Elie here: It’s finally over. The horror, the exhilaration, the time spent in New Jersey.
Our man Sam is finished with the bar exam. How did it go? How drunk did he get afterwards?
Sam walks us through the experience — the blow-by-blow experience, from the car to the end…
Last week, we told you that not much seemed to happen during the administration of the New York bar exam. In truth, in New York (and New Jersey), shenanigans usually don’t start until after the state boards of law examiners get their hands on the exams.
Still, things did seem quiet in the tri-state area this bar season. They were more dead than the proverbial curious cat.
But if we move upstate to Albany, there was an actual dead cat. Or perhaps we should say “horrifically murdered” cat? Try not to eat lunch (or take a bar exam) directly after reading this story…
Continue reading “Dead Cat Mars Usually Lovely Albany Bar Exam Experience”
Is the bar exam like a rat race? Well, when there are actual rats in the building....
If you just completed the 2012 bar exam, congratulations. For many of you, the bar exam will be the last test you ever take in your life. How good does that feel?
Special congratulations to those of you who just emerged from three days of bar exam misery, either because you took the bar in a state with a three-day test or because you took the bar in two different states. I took the New York and New Jersey bar exams back to back — and I had to take New York up in Albany, which meant hours of driving with a fried mind — so I feel your pain.
Pain and the bar exam go hand in hand. Earlier this week, we shared with you bar exam horror stories from Virginia and North Carolina.
Today we have many more bar exam dispatches. Read on for stories of horror and heroism, reports of rodents and other creepy critters, and claims of shady behavior….
UPDATE (7/27/2012, 11 AM): Please note the UPDATE appended below regarding the Virginia bar exam.
Staci here. Last weekend, hundreds of bar exam studiers crowded into the Javits Center to take BAR/BRI’s practice MBE for the New York bar exam. How did that turn out? Not so great, because apparently the average score was rather low. You can imagine how badly people are freaking out if their score was worse than the average.
And this might sound sick, but in addition to their practice MBE scores, some people are also worrying about their social lives, or lack thereof. But not to worry, because Mr. Bar Exam has got some sage advice for you on both fronts….
Continue reading “Mr. Bar Exam: Parents Friends Just Don’t Understand…”
Elie here: We’re nearing the halfway point of bar exam study season. The pressure is stepping up. Suddenly getting killed on the practice questions isn’t as funny anymore.
Seems like an excellent time to blow off steam with bar exam “party girls,” as Mr. Bar Exam explains…
Continue reading “Mr. Bar Exam: Bar Exam Is A Big Party, If You Don’t Need To Know The Answers”
Staci here. Do people who went to lower-ranked law schools have an edge on other bar examinees in terms of subject matter mastery? After all, lower-ranked law schools tend to have a much heavier focus on bar-related courses than you’ll find at HYS, CCN, or other top-ranked law schools.
For example, at most second-tier law schools, you’ll find that the majority of these courses are mandatory (no ifs, ands, or buts about it): Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, Property, Torts, and Evidence.
See what Mr. Bar Exam has to say about this — plus catch a glimpse of a BAR/BRI professor playing a special little ditty on a banjo, just for the Above the Law audience….
– the total cost for hotel accommodations during the July 2012 New York Bar Exam at the Desmond Hotel and Conference Center in Albany, one of the NY BOLE-approved test sites. Their “special rate” for the bar exam is $209.00 per night. The same room goes for $179.00 per night the following week.
The results of the February New York bar exam are available for private look-up.
They’ve actually been available for nine hours. If you didn’t know that, it’s because the New York State Board of Law Examiners decided to release this crucial information at midnight last night/this morning.
Who does that? Well, remember that a couple of years ago the NY BOLE accidentally released the results for full public viewing and then pulled it back. This is not an organization that has its act together.
In any event, let’s check out some of the late night reactions to the bar results…
Continue reading “New York February Bar Exam Results Released Under Cloak Of Darkness”
Most law school graduates pass the bar exam with flying colors on the first try. Law schools, of course, are ecstatic when their graduates pass, because it’s something that they can brag about in their brochures. Other law school graduates aren’t so lucky — they fail, and they fail hard. But law schools don’t want you to know about the people who fail the bar exam. They’d like to shove those dirty statistics far, far away from public view.
So what happens when a law school’s graduates fail the bar exam in such great numbers that it becomes national news? Does that law school hang its head in shame and admit defeat? Or does it figure out a way to game the numbers so that next time, it won’t be so embarrassed?
As with most things having to do with numbers, this law school has allegedly made an ill-advised decision to appear more appealing to the public (and the American Bar Association). This law school is allegedly offering its students money in the hopes that they won’t take this summer’s bar exam. But which law school?
* Only in Texas can a judge get paid leave after a video of him beating his daughter’s ass goes viral. Makes you wonder about the kind of crazy sh*t you’d need to do to get stuck with unpaid leave. [KRIS TV]
* A federal judge has ordered Paul Ceglia to return from Ireland to produce more of his hidden destroyed missing evidence. Oh, Facebook, always trying to steal his lucky charms. [paidContent]
* Memo to the NBA: you know you’re playing on the wrong court, right? On the bright side, at least we don’t have to worry about this happening with the WNBA. Or anyone caring about it if it did. [Bloomberg]
* Bar passage rates for first-time takers in New York were up by half a percentage point. Biggest contributing factor: I didn’t take the New York exam. Yeah, you’re welcome. [New York Law Journal]
* Joe Francis is suing over a debt dispute and vows to take the it to the Ninth Circuit if he loses. He needs to realize that no one cares about what he does unless it involves boobs. [Washington Post]
* Don’t be fat and then smush a lawyer at Shea Stadium. You’ll break her back, she’ll sue, and you might be known as the guy who got fat people banned from the upper deck. [New York Post]
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
Keep reading »
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
Keep reading »
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