Bar Review Diaries: The End Is The Beginning

If you took the bar exam last month, you might be trying hard to forget the experience, or you might be flying far, far away on an exotic vacation. Maybe you are counting the days until results come out in November, or maybe you’re frantically searching for employment before those organcolor> bill collectors start knocking.

This is the final installment of the Bar Review Diaries. We hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into the lives of three recent law school graduates as they prepared for the bar.

Let’s check in one last time with Mariah, Christopher and Mike, to see where they are headed next.

And if anyone has cool bar trips coming up or strange end-of-summer plans, please share them with us in the comments….

As you may have gathered from previous posts, Christopher will soon start his job in immigration law:

I’ll be visiting friends and family in the Midwest and New York before staring work in September doing immigrants’ rights advocacy at the Law Office of Fernando Quiñones in San Francisco.

Sponsored

Relaxing with family after the long months of studying sounds quite nice. (As long as your last name isn’t Lambert.)

Mariah will be chillin’ with her people in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains, before — wait, that can’t be right — going back for more school?

I’m spending this month in Carson City, Nevada, helping out at a legal services firm that also does a lot of work on the reservations in the northern half of the state. The work is interesting, I get to spend some time with family, and Lake Tahoe is right there. Can’t complain.

Then I’m moving to Seattle for a year to get my Masters in Library Science, with the ultimate plan of becoming a law librarian. After three years of law school, it is nice to finally be in the home stretch!

Good luck finishing up the last bit of school. Hopefully it’s a breeze after these last three years.

UPDATE (2:15 PM): If you’re interested in learning more about law librarianship as a career, read this post, Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Law Librarian.

Sponsored

Finally, some recent bar-takers are very employed and may be jetting off to Paris or Buenos Aires before starting work. But a lot of you are probably staying home, and diving deep into the job search. Mike can empathize:

Since the exam I have hung out with friends, won a few bucks playing poker in Atlantic City, and even read a novel (remember those?). Life is good after the Bar.

Yet, short respite over, I’m back in the library editing cover letters and shopping my resume around. I’m calling in all favors and exploring the extent of my network. Yes, the job market is slow, but I have already been surprised by how many opportunities there are and I’m taking advantage of them.

For those of you still looking, make building your career your only priority. No matter how intense your bar preparation was, it’s time to double-down. This is more important.

For those of you with jobs, enjoy your bar trips! You earned them and you will be paying for them soon enough. See Karma.

And, BOOM, that wraps up the Bar Review Diaries. Huge thanks to our guest bloggers, who devoted considerable studying time to Above the Law. (And none of them was late even once!)

Again, if you’ve got any crazy bar trip stories (regarding yourself or anyone else), job search tips, or other summer oddities, please share in the comments.

Disclosure: This series is sponsored by Themis Bar Review, which is an ATL advertiser.


Christopher Danzig is a writer in Oakland, California. He previously covered legal technology for InsideCounsel magazine. Follow Chris on Twitter @chrisdanzig or email him at cdanzig@gmail.com. You can read more of his work at chrisdanzig.com.