Professional Practicum

I passed the MPRE, passed the bar exam, took the oath, paid the license fee, but I still had to take care of one more piece of business last week. Every attorney licensed in Arkansas is required to attend a Professional Practicum put on by the Arkansas Bar Association. The state supreme court evidently takes the requirement seriously, because I know at least one attorney in town who missed the thing and had her license suspended over it.

The practicum is an all-day seminar that aims to promote professionalism and civility among lawyers. That is to say, it consists mostly of a series of speakers admonishing new attorneys to play nice with one another. Apparently the Arkansas bar has a history of cooperation and collegiality, but as the number of lawyers increases there is a fear that we'll get more attorneys of the type exemplified by this famous YouTube video:

 The practicum is the Arkansas bar's bid to nip that trend in the bud.

To me, it was mostly an opportunity to mingle with old classmates. I like visiting with these people, but I'm getting tired of having to tell them that I'm unemployed. The pool of jobless attorneys for me to commiserate with is shrinking all the time (though I can't help but wonder how many of the people identifying themselves as "solo practitioners" are de facto unemployed). It's only a matter of time before my friends start avoiding eye contact at social events so they don't have to talk to me about it.

More on the Bar Exam

In the weeks since bar results were released, I've interacted with my classmates enough to pick up some gossip about who passed and who didn't. The list seems pretty arbitrary.  Many slackers passed; many good students failed. Based on these results, I do not think the bar exam does much to separate the good candidates from the poor.

You might wonder how my bar exam scores panned out. I didn't botch the essays so badly as I thought. All my essays passed, though the scores were thoroughly mediocre. This tends to confirm a theory I've heard more than once: the essay questions are intended to test one's ability to write, not so much one's knowledge of the law. Probably half of what I said about the law in my essays was made up on the spot.

My multiple choice scores were fairly strong, which made for an overall score well within the passing range. My total score was just above the midway point between barely passing and top paper. A  popular aphorism goes, "If you passed the bar by more than one point, you studied too hard," but I have no regrets about my hours of preparation. I prefer an aphorism that BarBri puts on some of its t-shirts: "Do it once. Do it right. Never do it again."

Those Who Can't, Watch

During this long sojourn in the Valley of Unemployment, I have passed some of my time by hanging around the county courthouse and attending whatever trials or hearings I can find. It's always interesting, and I recommend it to anyone who has a weekday free. I have observed a handful of criminal proceedings, but the real drama is in family court. Watching parents fight over child support or--worse--try to prove one another unfit is heartbreaking. Family law would be tough to stomach day in and day out, but I could see myself working in criminal law.

Certificates

The Arkansas attorney's license is big: 11"x17". Between this, my diploma, and the certificates I picked up for various honors and extracurricular activities, if I open my own law office I might be bankrupted by framing expenses alone.

The Job Market

It's tough out there.

Here is a summary of the applications for law-related jobs I have submitted to date: six to judges, four to private firms, five to federal agencies, and ten to state agencies. About half of those jobs required a law degree; the other half were administrative jobs in legal departments. I have also applied for fourteen jobs outside the legal field. All of my applications were for advertised jobs; I have only cold-called the one or two places I most want to work.

My applications have resulted in five unsuccessful interviews, the last of which was about six weeks ago. I have been politely rejected without an interview six times. Sixteen of my applications got no response at all. That leaves twelve jobs that are either still open or closed recently enough that I am still hoping for a response.

Law School: What's the Big Deal?

I finished law school and passed the bar, so I guess I am now qualified to answer the question I posed when I named this blog three years ago: Is law school really that big a deal?

Nah. The workload does seem to be heavier than the average graduate program, and certain aspects of law school culture do seem calculated to stress students out (the Socratic method, the obsession with class rank, the all-importance of final exams), but one gets inured to these things. I certainly don't think I had it as tough as my acquaintances who went to medical school.

At bottom, law school is like any other academic program. The teachers tell the students what to do. The students who do those things make good grades. The students who cut corners make poor grades. If one doesn't care about one's grades, it is even possible to coast through law school on a bare minimum of effort.

The bar exam, on the other hand, is a very big deal. The bar exam is the reason you shouldn't coast through law school, even if you can. I don't think the risk of failure is significantly higher on the bar exam than it is on the average law school test (about 84% of my graduating class passed the Arkansas bar), but the stakes are terribly high. Failure on a semester test ruins your GPA, but failure on the bar exam practically negates your law degree. The eight weeks prior to the bar exam and the five weeks after were the worst period of sustained stress I have ever experienced.

The conclusion I draw from the last three years is that law school probably doesn't deserve its scary reputation, but the bar exam most assuredly does.

It's Official

I just got the receipt for my $125 license fee from the Clerk of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, along with my license number. I am now as legally qualified as the best lawyer in the state to draft your will or represent you in that million dollar slip-and-fall lawsuit.

Bar Results

PASS. Winning, tiger blood, etcetera. Congratulations to all my fellow travelers.

My Obsolete Law Library

I was able to sell off a few of my old textbooks before the fall semester started, but I still have a shelf load. Two or three of these are still current and might be in demand come January; it looks like at least eight are in my permanent collection whether I like it or not. Maybe I'll make some really posh book safes.

One week to bar results.

Suitable for Framing

Diplomas finally arrived at the registrar's office this week. You would think that picking up my diploma would be a morale boost, but not so. The career services office has decided that the most efficient way to garner responses to its employment surveys is to distribute them with the diplomas. Thus, every diploma comes with a tacit request to put a dollar value on it. So far, mine is worth zero.

Two weeks to bar results.

Job Hunting

My lack of a law license puts a crimp in my job search, but I can't just sit here and wait. So far I've sent applications to five judges, three law firms, and four government agencies, all in central Arkansas. My applications have resulted in four interviews, but no job offers.

I've also applied for a dozen or so jobs outside the legal field, but no one has so much as acknowledged those applications. I suspect that my law degree actually hurts my chances with a lot of employers; they may see me as overqualified.

Three weeks to bar results.

Bar Exam Postmortem

I don't think I exaggerate when I say the first day of the bar exam was one of the ten worst days of my life. If I fail, I might upgrade it to one of the five worst. I broke the seal on my essay test booklet and felt a little sicker every time I turned a page. The questions seemed calculated to expose my blind spots, and I certainly deserve to fail that part of the test. I might have failed it by a substantial margin.

Fortunately, a strong multiple choice score can whitewash a bad essay score. I wrote in an earlier post that the essays account for just 25% of one's score, but that wasn't quite accurate. The essay and performance tests combine to make up 50%, but I don't know how they are weighted against each other. In any case, multiple choice counts for the other 50%.

So my future in the legal profession boils down to whether I aced the multiple choice test. That means anything could happen. I answered perhaps a quarter of the questions with confidence. The rest were more or less educated guesses between two or three plausible responses. This is consistent with the way my practice tests went. If my hit-to-miss ratio on the real thing was at least as good as my ratio on the practice tests, I have a fighting chance at getting that law license.

Results are made public in five weeks.

I Took the Arkansas Bar Exam

I'll write something about the bar exam experience after my blood cools. For now, there is only this: I feel like I should demand my money back because, in two hundred questions, I was never asked about the rule against perpetuities.

Bar Prep Summary

I had eight weeks to prepare for the bar exam. I did not take a commercial prep course. This is what I did instead:

• Reviewed 570 pages of commercial outlines (about 70% BarBri and 30% Emanuel, just because that was what I could get free or cheap; I preferred BarBri's outlines)
• Answered 1,028 multiple choice questions (735, or 71%, correctly)
• Wrote 42 practice essays (15,600 words total)
• Wrote 5 practice performance tests (3,900 words total)
  
• Invested 180-200 hours altogether

By most standards this is lax preparation, but I feel like it should be enough. I broke my back to get good grades for the last three years, so I shouldn't have to cram here at the end. My practice work adds up to roughly five bar exams. Number six will count.

Inventory

This is the kit I'm bringing with me to the bar exam.
1. Laptop (essays are on day one).
2. Two pencils, two pens, and two highlighters. No sense risking being caught without the right writing implement.
3. Eraser. I probably won't need this until day two (multiple choice), but I might as well pack it now.
4. Soda. Because I think the stress-reducing effects of a swig of sugar water will outweigh any loss of time that results from extra bathroom breaks.
5. Earplugs. I never used these for law school tests, but the bar exam will probably be more crowded and louder.
6. Gum. The all-purpose stress reliever.
7. Origami paper. Applicants have been instructed to take their seats thirty minutes before test time. I'll need something to pass the time.

Essay Reality Check

I just answered the essay questions from the February 2011 Arkansas bar, and the results improved my disposition immensely.

Previously, I had written some two dozen practice essays. After comparing those to the model answers, I felt like I was just riding the line between passing and failing. The beauty of the February exam questions is that I have no model answers to compare to. Instead, the State Board of Law Examiners publishes the top answers by actual applicants. Now I see what the graders really expect, and these answers are just as rushed and sloppy as mine. Of the six questions on the test, I only really blew it on one. I'll take that in a heartbeat.

There Are No Right Answers

I've been getting my multiple choice practice from old BarBri books, but today I decided to mix things up with a hundred questions out of an Emanuel book at the library. Emanuel and BarBri obviously base their practice questions on a common set of released bar questions, because many of the Emanuel questions were substantially identical to questions I had already seen in my BarBri books. Only names and minor details were changed.

But here's the thing: in at least two cases, the Emanuel and BarBri books had opposite answers. Opposite! Contrast this passage from BarBri's answer key:

The general rule is that one who possesses an animal not customarily domesticated in that area is strictly liable for all harm done by the animal . . . . For trespassers, however, strict liability is not imposed against landowners.

with this passage from Emanuel's:

. . . the skunk will be considered a wild animal, making Householder strictly liable for damage it creates. As a result, Walker's status as a trespasser will not relieve Householder of liability.

Why must you mess with my head, Emanuel? I don't need this cognitive dissonance a week before the exam, so I'm just going to assume that the rule I learned first (BarBri's) is right.

Printing on My Own Dime

Of all the things I miss about being a law student, I may be most nostalgic for those sweet, sweet library printing privileges.

Improving

As planned, I have started targeting my study at a few problem areas. The early results are promising: my last two hundred practice questions yielded a 74% success rate. That's not ideal, but I'll take it. I'd love to hit 80%, but I'll be satisfied if I can keep my average in the 70s from now until exam day.

Undertaught and Overtaxed

I'm annoyed when I come across a point of law that is heavily tested on the bar but somehow got little or no coverage in the relevant class. Couldn't the contracts professor have spared a few days to teach contract assignments and third party beneficiaries? Did the Torts professor really think we'd learn conversion in fifteen minutes? Those topics are killing me.

Bar Review as Math Problem

I've answered 528 practice multiple choice questions to date, and I just can't seem to get my average past 66%. That means I've put down more than 150 wrong answers so far.

I decided to mine that data by putting it in a spreadsheet. I made a list of every rule of law I got wrong, sortable by subject. It took six or eight hours to type it all up, but I am happy with the results. I came up with seventeen legal principles that I botched at least twice. Six of those got me three or more times. Altogether, these repeat offenders accounted for forty-four of my wrong answers, or more than a quarter of the total.

Now my path is clear: if I can master these seventeen rules--no more than a few pages of notes, really--I should see a marked improvement in my multiple choice scores. That's the theory, anyway.

Performance Preparation

The "performance" part of the bar exam consists of ten or fifteen pages of cases, statutes, depositions, evidence, or what-have-you and instructions to draft a document using them. It isn't really possible to study for a test that supplies all the applicable law, but I gave it a go. I took four mock exams over two days. The documents called for in my practice tests were a closing argument, a brief, a memo, and a demand letter. I did well at assignments like this in school, but mostly because I spent a lot of time on them. The documents I put together in ninety minutes looked rather incomplete. Hopefully that is what the graders will be expecting. At any rate, now that I have a feel for what the test is like, I'm setting it aside. The rest of my study time is going to be devoted to getting my multiple choice scores up.

No More Essays

I downloaded the 2006 bar exam essays from the National Conference of Bar Examiners website. After answering six questions and comparing my responses to the model answers, I am satisfied that I would have passed, if barely. Barely is good enough for me, so I don't plan to look at the essay subjects again until just before the exam.

Three weeks to go.

Essays, Essays, Essays

In my bar preparation, I am giving the essay questions short shrift. This is a sensible strategy for a few reasons: Most importantly, the essays are not weighted as heavily as the multiple choice questions (25% vs. 50%). For another thing, it's hard to practice for the essay test because the grading is not objective--I have model answers to my practice questions, but those are "ideal" answers. They don't really tell me if my crummy answers would pass or fail. This lack of feedback on practice essays may be the biggest disadvantage to blowing off a commercial prep class. Lastly, let's not kid ourselves, it's easier to fake it on an essay test than on a multiple choice test. After three years of law school, I should be able to write a plausible essay on even a branch of law I've never heard of.

With all that in mind, I picked up a book from the library that contains practice questions and short outlines (most are under twenty pages) of the essay subjects not covered on the multiple choice test. I also got copies of longer outlines of subjects I didn't study in school (commercial paper, conflict of laws) or did poorly in (family law). For the last week I have been reading quickly through one or two outlines per day, then writing two or three practice essays. To date I've written thirteen such essays. Most have been pretty poor, but my expectations are low. One day this week I plan to wrap up my essay prep by giving myself a complete practice test, meaning six essays in three hours. After that I'll spend a maximum of two days practicing for the "performance" portion of the bar (a test of one's ability to interpret and draft legal documents), then it's back to multiple choice drills.

Spring Grades

Spring grades are out, so my GPA is finally set in stone for ever and ever. I managed to give it a .01 bump in my last semester and finish with a nice round number. Excelsior!

Immortalized on Film

Last week the school surprised me with a complimentary 5x7" photo of me receiving my leatherette diploma cover. Very nice. It makes me glad I put off responding to the eight emails I've received to date from the graduation photographer.

Scant Progress

Three weeks after graduation and five weeks before the bar exam, I have finished my first pass through the multiple choice test topics. My performance to date on practice questions is 283 out of 428, or 66%. That's weak. The conventional wisdom I've heard is that one should be able to hit 80% consistently on practice tests before taking the bar.

Even so, I have to put the multiple choice stuff down for now. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to spend a week or two writing practice essays. Maybe the multiple choice questions will look easier when I have fresh eyes.

Developing a Study Plan

I don't know what my colleagues are doing in their Barbri and Kaplan classes, but here is the pattern I've slid into as I review for the multiple choice portion of the bar exam:

I spend six or eight hours going through a subject outline, taking notes (these are duplicative of notes I already have, but note-taking is the only way I can force myself to read slowly and carefully). After each outline, I take a sixty- to seventy-five-question practice test on that subject. The test takes about two hours, so by the time I review the questions I missed I've spent about ten hours on each subject. With six subjects tested by multiple choice (constitutional law, contracts, criminal law, evidence, property, and torts), I'm on a pace to get through a complete review in sixty hours of study time.

After that, I'll spend some time prepping for the essay and practicum portions of the test, then go back for more multiple choice practice in July.

Bar Prep Begins

My first efforts at studying for the bar exam have been demoralizing. This week I took practice exams in the areas of constitutional law and contracts. I scored 73% and 59%, respectively, and that was after several hours of review. I obviously need to improve my study methods if I want to get up to speed in two months.

Graduation

Speeches were spoken, hands were shaken, and I collected a handsome diploma cover (sans diploma--that will have to wait until the last round of exams are graded). For the graduates, I think the best part about graduation may have been the opportunity to scope out one another's regalia. Students rarely talk about their GPAs, so most of us were finding out for the first time who would or wouldn't graduate with honors.

After the ceremony, someone asked me if I felt any different. I said, "ask me again after the bar exam." By itself, a juris doctorate doesn't amount to much. As one wag at the ceremony observed, as if it isn't bad enough that we can't practice law, we can't even make people call us "doctor."

Tax Policy Exam

My last (ever) exam was a barn burner. The Tax Policy professor asked some devilishly specific questions about readings that were assigned weeks ago. I reckon I handled it okay. Even if I didn't, this late in the game anything but an F qualifies as a success.

And that's that. The only thing standing between me and a juris doctorate is the formality of picking up my diploma.

Secured Transactions Exam

It was impossible to fully prepare for the Secured Transactions exam. We covered an absurd amount of material in the last fifteen weeks (UALR Law Student summed up the prevailing sentiment pithily at his blog). Add my complete lack of motivation to study here at the end of my 3L year, and I was expecting the worst.

It wasn't too bad. The essay portion of the test was exactly what the professor had told us to expect, so I think my answer was competent, if a little rushed. About an hour after the exam I remembered a statute that made part of my response dead wrong, but that shouldn't be enough to sink the whole essay.

The multiple choice questions worry me. They add an element of chance to an exam that I'm never comfortable with. Your typical law-school multiple choice question is about half a page long, and you only have to misread one word to botch the answer. Since half the points on the test came from the multiple choice questions, anything could happen.

Open Book

I have two exams this semester, and both are at least partly open book. Since I'm about to graduate and have a pretty casual attitude toward my grades, this open book business is a nuisance to me. For a closed-book exam, I would probably just read through my notes a few times and take my chances. With an open-book exam, expectations will be higher; now I feel like I have to spend time organizing my notes, writing cheat-sheets, putting tabs on things, and what-have-you. After the thousands of hours I've sunk into my legal education, these last few dozen feel like too much to ask.

Regalia

My graduation regalia has arrived. I'm renting, so I only get to keep the cap. You can tell a juris doctorate is a prestigious degree because the regalia is very, very silly.

I tried on a sample before I placed my order, but somehow I got a cap that is much too small. I hope my sewing skills are such that I can fix it, because I don't want to deal with ordering a replacement.

Health Services

Three years as a UALR student, and I never had occasion to use the student clinic until this week. I had heard bad things about the health services department, but my experience was perfect. I was just there for a tetanus booster (dog bite, kind of a long story), and they took care of me in under ten minutes. Best of all, it was free (well, free in the sense that I prepaid for it with my student activity fees). Incidentally, if you are a UALR student and plan to step on a rusty nail in the next few years, now is the time to get that tetanus shot. Starting in fall 2011, they're going to cost $25.

Because the law school is across town from UALR's main campus, I think some students don't realize that their student ID gets them all the same perks the undergraduates enjoy. My favorite is the free admission to school sporting events. I'm going to miss that next year.

The First of Many Lasts

Yesterday I attended my last law school class. Ever. The professor knew he had a room full of graduating 3Ls, so he gave us a lovely pep talk about passing the bar and being a force for good in society.
I like school a lot, and I'm a little sorry I won't be back in the fall. Hopefully I'll be doing something else at least as interesting.

The Never-Ending Semester

The clock is slowing down as the closing bell approaches. Another week of classes? That doesn't seem right.

How I Plan to Pass the Bar

There seems to be a presumption on the part of the school administration that every graduate is going to take a commercial bar exam prep course. I don't know what percentage of my classmates have signed up for one of these, but it certainly isn't in the cards for me. Rather than spend $1200-2000 on a full-on course, I bought these gently used books on eBay for $160. I think they'll be more than enough to get me across the finish line if I can maintain the discipline to study them thoroughly.

Brush With Greatness

Justice Stephen Breyer spoke at the law school today. Breyer was the first Supreme Court justice to visit Bowen in my three years there, and he was great. He spoke effortlessly without notes and had engaging, expansive answers to all the audience questions (even a couple that I thought were dopey or ill-considered).

Coincidentally, yesterday I found myself in line at the DMV behind Jermain "Bad Intentions" Taylor. Time will tell which of these brushes with greatness will make for a more popular anecdote.

David and Goliath

It's good to be Goliath. I am one of two law clerks working on a particular case. Today I Googled the opposing attorney and learned that he's a solo practitioner who graduated from law school in 2008. Tough break for that guy. He probably doesn't have an army of clerks to deflect the storm of paper we're blowing his way.

Senioritis

The post I wrote a couple of weeks ago about using spring break to reset my study habits was naive. Spring break is over, and I'm more ready than ever to put school behind me and start worrying about the bar exam. These days I'm feeling a lot of sympathy for the disengaged 3Ls that seemed so lazy to me this time last year.

Bar Application IN

I just got email notification that the State Board of Law Examiners has received my application to take the July bar exam. I beat the April 1 deadline by three days. This might just be the scariest deadline in all of law school. Late applications are not accepted--if you're one day late, you can take the exam in February. In possibly related news, I missed work today because of headaches and nausea. Stress? May be.

Easily the worst part of the bar application process was having to wrangle letters of recommendation. It's never fun to ask people for favors. Still, there are psychological benefits to asking your friends and acquaintances to write nice things about you. Awww, thanks, guys!

A is for Annoying

There is an unexpected downside to practicing law in Arkansas. Books that survey a legal topic state by state are always arranged alphabetically, so the books will never lay flat on my desk when turned to 'Arkansas.' I have encountered this problem repeatedly. Lawyers in Michigan don't know how good they have it.

More Lumens, More Learning

The projector in classroom 305 got a new bulb yesterday, ushering in a new era of clarity and legibility. Note-taking is going to be a piece of cake for the rest of the semester.

Honored?

I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but one has to question the prestige of an award certificate that bears the URL of the website from which it was downloaded.

The Lawyer-Client Disconnect

Here is the impression I get from the real, live lawsuits I have been exposed to in the past few weeks. The paper war over any given sub-issue in a lawsuit is likely to involve a couple of motions from each side, one or two written arguments from each side in support of or opposition to each motion, and possibly an in-person hearing. Researching and writing any of the legal documents involved is very time-consuming.
The upshot is that lawyers experience litigation as a constant stream of looming deadlines; their clients experience litigation as months-long (and fabulously expensive) stretches of time during which nothing gets decided. No wonder they hate us.

Need a Break

Spring break needs to hurry up and get here. My work ethic is slipping badly. Even though I have a light class schedule, lately I have been waiting until the last minute to blitz through my reading assignments. I need a week off to reset my study habits.

Supply and Demand in Action

Enjoy this map of my workplace parking options. I usually park in the $3.50 lot, but as the weather warms up the $2.25 option is getting more attractive.

Long Day

One of my classes met tonight to make up for a day we missed during last month's snow storms. That meant working from 8:30 to 5:30, then sitting in class from 7:00 to 9:00. Also, it's my birthday.
I would complain, but some part-time students might read this. For them, this is a normal schedule. For four years. Ouch.

Defending My Character

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours filling out the thirteen-page "character questionnaire" portion of the bar exam application. I still need to get three letters of recommendation and have myself fingerprinted. It must be this onerous screening process that earned the legal profession its sterling reputation for integrity.

A Nod to Black History Month

I don't usually write about the law in this space, but I came across a case this week that so took me aback that I had to share it. I've been researching the law of bailments for work lately (for the uninitiated, a bailment is a loan or temporary deposit of something; coat checks are a classic example). As part of that research I read Miller v. Dyer, 243 Ark. 981 (1968). The plaintiff was suing over damage to a truck that he had rented out. As courts will do, the court looked for analogies in prior case law:

[A]n express agreement by bailee to return the bailed property imposes no greater liability upon the bailee than is implied in every bailment. Yet, this court has held that one who hired a slave upon a written contract that, in addition to providing for payment for the slave's service, required his return at the end of the year, was liable for failure to return him because of the slave's escape without fault of the hirer.

So the state supreme court thought that loaning out your truck was kind of like loaning out your slave. In 1968. Real classy, Arkansas.

Honored

Getting an A is good. Getting top paper is better. One has to take about thirty classes to get through law school, so one has a fair chance, if not a good chance, of coming away with at least one top paper. As I heard one student say, "everybody's a savant at something." After twenty-one bites at the apple, I finally found my something. In Decedents' Estates I scored my first top paper in a substantive law class.
Last night my fellow overachievers and I--fifty or sixty in all, somewhat undercutting the notion that we were the 'best of the best'--were feted with hors d'oeuvres and encouraging speeches. A good time was had by all.

Nice Work if You Can Get It

This is the view from the office I share with three other clerks.

There are ninety attorneys at the law firm and six clerks, so you'd think there would be plenty of work to go around. Not so. A project gets offered up via email about once a day, and it's a race to see who can get it first. I'm sure there will be feast periods to complement the present famine.

The work I have done so far has been interesting. I've researched eminent domain, guardianships, stock repurchase by insolvent corporations, and tax exempt bonds. I think I'm going to enjoy the semester.

People Aren't Litigious Enough

One of my coworkers was going to observe a jury selection this morning, so I tagged along. I had never been in any of the courtrooms at the county courthouse, and I was pleased to see that they are old in a good way--venerable, not dilapidated. They're also kind of small, and when we arrived the room was jammed with potential jurors, most of whom had already been waiting for half an hour or more. We sat and waited with them for another forty-five minutes while attorneys furtively slipped in and out of the judge's chambers. Just as a riot seemed imminent, the bailiff called the room to order and introduced the judge. He sat down just long enough to tell us that there would be no trial because the parties had reached a settlement. Everyone was free to go. My colleague and I hiked back to the office, crestfallen.

I'm not even a lawyer yet, and I'm already disappointed when people settle their differences without resorting to a jury trial. What will become of me?

Tax Policy

Tax policy is going to kick my butt. I registered for this class more or less as a lark, because I really enjoyed the professor's Federal Income Tax class. I have since learned that the credit is also good toward an MBA, so the class is packed with dual JD/MBA students. It's very heavy on economic theory. I know nothing about economics, having taken exactly one undergraduate macroeconomics course some fifteen years ago, so I'm starting Tax Policy at a terrible disadvantage. I figure I'll learn a lot, but this class probably won't help my GPA any.

Contemplating the Bar Exam

I spent my weekend taking a grueling thirteen-hour class on how to apply for and prepare for the bar exam, so I'm good and scared now. The bar exam tests a dozen subjects, three or four of which I didn't study at all in school. I'll have about two months after graduation to learn those subjects and relearn the ones I studied two years ago. In Arkansas, about 75% of bar takers pass.
As part of the class we watched the documentary A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar . . ., which I can recommend as entertaining whether you're going to sit for the bar or not (pro tip: you can watch it instantly on Netflix!).

The Tyranny of the Billable Hour

Ever since I started school I have been hearing about what a pain it is to keep up with billable hours, but I have not had to do it myself until this semester. I'm in the office seven and a half hours a day, and if I stay busy all day I usually wind up with about five billable hours.
On the one hand, I feel like I need to pack on more billable hours to justify my employment, so I have a powerful incentive to keep the meter running no matter what.
On the other hand, I know my time is being billed to the client at an extravagant rate, so I feel guilty if I bill even one minute spent chatting with my office mates, staring out the window or whatnot.
Billing is ethical dilemma number one in the legal profession.

Fall Grades

Fall grades are in. Mine were respectable. About six months ago I settled on a target GPA that I wanted to graduate with. I'm on a pace to beat that target, but I could still blow it with a poor showing in the spring. This is no time to slack off!

Swimming with the Sharks

My spring clerkship is underway. This is my first exposure to a big law firm ("big" is relative--the largest firms in Little Rock would be considered "medium-sized" in a place like New York or Chicago). I haven't done much actual work yet, so I don't know what that's going to be like, but I can tell you that the offices are almost a parody of big law firms. Seriously, you can't turn around in that place without bumping into some burled wood or tufted leather.

Employed, But Not Working

Now this just isn't fair. Even when I find paying work, somehow the universe finds a way to prevent me from benefiting from it. I have been idle for weeks, just waiting for the first day of my spring clerkship. Today is that day, but Little Rock got five inches of snow last night and the whole city is shut down. So here I sit in my living room, getting poorer by the minute.

Fortunately, the research project I undertook a few weeks ago went well. I put in a total of around fifty hours, which went a long way toward funding my spring tuition. The supervising attorney didn't give me much feedback, but he did say I can use him as a reference, so I must have done a decent job.

Paid Up

I just wrote what should be my last tuition check. The Bowen school sells one of the least expensive legal educations in the country, but considering tuition, books, and most of all the cost of being unemployed for three years, I am still out well over $100K. It's going to take a long time to make that back at the $0 per year I have arranged to earn upon graduation. I have excelled at academic life, but I'll look like a real dummy if I don't find a job pretty soon.