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The Mother of All MPRE Stories

Tuesday, December 4, 2007 2:50 PM - By David Lat

MPRE Model Professional Responsibility Exam Above the Law blog.jpgTo our surprise, yesterday’s open thread on the MPRE generated over 200 comments. Who knew that this topic would incite such interest?

Since you’re all so interested in talking about the MPRE, here’s more. A reader sent us a long but entertaining story about the test — which you can read in full, after the jump.

We don’t think it rises to the level of the headhunter lunch from hell. But still, it’s pretty good. It appears below.

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my third year of law school (midwestern state school), i lived with three other guys in my class. three of us including myself took the mpre in the fall of our last year. we all passed.

our other roommate decided to take it in the spring of his last year. this guy was pretty serious about school and studied hard for the test. in addition, he was a somewhat typical law student, always stressing about school, jobs, etc.

anyway, he took the mpre and thought he did pretty well. he waited the six weeks or whatever it took for his exam scores to come back. during the week or two before the results were mailed to him, he would always make a big deal when he checked the mail, noting that his results had not come in yet.

so, the three of us roommates got to thinking — maybe we should snatch the results in the mail and mess with our high strung, highly motivated roommate. class schedules worked out that there was always one of us home when the mail came and before our roommate arrived back from class.

when the big day came, we opened his test results — he knocked it out of the park — i think he got a score in the 120s (if that’s possible). so after we got the score we went down to Kinko’s and did some really good photocopies of the results.

on the bottom of the page, there were some coded numbers that were the same font, size, etc. as the exam score. so we made some “adjustments,” and a new copy of the test result, showing our buddy had scored a 74 on the test. he needed a 75 for practice in DC. (those numbers might be off — but i’m pretty sure it was 75 or 85 for DC). we sealed the envelope back very carefully and waited the next day to put it back in the mail.

as expected, our roommate comes home the next day and sees the envelope in the mail. the rest of us are waiting in the living room. now, the guy we played this practical joke on is a fairly loud and boisterous guy. so when he opened the door to our apartment, he yelled at the top of his lungs, “Oh, shit, my test results are here.”

mind you, he had yet to open the envelope. so he goes into the living room and opens the test results in front of us. the tv was on as he opened the letter. he stood standing in the middle of the living room for about five to ten seconds, just staring at the letter. this five to ten second period seemed like a year to us, since we were just sitting there waiting for him to say something.

finally, one of my buddies said, “Are we happy, did u pass?” (i think that was stolen from Jules talking to Vincent in Pulp Fiction). At this point, the guy we were playing the prank on just looked at my friend and said, “yea we’re happy, i passed.” He then turned around and went into his room.

now as experienced pranksters, you often plan things a certain way, and can see a few possibilities in terms of how things might shake out. we did not expect him to tell us that he passed. we figured he’d blow up and left off some steam, and then we would let him in on the joke. so as we sat in the living room contemplating our next move. we decided just to let him go for a little bit, and tell him in a couple of hours that we were just pulling his leg.

at this point, two other things happened for which we were not prepared. our buddy had accepted a job in DC for a place he clerked for the previous summer. it was his dream jo,b doing what he really wanted to do, and he was actually excited about working there.

so our buddy makes two calls: (1) to his boss in DC telling him/her that he failed the MPRE, and (2) to his mom telling her he failed the MPRE. both were cool about, his boss said he could start his job and take the MPRE over. his mom was cool and told him not to worry about.

this happened in the afternoon. our buddy, who now thinks his life is over, has to go to a legal ethics class. my friend, who was in on the gag, texted him during class to say that he passed. he was a bit confused, and he had to leave class to confront the guy who texted him. he told him that we were messing with him and that he actually passed.

he was relieved. he forgave us. we are all still friends and still hangout.

(84) Comments
Posted in: Attorney Misconduct, Bar Exams, Law Schools, Legal Ethics, Pranks

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