Law Students

Hate the Bar Exam? Read on

By jessie

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The legal blogosphere is abuzz over Elizabeth Wurtzel's latest musings on the problems of the legal profession. Her target: the bar exam. If you're going to complain about the bar exam, this is the time to do it, with thousands of nervous studiers buckling down for one last push before the big day(s).

Wurtzel, a July 2008 NY Bar failer, points out that plenty of famous lawyers have failed the bar exam, including Kathleen Sullivan, Hillary Clinton, and Jerry Brown.  Wurtzel posits that she and other folks from her YLS who failed have this determinative quality in common:

The common denominator among the bar-failers in my class at Yale Law School?and there were a few?was a complete inability to comply with senseless rules; they weren?t the best students, but they were the tartest and the sharpest people?and the least likely to accept the constraints of Big Law that make neither financial nor intellectual sense ....

I'm not going to pretend to know why some people pass the bar and others don't - in my group of friends there was no such discernable pattern. But I also fancy myself a sensless rule rejector. I was the only person I knew in my law school class who did not apply to work at a law firm during on campus interviewing. I was the only public interest student in my tax concentration. But there's rule rejecting and then there's biting your nose to spite your face. The bar exam is painful, expensive, and time consuming. Not something you want to do twice if you can possibly avoid it.

The bar requires both a huge knowledge base and real stamina - both skills that improve with study and practice. It tests your willingness to work long hard hours and perform under intense pressure. It tests other, less meaningful things - like your understanding of California civil filings deadlines - and Wurtzel takes aim there as well. But she isn't willing to divulge what she did differently to pass the second time around. My guess is the stakes were higher for her then - her BigLaw job probably hung in the balance along with her pride. I'm guessing there was some difference in her approach and that it reflects something we might want the bar to test.

According to Wurtzel,

There are many better ways that the ABA could keep the numbers down in the profession: for instance, while there are only 130 accredited medical schools, there are nearly 250 law schools that have been approved by either the ABA or a state equivalent.

On this point, we generally agree.  But then on this point our biases are aligned - you didn't pass the bar so you don't like it, but now you're in da club and want to keep it exclusive. Talk to these kids: they've been waiting in line forever!

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Full post as published by Ms. JD on July 13, 2010 (boomark / email).