Day One Down, Feels Like Two

We just got back to our room after the first full day of the California bar exam, followed by a delicious chicken dinner in the hotel restaurant. We are exhausted. And stuffed. The chicken dinner we ordered came with a breast, a thigh, and a leg, together with carrots, asparagus, and rice. Neither of us finished, but it was super-tasty. If you’re going to be taking the bar exam, you might as well eat good food. Stay at a nice hotel.

Anyway, the test. In all the stuff I read beforehand, from various sites on the web, and in everything people told me, nobody really said what the exam is actually like, down to the nitty-gritty details. So I thought it might be helpful for some people to explain how it all goes down.

Other locations may be a little different. (E.g., in Los Angeles this morning there was an earthquake—a friend sent me a text message and said chandeliers were swinging and people were screaming during the third essay question). Here’s how it went down in San Mateo, July 2008.

Getting in the Door

The instructions we received in the mail from the state bar told us that people using laptops needed to be at the test site, seated, with their computers ready to go by 8:15. They recommended arriving about twenty minutes early and told us that we would need our admission tickets and a photo ID to get in. But that’s all they told us. So we showed up pretty early, before 7:30, because we were thinking that getting a couple thousand people through the doors and seated was going to take a while. Twenty minutes didn’t seem like nearly enough time. Turns out we were wrong. The instructions make sense, now that we know how the process works, but the stuff they leave out is the stuff that made us worried about getting up early enough.

When we arrived at about 7:20, there were already a bunch of people standing around. The doors were locked. Nobody knew what was supposed to be happening. New people would trickle in from the parking lot, walk past and say, “Are the doors open yet? Is this the right place?” It was very odd. So we just stood there, holding our stuff, as the crowd amassed. There weren’t nearly so many freaked out people as I expected. Most everybody looked ready to go. Nobody was studying outlines or doing any last-minute cramming. Fate was upon us.

About fifteen minutes before 8:00, a pudgy, middle-aged guy emerged from one of the doors. There were hundreds of people standing around out there, spread out over a pretty substantial area. Maybe seventy yards across and about twenty yards deep. I don’t know. But big enough that one guy standing near the door and talking in an ordinary voice was not going to be very helpful. He said something about how, after we got inside, people with briefcases or backpacks needed to leave them against the walls. Then he went back in.

A few minutes later, from another door, a woman emerged, but she didn’t come very far out. She said some stuff we couldn’t hear. She was basically talking to about four people who were standing next to her. It wasn’t very helpful. None of us really knew what was going on and we just wanted to go inside and set our stuff down.

Finally, around 8:00, they opened the doors and we all streamed in. That thing about the admission ticket and the photo ID? There was just a guy at the door kind of glancing at our tickets. He tried to be helpful. He told me my seat was in the third section over. He told my partner her seat was in the second section over. Wrong on both counts.

Once we got in, we just had to find the seat with our applicant number.

Sitting Down

The “desks” were ordinary tables, probably the eight foot long variety, lined up end to end. Two padded folding chairs to each table. Electrical outlets strung out along cables on the floor. Each chair had a badge with an applicant’s name and number, with a packet of papers.

Once we found our seats, we plugged in our computers, fired them up, and started the ExamSoft application. We also unpacked supplies from our clear plastic bags. I recommend a large ZipLoc bag, the kind that are about eight or ten inches on a side. I don’t know what volume they hold. Anyway, we all pulled out our pens and pencils and highlighters and clocks and earplugs.

Each group of thirty seats has a proctor, who was there telling us to get out our photo ID and our admission ticket, to leave them on the table in front of us throughout the exam. We also needed to put our badges onto the front of our clothing somewhere. You have to wear the badge while you’re taking the test, but then you leave it at your desk when you leave for lunch or at the end of the day.

Once you get set up at your table, you pretty much just wait for the instructions and “general announcements” to begin.

Instructions and General Announcements

Starting around 8:30, there was a lady at the front of the room who read some scripted instructions and “general announcements.” You have to write your name and applicant number on these colored covers that, I presume, your answers will go into once they’re downloaded and printed. She walked us through that. Then she told us the basic rules, where the bathrooms were, etc. Most of the rules are no-brainers, but there are some specific ones, like the fact that you’re not allowed to leave after they give the five minute warning. But you can leave any time before that.

The instructions are a little ominous. They’re completely scripted. The lady was clearly just reading them. And very mechanically. At the beginning she said something like, “The morning session will begin immediately at the conclusion of the general announcements.” When she said that, it was sort of like when you get onto the roller coaster and the harness comes down and they lock you in. There’s no getting off.

The First Moments of the Bar Exam

And, true to what she said, the exam began at the conclusion of the announcements. One minute you’re sitting there listening to someone tell you not to talk to anybody but the proctors during the exam, the next minute you’re on the clock with the most important test you’ve ever taken.

It’s a little weird. For the last few minutes before it started, I felt strange and detached. The bar exam is this terrifying event that I’d been anticipating for three years and, suddenly, actually being there seemed banal. It was just a big, cavernous room that has probably held livestock exhibitions before, with bare concrete floors, filled with some of the smartest and most irritating people I have ever met, many of whom are pacing or tapping or rocking or staring into space or trying to make small talk with the people next to them.

And that’s a weird thing in itself. Here are all these hundreds of people you have never met, but for this one period of three days, you are all on pretty much the same page. You are all thinking about the same stuff. Everybody is talking about stuff that Professor Honigsburg said in BAR/BRI. I heard somebody say, “Good ideeeeeeaa?” If you took BAR/BRI, you know exactly what that’s about.

When I could tell the instructions were coming to a close, I put in my foam earplugs. That made for an eerie feeling. The foam expanded and all the sound just went away and all I could hear was my own breathing. I kept reaching for my pocket because I wanted to pull out my iPhone and send a text message to somebody, anybody, but my phone was back in the car. My computer had me locked out of everything, so no internet. I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody. And the loudest thing I could hear was my own breathing. Immediately, I thought of that scene from Saving Private Ryan, shortly after they land on the beach and the sound goes muffled, everything goes in slow motion, and the perspective seems like it has been ripped out of reality and is hovering in some other dimension.

So there we were. The lady up front said we could begin. I started the time on my watch, which I had previously set to noon and stopped, for easier time-telling during the session. I typed “begin” on ExamSoft. I turned the page to open my exam.

Even in law school, when the stakes were much lower, there was something just a little bit terrifying every time an exam began. I just knew that for the next three hours, I would be doing nothing but reading, analyzing, and writing. The bar exam feels the same way. You just have to breathe and go.

For the first couple seconds, there was this weird feeling: “Wow. My first bar exam question.” But then, since I’ve studied and practice, instinct kicked in. I read the call of the question. I read the fact pattern. I started outlining. That’s really the only way to do it, I think. You just get mechanical, you go step by step, and you never, ever freak out.

The First Three Essay Questions

Last night, my partner said something about how the first three questions usually follow a pattern. The first one is a “racehorse” (there are so many issues to talk about that you write frantically for the entire hour), the second one is a “thinkum” (there are only a couple issues, but you have to grapple with them pretty hard), and the third one could be anything.

Our first question was on professional responsibility, a subject I hate. You’d think it should be easy, but it’s ridiculously complex. These questions are like minefields, filled with hidden duties just itching to be breached. But I got started without really stopping to contemplate anything. An hour later, I was still writing frantically.

You have to stop after an hour though. If you don’t, you will get yourself all screwed up.

So I turned the page. Constitutional law and the Fourth Amendment. Is that a criminal procedure crossover? Wait, the whole thing is about an executive order. I didn’t study executive orders. Everybody said the hot topic in constitutional law was individual rights. What is this monster?

About fifteen minutes into that second question, while I was staring at the fact pattern and trying to figure out what to write, I suddenly realized that it was a “thinkum.” And that the first one had been a “racehorse.” They were following the pattern.

The third question was a pretty normal contracts question. Nothing really weird. Contracts questions always leave this weird flavor in my mouth, but I never do particularly badly on them. This one felt like every other contracts question I have written: I have no idea how well I did. But I’m glad it felt normal.

So those were the three essays. A “racehorse,” a “thinkum,” and a “whatever.” Once I realized we were following the pattern, even though it gave me no real help answering the questions, I felt better. It freed me up on that constitutional law question. I realized I could be creative. I remembered the email from my boss yesterday, who wished me good luck and said that when I got that one question when I wouldn’t have any idea, “bullshit works.”

Talking to a few people later, it seems most everybody had the same experience with that second question. During that question I did glance around and saw quite a few empty screens well into the hour. A lot of people were just sitting there staring at the fact pattern. So that was probably one of those questions that makes or breaks you, where they separate the sheep from the goats.

Lunch

Once you finish the morning essays, it’s not like you can just get up and take off to lunch. You have to sit there while they collect everybody’s scratch paper and answer covers and whatnot. That takes about twenty minutes. It’s pretty excruciating. I just wanted to get out of there, eat something, go to the bathroom, whatever. But they make you sit there and wait.

Most people just stayed around the exam site, eating lunch in their cars or whatever. We drove over to a Taco Bell we reconnoitered yesterday because we wanted to eat something familiar. We just got our food to go and drove back to eat in the parking lot. Then we went back to the doors, locked again, and went through pretty much the same drill as the morning session.

The First Performance Test

After lunch, any nervousness from the morning was completely gone. I just wanted to take a nap. But there I was, getting locked in for another three hours.

First, before we started, they had us give them fingerprints. While we were out at lunch, they left a little inkpad and two separately wrapped moist towelettes on each table. They require you to give fingerprints to make sure you are who you claim to be. Impostors not allowed. So unless you’re like that dude from Gattaca, there’s no faking it. If you refuse to give them fingerprints, they give you a Rule XII warning notice.

Our first performance test was a refreshingly straightforward affair. The instructions were simple, the materials were easy to understand, and the assignment was just an ordinary neutral memorandum. There were a lot of things to discuss, so it was a little racehorse-y, but other than that we thought it was pretty easy, especially after some of the practice tests we did. A couple of those were downright painful.

The end of the performance test is just like the end of the essay session. You sit there and wait for about twenty minutes while the proctors collect everybody’s stuff.

One Day Down

Only one day is finished, but it feels like two. When I studied, there were several days when I put in the equivalent of two three-hour sessions, and they were tiring, but never so exhausting as this. All in all, though, I have been pleasantly surprised that the bar exam is nowhere near as scary or difficult as I expected. And, really, when you think about it, there is no reason it would be any different. If you study hard and you do a lot of practice questions, how much variation can there really be? There are only so many things they can ask and all your essays follow pretty much the same pattern: Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion, Issue, Rule Analysis, Conclusion, and so on. Even when they throw you a weird question about the constitutionality of an executive order, the range of possibilities is not excessive. You can make something up. Bullshit works.

Of course, we still have the MBE tomorrow—that’s 200 multiple choice questions—and another round of three essays and a performance test on Thursday. But we know that professional responsibility, constitutional law, contracts, and maybe even criminal procedure are probably off the table. They still might hit us with a vicious performance test, which worries us a little, but we’re in it now. Things are not going badly. We’re not demoralized.

Maybe somebody taking a future bar exam will stumble on this page and find it helpful to see the mechanics of how the thing plays out. It’s not that bad. Most of the proctors are very nice. A couple of them got a little irritated when people stood up before we were dismissed, but otherwise they’re not mean or anything. Just make sure you study and do lots of practice questions. They can’t give you anything so outlandish that your brain will melt and drip out of your ears.

But now it’s time to relax. I’ll probably post again tomorrow and tell you about the MBE.