What taking the bar exam did to my living environment (and I’m usually such a clean person):

This video was taken after day two of the bar exam.

My final confirmation email:

Dear [DoorFrame],

This email confirms you have successfully uploaded your answer file for the July 2008 California Bar Examination. ExamSoft has received the following exam from you:

Institution: State Bar of California
Application #: XXXXX
Exam File: CalBar_XXXXXXX.XXX
Answer File: XXXX-CalBar_XXXXXXXXX.XXX
Upload Date: 7/31/2008
Confirmation ID: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Exam Download/Upload Confirmation: Click on this link or copy and paste into your browser to review how to confirm your exam files were downloaded and your answer files were uploaded successfully: http://www.examsoft.com/confirmations

Sincerely,

ExamSoft Support
barsupport@examsoft.com
8:30am - 5:30pm ET

Bar exam day one? Earth shaking.

Day two? Tidal waving?

Even top lawyers fail the California Bar.

Anybody else going through the bar preparation process want to share how messy and note-laden their room has become?

I like the cut of this girl’s jib:

I took the five-week, three-hour-a-day [Bar] prep course, paid for the computer software, booked a hotel room near the testing site and even stayed one night there. But, at 2 a.m. before the first day of the test, I decided that I wasn’t prepared enough to take it. So I didn’t. I was angry at myself, but I felt more relieved than anything else.

Then I did the exact same thing all over again — in February [2008]. It’s now summer and, once again, I’m registered to take the exam.

I’m thinking of bailing out of one or two bar exams. Anyone want to join me?

Far more stats about the bar exam than anyone could ever be interested in reading.

This is a totally reasonable system for confirming my laptop’s certification:

One, two… sigh… three, four… sigh… five, six… come on, come on… SEVEN! Yes!

BarBri is expensive: joining BarBri can cost over $3,000, just trying to snag the books on eBay can cost you over $700. Yesterday at lunchtime the books for this summer’s New York bar exam arrived at Georgetown and by 7:30pm they were already being put to effective use:

Yes, the box is full of books. Click to big-ify.

I know ONE door that’s going to be passing the bar.

The California Bar Moral Character Determination Application is very lengthy, and requires me to be fingerprinted. My real sticking point, though, is question 11.1B:

Click to big-ify.

Trick question, trick question!

Elsewhere in the 37-page long application, if a question can be skipped the form indicates that that is an option. Not here, the form implies that I should answer this. I am not admittd to practice law elsewhere, what should my answer to this question be?

The California Bar publishes a decent amount of stats about the passage rates of various groups taking the bar exam.  In-state ABA approved law schools perform better than out-of-state ABA approved law schools.  Men perform better than women.  First time test takes are more than three times more likely to pass than those repeating the test.  White students perform best, followed by Asian students, Hispanic students and black students.

The best performance by a school with more than 10 people taking the exam was by Stanford, followed by a two way tie between the University of Virginia (who knew?) and Yale (Harvard appears to be in sixth).

20% of people taking the exam from Georgetown fail on the first attempt.