working, some are more ruthless and wait till October. To make things even worse, some states have a website public to anyone who googles "State Bar Results" where anyone can see all the names of those who passed.

Pass - the word instantaneously that brings relief and years back to their lives. A word that lets them into the club of "lawyers" and the butt of jokes. A word that says, yes, I am the stereotype and after going to school for 3 years, I am making craploads of money for someone who has never worked before.

Pass - the word that my sister heard when she was sitting in a meeting at her law firm when someone came running in and yelled, congratulations! My sister the lawyer, the money-making hour-billing, arrogant sleazebag esquire. I love her and wish her the most heartfelt congratulations.

posted by Leighna @ 1:10 am