pls hndle thx

Pls Hndle Thx: On Multiple Bars & Migrant Workers

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Ed. note: Have a question for next week? Send it in to advice@abovethelaw.com.

ATL,
I am a junior associate with a good job, but sadly, job security for attorneys in this market is virtually non-existent. Especially in the secondary market in which I work. If I were ever to lose my job, finding another one here would be extremely difficult, despite excellent credentials: T-14 law school, honors, moot court, executive editor of journal, and substantive corporate-law related experience.
Thus, I am considering taking bar exams in some of the major markets (NY, IL, CA, TX) so that I would be licensed elsewhere and could hopefully job-search in a number of cities. Assuming I can still meet and exceed my billable requirement and maintain positive reviews, would I be wasting my time acquiring additional licenses because of the difficulties lateraling from secondary markets or would I be wise to collect bar licenses to expand my job search into several cities should I ever find myself unemployed?
Garbage Collector

Dear Garbage Collector,
Yes…let’s say you embark on this “ingenious” plan of yours, and start scheduling two bar exams a year. What could possibly go wrong?
For starters: after slogging away for 14 hours at work, you’ll arrive home, exhausted. You won’t feel like studying for the 87th day in the row, but since your ringer’s been off for the last three months and you’ve been ignoring personal emails, your friends aren’t talking to you anymore and you might as well crack the BAR/BRI books again this evening. So as usual, you pound a latte and a Marie Callender and study in your filthy apartment until you become delirious and pass out, only to wake up four hours later, pick some rumpled clothes from the floor and drive to work where you’ll attempt to stay awake by eating a bag of Sun Chips having a fan blasting cold air two inches away from your face. But your billables suffer anyway and you’re too lazy to pad them and this all comes to a head when you eventually miss a key issue when reviewing ground leases for a diligence memo. The head partner calls you into his office and fires you, so you text your girlfriend that you got fired and ask if she wants to come over and test you with crim flashcards, at which point she calls you screaming that you’re a selfish asshat who’s turning into Howard Hughes from The Aviator, but you point out that while you may have lost your job because of your incessant bar taking, you now have a large selection of places where you can look for new jobs. After your girlfriend dumps you and retrieves her Wii, you start papering every law firm located in New York, Illinois, California and Texas with your resume, and the three firms that are hiring in those jurisdictions look at your credentials and Google your name, whereupon they discover that you’ve taken four bar exams in the space of two years and assume you are a polygamist with wives in different cities, so they tear up your resume and notify Dateline.
My recommendation is to calm down, stop having heart attacks over a job that you do not appear to be in danger of losing and try for once not to be a complete nerd.
Your friend,
Marin

Dude, where do you want to live?
I don’t know how old you are, but I’m assuming you are older than 16. If I’m right, that means you are way too old to still be playing “where do you want to live when you grow up.” I mean, come on: you live in a “secondary market” but could see yourself living in New York or California or Illinois or Texas? If this lawyer thing doesn’t work out, I’m sure you could still be a firefighter, or an astronaut, or maybe even a ballerina.
You’re a lawyer, not a migrant worker. Make a choice about where you want to live and then focus on figuring out how to maintain gainful employment in that city. You’re saying that it might be too hard to find another job in the market where you live, and so, as a hedge against that, you want to preemptively take multiple bar exams? Sure, that will be so much easier than just hanging onto the job you’ve got.
There’s prudent risk avoidance and then there’s paranoia, and you my friend are on the M. Night Shyamalan side of the ledger. If the axe falls and you have to look to another market, you can take the bar then. But it’s silly to prepare for a worst-case scenario future to the detriment of the present. You don’t spend time practicing Morse code with your eyelids just in case you get hit by a bus tomorrow, do you?
Unless of course you are ashamed of yourself because you passed an “easy” bar and just want to prove to yourself that you can pass a more difficult exam. That’s still psychotic but only you know what haunts you when trying to make love to a real woman. If taking the CA bar will get you off the Cialis, then go for it. I mean, that’s why UC – Hastings students sit for the exam, right?
— The Unbreakable Village in the Water looking for Signs of the Sixth Happening.

Do you have a question for next week’s Pls Hndle Thx? Send it to advice@abovethelaw.com.
Earlier: Prior installments of pls hndle thx

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