Bar Exams, Booze, And Blow

Memories of Brian Cuban's adventures in bar exam-taking and how alcohol and drug use affected those efforts.

As a nation of hopeful law school grads sit for the bar exam this week, it brings back memories of my adventures in bar exam-taking and how alcohol and drug use affected those efforts.  I have taken three-and-one-half bar exams in two different states. The math in that is easy. I failed it twice. The one-half being the Texas Bar exam which allows you to pass one part and fail another without failing the entire exam.

The first bar exam was Pennsylvania in July 1986, just after I graduated from Pitt Law. From an addiction and studying standpoint at the time, the upside was that I had not yet discovered the “joy” of that evil white powder, cocaine. The downside was that I had been a problem drinker or an “alcoholic” dating back to my sophomore at Penn State, and drinking had become my crutch to throw a blanket over a host of other mental health issues including clinical depression and two different eating disorders (traditional and exercise bulimia).

Since I had no desire to be a lawyer after having gone to law school for all the wrong reasons, taking the bar exam seemed more like a law school peer, societal, and family expectation than something I needed to practice my trade. Bar exam and post-bar job-plan talk in the Pitt Law School break room ramped up in my third year and I wanted to be part of the conversation if not for anything other than acceptance and validation.  I also had to show something for my school loans and minimal studying effort that got me through in the bottom half of my class. It therefore seemed reasonable to me to take the path of least resistance to exam day.  I took no bar review course. I obtained BARBRI bar review books from someone who had previously taken the exam. It was a foregone conclusion to me that I would fail, as I felt I had in all other aspects of my life.

I did resolve to myself that for those two weeks of studying, I would not drink. I dressed up in my only suit, put my bar review books in a briefcase, and took the bus to downtown Pittsburgh where I studied in the food court of an office tower where I knew a lot of my classmates had summer clerkships (so they would think I was one of them), and where a woman I had a law school crush on always ate lunch (so she would see me and realize what she missed).

In the week running up to the exam, the pressure and fear of failure took its toll and I began to drink. I, however, stuck to “acceptable drinking.” As long as I had the suit on, I went to where I knew young lawyers hung out after work and got drunk with them, embellishing, lying, and fantasizing to anyone who would listen about my incredible future as a licensed attorney.

I remember the sickening feeling the morning of the bar exam, being sure I would fail. No thought of maybe a drinking problem and other mental-health issues were part of the problem in how I approached the test.  At the time, the Pennsylvania bar exam was a two-day exam, the multistate on day one, then Pennsylvania-law specific essays the next day. To my credit, I did not drink between day one and two of the exam.

Less than three months later, on Labor Day 1986, I took a Greyhound bus to Dallas, Texas, to live with my older brother Mark and seek my future.  In November of that year, I would find out that I passed the Pennsylvania bar exam. I couldn’t believe it. I, however, had resolved that I would not be returning to Pennsylvania.  The Texas bar exam would be next.

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Unfortunately, before I took the Texas bar exam in 1987, I would discover cocaine in a hotel bathroom. I instantly became addicted to it. First psychologically, then physically dependent.  For the few moments of that cocaine high, the highest score on the Texas bar exam and countless Biglaw job offers were in my future. Cocaine would become an integral part of my daily personal and work life as well as my bar study routine for the 1987 Texas bar exam. It became more important than passing.

Once again, I did not take a bar review prep course. That money was better spent on booze and blow.  My studying was done in the lunchroom of the job I had working for the city of Dallas. Between the bars, blow, and studying, I was not doing any work and resigned before I was about to get fired.

The two nights before the exam in Fort Worth, Texas, were spent in a bedbug-infested, raunchy, “no-tell motel” room.  In addition to books and flash cards, my study aids included an eight ball of cocaine, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and two liters of TAB to mix with it. Looking back, all that was missing were ladies of the night charging by the hour to quiz me with the flash cards. Needless to say, I failed the exam.

My next try at the Texas exam would not come until February 1990. I had gone into insurance litigation management, so it no longer became something that I felt pressured to do. My company, however, told me they would pay for my bar review course if I want to take it again, so I said why the hell not. I vowed that this time would be different.

Deep in cocaine and alcohol addiction, the prospect of a result different than the first try was not promising but I told myself that with a bar review course, I would pass.  In the end, there was not much of a difference study wise. Cycles in addiction repeat themselves. The booze and the white powder took precedence, but this time, I had one thing that I did not have at my previous employer: an office door that closed. I could spend as much time as I needed during the day studying, and this time, I was able to pass part one of the exam.  That July, I passed part two, and in in the midst of a major drinking problem, cocaine addiction, an eating disorder, and no concept of recovery, I finally became a Texas-licensed attorney.  A privilege that would, as the bar exams did, take a distant second fiddle to addiction in the next 16 years as I almost lost everything before finding recovery.

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Good luck to everyone who takes the bar exam this week. I hope you all pass and your road to your “ticket” was more conventional and quicker than mine. If any of what I say in small or large part hits home, talk to someone. Today is as good as it is ever going to get.


Brian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Addicted Lawyer: Tales Of The Bar, Booze, Blow & Redemption (affiliate link). A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.