I received my bar number today, which means I am a fully licensed member of the Washington bar. It was only about an hour later that I signed my first legal pleading as an attorney. If there was any moment of accomplishment that was most meaningful, it was that moment. More than graduating law school or passing the bar. More than even taking the oath of attorney in open court. It was that moment when my signature had the power to send someone to jail that I felt the overwhelming sense of responsibility that comes with being an attorney. With that signature I put my reputation, my honor, my ethics on the line and I was very proud of all of the work I had done to get to this point. I am also grateful for all of the help from my family, my now wife, my friends, my mentors, employers, coworkers, and other law students. Becoming a lawyer really is a process through which you change and it is hard to realize it when it is happening, but you really do think about the world in a different way. I know lawyers have gotten a bad reputation in recent years and frankly with the number of lawyers that are being admitted every year, you only increase the number of idiots and jerks who become lawyers, but there are really many many great honorable attorney's who I have met along the way. I hardly knew any lawyers before I started, but now I am really proud to be part of this profession.
As far as this blog goes, I think this is as good of a place to wrap it up as any. I had anticipated writing some reflective posts on the process of getting to where I am now, but I think I have all of the prior posts that do that just fine, and frankly, I have no appetite for looking back. I have not felt much of an urge to write anything in months and the who point of this blog was to track my law school experience, and so that this blog does not become a run-on like this sentence is, I am going to make this my last post. I must also thank all of the readers of this blog. You know who you are. You don't know how meaningful it was to see every week when my page view count was e-mailed to me that that 14 or so people had visited this sight. 11 of those could have been my mother, but I am grateful for everyone who was there to share in my sometimes random, sometimes grammatically incorrect, but sometimes, I hope, insightful commentary.
I may blog again in the future, but if I do, it won't be here. I will put a link to any future blog if there is any. In the meantime, I am going to just enjoy the fact that everything in my life feels like it has finally come together. Thank you and good bye!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, August 04, 2008
A Look Back. Part 1: Lets go to law school
It is hard to believe that more than four years have passed since I decided to go to law school. I do not feel that different on the inside, but I know I must have changed because I am still young enough that 4 years constitutes a significant segment of my life.
My decision to go to law school was not a deliberative one. In fact, I do not really remember thinking about whether I should or not. My girlfriend at the time was applying to law school, so I decided I would just see if I could get in somewhere. I would not have articulated it in this way at the time, but I was looking for some direction in my life. I was looking for a career after contentment, excitement, and happiness had eluded me on the other career avenues that I had tried. But really it was more of a gamble than it was a deliberation. I did not think about the hours I would have to work, or what a lawyer does, or the thousands of dollars in debt I would have to incur in order to finance this venture. I remember the exact moment at
a Mexican restaurant when I simply said: Maybe I should go to law school; it seems like it could be interesting. And since that moment, I never looked back.
Compared with everything else, applying to law school creates the most unrewarding stress. As pointless as the bar exam seems at some points, what you learn is a lot more relevant to the practice of law than what you have to learn for the LSAT. That exam really is worthless. I probably could have received a higher grade and into a better law school, but as with the bar exam, once you pass and get into law school or get your license, there is no reason to dwell on the exam any further.
After getting accepted into several schools and knowing I was going to actually be going to law school, I started to wonder exactly what I would be doing. I read A Civil Action and watched The Paper Chase and checked out from the library some guides to law school, the titles of which I have long forgotten. These guides provide no real help to someone curious about the law or law school. If fact, I would recommend to anyone considering going to law school to never read a single book with a title anything close to "Surviving your First Year" or "How to Succeed at Law School without Losing Yourself." They mostly provide advise that means nothing to you until you are actually sitting in a class room and will only cause you to worry unnecessarily about the Socratic method outlining a case. Probably the best thing you could do for yourself if you want to preparing for law school is start reading cases. They won't make sense to you. I really didn't know how to read a case until at least the first half of the first semester. Part of the difficulty of the first year is just learning how cases are structured and what you are supposed to be getting out of them, and learning that is mostly just reading enough cases that you become familiar. Now I am not saying that you should use your last summer before law school to read cases. In fact, the even better advice I could give someone is to spend the summer doing something that you love and enjoy. The most important lesson I learned in law school was that an attorney looks like me, thinks like me, writes like me, and works like me. It is true for everyone. When you are done, you are an attorney, so before you go filling your head with all sorts of ideas that other people have about what it means to go to law school and how one should do it, you should just do what it takes to be you.
Before I get too preachy and pretend I have any wisdom about how one should treat the time before law school, I should conclude, but first, one thing with which everyone who has gone to law school would agree: from the moment you send your acceptance in until you walk out of the bar exam, you will think about the world differently, and there is nothing you can do about this. Not that this would be any different if you spend 4 years intensely doing something else. By sending in the acceptance letter, a whole chain of events begins that led me to where I am now.
My decision to go to law school was not a deliberative one. In fact, I do not really remember thinking about whether I should or not. My girlfriend at the time was applying to law school, so I decided I would just see if I could get in somewhere. I would not have articulated it in this way at the time, but I was looking for some direction in my life. I was looking for a career after contentment, excitement, and happiness had eluded me on the other career avenues that I had tried. But really it was more of a gamble than it was a deliberation. I did not think about the hours I would have to work, or what a lawyer does, or the thousands of dollars in debt I would have to incur in order to finance this venture. I remember the exact moment at
a Mexican restaurant when I simply said: Maybe I should go to law school; it seems like it could be interesting. And since that moment, I never looked back.
Compared with everything else, applying to law school creates the most unrewarding stress. As pointless as the bar exam seems at some points, what you learn is a lot more relevant to the practice of law than what you have to learn for the LSAT. That exam really is worthless. I probably could have received a higher grade and into a better law school, but as with the bar exam, once you pass and get into law school or get your license, there is no reason to dwell on the exam any further.
After getting accepted into several schools and knowing I was going to actually be going to law school, I started to wonder exactly what I would be doing. I read A Civil Action and watched The Paper Chase and checked out from the library some guides to law school, the titles of which I have long forgotten. These guides provide no real help to someone curious about the law or law school. If fact, I would recommend to anyone considering going to law school to never read a single book with a title anything close to "Surviving your First Year" or "How to Succeed at Law School without Losing Yourself." They mostly provide advise that means nothing to you until you are actually sitting in a class room and will only cause you to worry unnecessarily about the Socratic method outlining a case. Probably the best thing you could do for yourself if you want to preparing for law school is start reading cases. They won't make sense to you. I really didn't know how to read a case until at least the first half of the first semester. Part of the difficulty of the first year is just learning how cases are structured and what you are supposed to be getting out of them, and learning that is mostly just reading enough cases that you become familiar. Now I am not saying that you should use your last summer before law school to read cases. In fact, the even better advice I could give someone is to spend the summer doing something that you love and enjoy. The most important lesson I learned in law school was that an attorney looks like me, thinks like me, writes like me, and works like me. It is true for everyone. When you are done, you are an attorney, so before you go filling your head with all sorts of ideas that other people have about what it means to go to law school and how one should do it, you should just do what it takes to be you.
Before I get too preachy and pretend I have any wisdom about how one should treat the time before law school, I should conclude, but first, one thing with which everyone who has gone to law school would agree: from the moment you send your acceptance in until you walk out of the bar exam, you will think about the world differently, and there is nothing you can do about this. Not that this would be any different if you spend 4 years intensely doing something else. By sending in the acceptance letter, a whole chain of events begins that led me to where I am now.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Bar Wrap Up
It has taken me a week before I am ready to reflect on the bar exam. I can't say I have done nothing for the last week but close to it. The nine weeks of studying and exam left me pretty exhausted and having moved in the middle of it, I felt like I woke up last Friday in a life I did not recognize. It was only nine weeks, but the bar is all consuming, so I have been a bit disoriented.
So with one weeks retrospect, I guess I can say that it was pretty stressful although I had most of my anxiety dreams about it since it has been over. It happens at least once a day that I start thinking about some topic that was on the bar exam and wondering if I answered it right. I feel like I pretty much still remember almost everything that I knew a week ago, but I am sure that will slowly change.
It was not all bad. I do feel like I learned a lot and there was a certain sense of comradeship with other students that I had not felt in a long time. It didn't have the same feeling as first year classes where we were all graded against each other on a curve, although I know everyone looked around the room and thought to themselves that 1 out of every 4 people will fail and hoped it was someone else.
Speaking of the room, it is hard to imagine exactly what the conditions were like. I don't know how many people took the exam on computers, but there were probably 500 people sitting at their computers in groups of 2 in a single conference room with a proctor at the front on an elevated dias reading us the same instructions for each section of the exam and interrupting out thoughts at 30,10, and 1 minutes to go. I took a picture, but you can see too many people's faces for me to be able to post it.
The bar exam is probably like a lot of other experiences that really cannot be understood until you go through it. It strikes unique anxiety in almost all lawyers no matter how many years stretch between now and when you took it. For a professional organization, the bar association does not really make a good first impression since the first real experience you have with them is the bar exam.
I am glad it is over and I hope I will not have to go through that again, but all that is left for me now is to wait until the results come out in October. In the meantime, I have some more time off, and then I will be interning again at the prosecutor's office until the results come out. As far as this blog goes, I think its purpose as a law school blog has about concluded. I haven't decided whether I will continue blogging, but look for a couple more reflective posts about law school and then I will be wrapping this up.
So with one weeks retrospect, I guess I can say that it was pretty stressful although I had most of my anxiety dreams about it since it has been over. It happens at least once a day that I start thinking about some topic that was on the bar exam and wondering if I answered it right. I feel like I pretty much still remember almost everything that I knew a week ago, but I am sure that will slowly change.
It was not all bad. I do feel like I learned a lot and there was a certain sense of comradeship with other students that I had not felt in a long time. It didn't have the same feeling as first year classes where we were all graded against each other on a curve, although I know everyone looked around the room and thought to themselves that 1 out of every 4 people will fail and hoped it was someone else.
Speaking of the room, it is hard to imagine exactly what the conditions were like. I don't know how many people took the exam on computers, but there were probably 500 people sitting at their computers in groups of 2 in a single conference room with a proctor at the front on an elevated dias reading us the same instructions for each section of the exam and interrupting out thoughts at 30,10, and 1 minutes to go. I took a picture, but you can see too many people's faces for me to be able to post it.
The bar exam is probably like a lot of other experiences that really cannot be understood until you go through it. It strikes unique anxiety in almost all lawyers no matter how many years stretch between now and when you took it. For a professional organization, the bar association does not really make a good first impression since the first real experience you have with them is the bar exam.
I am glad it is over and I hope I will not have to go through that again, but all that is left for me now is to wait until the results come out in October. In the meantime, I have some more time off, and then I will be interning again at the prosecutor's office until the results come out. As far as this blog goes, I think its purpose as a law school blog has about concluded. I haven't decided whether I will continue blogging, but look for a couple more reflective posts about law school and then I will be wrapping this up.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Done.
After literally two and 1/2 days of cloudy weather, the clouds just broke and the sun has come out after the end of the exam. School's out for summer; school's out forever (hopefully.)
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Almost done!
18 questions covering potentially 22 subjects are over. There was no evidence question and no Sales question but three torts and two contracts. Weird. This won't make must sense unless you have taken or are taking the bar. Six more professional responsibility questions and its over. Phew. Almost done.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Day 1
All I can really say about the exam at this point is that it is pretty exhausting. I was having a lot harder time remembering the rules on the 9th essay than I did on the first. I had both criminal law and criminal procedure today, which means I had a easy start and I still have some of my more difficult subjects ahead of me: business entities and constitutional law. Adrenaline and endurance. That is what I need to get through tomorrow.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Its here.
After 8 weeks of studying, it is finally here. If you were going to describe the skill needed most for the bar exam it would be endurance. I have probably written over 200 practice essays, and now I only have 24 to go. I can only hope what I have done enough, because there is not much more I can do. My success will not hang on what I do tonight but on what I have done for the last 8 weeks. I know what I know and don't know what I don't know. No matter if I fail or pass, I have done about as much as I could do. One can always do more, but it feels like I have been studying for the for years. A good night sleep is what I need now. I will check in here when it is over and let you know how it went.
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