The Bar Exam Is Dumb

I have been studying, REALLY studying for 2.5 days now, and after reading a few outlines and doing a handful of MBE problem sets I have concluded this exam is stupid. Not just stupid because I have too much to learn and too little time to learn it or because it's keeping me in the office for 14 hours a day instead of chasing Landon around the downstairs- it's stupid because it's a TERRIBLE way to license lawyers. I now know contracts and torts- really know those areas of law. I could write you a small treatise and give you the exceptions and yet I still can't get more than 75% of those practice questions right. I come to questions where I recognize the issue immediately, I know the exception they're trying to test you on, and I read the answers and find either zero or three that appear correct. And even if you ignore how horribly written the MBE is (I know nothing about the MPT, Texas essays, or Procedure & Evidence exams because I haven't looked at any yet, but I'm sure they're badly written too), I still can't get over the fact that this has basically nothing to do with practicing law. I will not be a physician in the ER who needs to have facts and medical terms just sitting on the tip of my tongue. No corporate client will call me yelling "get me the answer to this corporations question STAT". There will always be time to double check, ask a colleague, or run a quick Westlaw search before calling them back. And most lawyers specialize - I will never need most of what is being crammed into my head (I'm looking at you, civil procedure and evidence).

But, despite the fact this exam is stupid, I'm plugging along fairly well in the studying for it. The office at the firm has been a godsend. It has floor to ceiling windows with a beautiful, calming view of Austin, no computer, and a door I can keep closed. I raid the diet cokes and hot tea from the kitchen, get lunch from the cafe downstairs, and grab hand fulls of chocolate from the employment office. When I'm taking a mini trip to get more food or caffeine, I am studying - reading outlines, reading the CMR (a very helpful little book!), doing practice sets, yelling at the answers in the practice sets... But I think I'm learning things - or at least memorizing things. In four hours I went from getting 8/18 in evidence to 15/18- and I still don't really understanding what hearsay is (I just know the rules that govern it).

I'm plugging through the MBE topics until Tuesday, and then I guess I'll tackle Texas Procedure and Evidence, and then the essays. The essays still scare me. I'm good at writing and making stuff up, but I feel like on the Bar the questions are so short and focused at one particular issue that it's hard to BS. You have to know things and know them quickly.

Tonight my sister came to babysit Landon for a few hours so JP and I could go on a date (Chuy's - very delicious). I had to limit myself to one margarita so I could keep studying afterward, but as always it was nice to sit and enjoy each other's company. My schedule is up with Landon at 6:30, soak him up until 9 when I go to the office, come home around 4:30 to play with him while JP goes to swim, go back to the office by 6:30 and stay until 10:30. I'm so happy that in stressful times like now I can completely rely on the strength of my relationship- I may worry about failing the Bar, but I don't worry about us one bit. Now I'm headed back to the office to finish Evidence. I hate ending each day knowing I won't get back to the topic until maybe the day before the Exam, especially because I don't feel any mastery of them, but there isn't time to give any topic more than one day of review.

So I'm pressing on. Not feeling great about it, but not feeling terrified either. At least not yet.