Done with the bar exam

Wrists still work, although they need some rest. The essay day was okay. There were one or two essays where I read all the way through the fact pattern and got to "What are the rights of the parties?" and hadn't spotted a single issue. But when I thought long enough, I could come up with various ways for everyone to sue each other. I think that means I'm ready to be a real lawyer.

The criminal law essay involved a guy who hired somebody to kill his pregnant wife. When the wife saw the killer trying to break in, she grabbed a knife, yelled "I'll take this into my own hands!" and stabbed herself until she fell down unconscious. What deranged mind came up with that one?

Immediately after the bar, I checked my email and learned that a close family friend had died. So I didn't feel much like celebrating. I called my ER doctor brother, who told me she was hit by a car and gave me some unnecessarily gory details. That made me feel much worse. I guess the result is the same, but it was comforting to think that she died peacefully. When I heard how violent her death was, it seemed so random and unfair.

She was one of my parents' best friends. She helped take care of me when I was little. Her house was always open to all the kids in our community, and when we grew up we would still gather there every Thanksgiving. She had a grandson who was almost the same age as K, and would trade stories with me whenever I talked to her.

Today I'm going to Boston to return my bar books and iPod. Tonight we're driving to New York for the funeral.

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I did the MBE and it wasn't so bad

Done with Day 1 of the bar exam.

Yesterday I blew off the last few study items on my list and took a mental health day. I finally used the birthday gift certificate from my sister-in-law and got a massage and my first-ever facial. Then I went to see a movie, and spent the evening hanging with the family. At night I slept like a baby (meaning I woke up a few times, but got back to sleep) and woke up feeling relaxed and back to my old self. Which meant that I was honestly happy, not just convincing-myself happy, that the bar exam was finally here and I could stop spending every spare moment answering multiple-choice questions.

I got there a little early and took a walk around. A comparison between the bar exam and labor popped into my head -- both take lots of preparation and are anticipated with horror, but once you get through them, they're done and you never have to think about them again. (Until you get to the next state or kid.) But then I realized that labor was the most excruciating pain of my life and there was no way the bar exam could compare. I've given birth. I can handle way worse than this.

These thoughts comforted me while I ate a second breakfast. My main concern with the MBE morning session was eating enough. When I'm hungry I get distracted and can only think about food. I ate enough to focus during the morning, but in the afternoon there were lots of criminal law questions and those distract me too. I always start imagining myself as the criminal defendant and daydream elaborate scenarios where I plead for justice or scheme to evade it.

The exam conditions were more humane than I expected. The proctors were nice, we had plenty of room, the bathrooms were clean, nobody seemed to be freaking out. The actual test was tough, but so similar to the Barbri practice tests, right down to the typeface, that I felt pretty comfortable.

I finished both sessions way early, earning glares when I was one of the first ones to walk out. (I did check some of my answers, but I didn't think I was going to change anything and I really wanted to leave. So I left.) Between sessions, I walked into the city and treated myself to a fancy lunch.

The best part was when I got home. JW opened the door with a big smile, and K exclaimed, "Mommy, I bought you some ice cream!" And he did, too!

So, to quote Dr. Seuss, today is gone, today was fun, tomorrow is another one. I think tomorrow will be brutal. Not just because it's so much more material. And not just because, unlike today, I doubt I can crank out five essays in two hours. Given my past wrist problems, I will be medicated and possibly bandaged and am hoping that I will finish the day with full use of my hands. Wish me luck.

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Optimism

Yesterday morning K put up stiff resistance to leaving the house. I set up the stroller while he ran around inside. When he became interested in the door hardware, I seized the opportunity to pull his shoes on while explaining how the door worked. Relieved that we were finally ready to go, I hustled him outside and told him to listen for the click when the door closed, because that was the sound of the door hardware clicking into place.

You know what else happens when the door closes? It locks, and you need a key to open it again. I had carefully checked to make sure the key was in my purse, which was just inside the door, right next to K's backpack containing everything he needed for school.

I walked K to daycare, formulating a plan. If JW couldn't bring me a key, I would walk to school or to the library. It was hot and it would be a long walk, but at least I'd get some exercise. I could find a computer with free Internet access to look up bar study materials or track down a friend willing to share, and I could stand to skip eating for one day.

I borrowed the daycare phone and called JW, who couldn't leave work. I told the woman who runs the place my tale of woe and she immediately said, "How can I help? We'll take care of K, of course. And let me give you some money for the bus." "Oh no, it's okay," I replied, "I can walk to school." "To Harvard?" she said. "That's much too far." She handed me a ten dollar bill and said, "You can buy yourself lunch too."

I walked home to check the back door, then waited for the bus. When it finally came, I asked the bus driver if he could make change for a ten. He told me I could only get a bus ticket good for the remaining $8.50. "But this is the only money I have," I said. He shrugged. "You can get off at the next stop and ask somebody for change."

So I got off. I sat down on the stoop at the side of the diner and started to cry. I'm being silly, I thought. So I'll get change. Big deal. I should just be grateful that Dina lent me the money in the first place. I have a plan. And all of this is my own fault anyway.

I pride myself on staying calm and keeping things in perspective. When I have a problem, I figure out a way to handle it and accept what I can't change. I am an optimist, sometimes annoyingly so. I focus on the positive in every situation and am grateful for it. This is why when people ask me how law school / work / studying for the bar / motherhood is going, I honestly tell them how happy I am and how much I enjoy it. Life is good. My problems are very small in comparison.

But for a few minutes, I sat there on the side of the road and cried. Just for a few minutes, I let myself acknowledge that the bar exam was in two days. I was locked out of the house with no books, phone, or wallet. We had received terrible family news recently. JW had been sick. I had re-injured my wrist and hadn't been sleeping well. A work situation had been hanging over my head for weeks and I didn't like how I was being treated. And the stupid bus driver wouldn't even cut me a break.

Just for a few minutes, I squelched the little voice that said, Yes, but K is fine and JW is starting to feel better and you're fine and everything is fine, and look how nice Dina was to you, and that total stranger who stopped and offered to lend his cell phone, and aren't you grateful that even when you have nothing but the clothes on your back there are so many places you can go and people you can turn to. All that is true. But for a few minutes it felt good to let myself be stressed out.

I think there's a continuum between optimism and denial. If you convince yourself that everything is good, then it must be true. Maybe I was heading too far in the denial direction. But isn't all this in the "accept things you can't change" category? Feeling stressed and upset is unproductive if you can't do anything about it, isn't it? But maybe my mini-breakdown today showed me that feelings don't have to be productive.

(And thus, I learned a lesson, meaning it was a good thing that I cried on the sidewalk. Also, it is good that I have been up since 3:30 a.m. because now I have time to blog and exercise.)

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Library!

I abandoned today's Barbri session after about fifteen minutes, deciding that studying solo was far preferable to hearing some guy drone on and on about the rules of evidence. Cutting through the law library on my way to the student center, I looked wistfully up toward the fourth floor reading room where I spent so many hours napping in a comfy armchair (and occasionally studying). I decided to ask the librarian if she would let me back into my favorite study space, just for the day. "You're an alum?" she asked. "Here, let me get you a library card." And she handed me a permanent pass to get in! (Apparently all the June grads get an email about this. What else do they tell them that I'll never know?)

I know most people are perfectly happy never to return to their law library, but I love this place. When I graduated, I felt like I would never find such a perfect work space again. Knowing I can work from here whenever I want, forever, made my day.

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Those Harvard guys

In conversation with somebody from town, JW told him that I was studying for the bar. "Are you doing Barbri?" he asked. "A friend of mine from Suffolk was doing that, and this guy from Harvard asked for his notes because he missed class. Can you believe that? He was pretty annoyed, but he gave him the notes. The Harvard guy never went to class again and just studied from my friend's notes, and he passed the bar!"

"That's not right," I said. "I wouldn't have given him the notes for every class."

"No, it's not right! My friend was really upset. And you know what else? My friend has been practicing law in Massachusetts ever since. The Harvard guy didn't even become a lawyer -- he left to go work at a think tank or something."

"A lot of Harvard people see their degree as a stepping stone to something else," I replied.

"Yeah, those Harvard guys don't stick around, and half of them don't even practice law."

"Those Harvard people," I agreed. "You can't count on 'em!"

"So where did you go to law school?" he asked.

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Five years, part 2

Part 1 left off at K's birth. When I think about it now, life with a newborn seems sort of awful, but apparently at the time I didn't think so (except for the C-section recovery part). Which is good because we may just do it again one of these days. I did spend most of my 29th birthday in tears, but they were wiped away when my baby gave me his first smile.

After a few months at home, I went off to my summer jobs at two different firms. My mother came to stay with us for the summer to look after K, and I learned about the joys of pumping at work. I made several career decisions that summer: I picked a firm, turned away from patent law, and discovered that maybe I did want to be a corporate lawyer after all. And reaffirmed that I do not have what it takes to be a stay-at-home mom.

In the fall, K started daycare and I returned to school. (And CT got married!) K was a tiger for his first Halloween, and got his first haircut a few weeks later. Despite my chronic sleep deprivation, which made me feel like the semester was going to be a washout, it turned out fine in the end.

Life seemed to accelerate once K finally started sleeping through the night (at 10 months old, god help us). Winter term. Spring semester. K turned 1 and started walking. I turned 30 and decided life was good.

I returned to The Firm for the summer and pondered being a tax lawyer. They let me take a vacation day to pretend-graduate with my class, but it wasn't much fun. I had my last summer vacation, during which I sprained my ankle twice, did too much work, and met my niece.

During my last semester of law school, I interned at the AG's office, took some fun classes, and fed K butter. K said "Mommy" for the first time and dressed up as a bat for his second Halloween. K took his first shower. Oh, and history was made.

I graduated from law school (more or less) and, after a few weeks off, went back to The Firm for real. I learned a lot in my first few weeks, but also found the lack of autonomy a little frustrating. The first few months have worked out well in terms of work-life balance, possibly because I haven't been terribly busy. But, along with my fellow MILPs (WILPs?), I continue to struggle with assumptions about women and part-time work both at The Firm and in the profession.

Meanwhile, K turned 2 and dressed up like a duck for the Mother's Day parade.

And now I'm studying for the bar exam, which is less than two weeks away. I should be studying, anyway, instead of taking this trip down Memory Lane.

I started writing this blog because I wanted an outlet to write about law school, but I love that I've also found a community and friendships. So if you've read this far, thanks for sticking with me!

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Five years, part 1

Five years ago today I wrote my first post on this blog.

I had just decided to disrupt our comfortable lives by applying to law school, after months of soul-searching about what I really wanted to do with my life. I applied to five schools, three in Boston and two in New York. After lots of worrying about money and moving, I got into school right down the street. I quit my job, took a summer vacation, and started law school. I adapted pretty quickly to student life and survived 1L year, getting through classes, exams, moot court, the summer job search, and an unsuccessful law review write-on.

Looking back, I can see that I became MUCH more laid-back about law school after getting pregnant, which, if you're keeping score at home, happened during 1L exams. During my Torts exam, to be exact. Don't worry, it was a take-home. Pregnancy kinda sucked, even though it had its moments. I was in my second trimester when I started my 2L year. Doing OCI during a heatwave while pregnant was an adventure. As the semester drew to an end, I got excited about the baby (and realized I didn't want to be a corporate lawyer).

Winter term provided a needed distraction from the third trimester, and I was a little wistful when I saw everybody heading off to class in the spring. Especially since I was just sitting around waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And wishing he would come out already.

After a long and eventful labor, out came K!

As it turns out, it takes a long time to recap five years, especially when you should be studying for the bar, so part 2 tomorrow...

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Two weeks

The bar exam is exactly two weeks away.

Until now, I've been feeling pretty laid-back about the bar. Standardized tests are the one thing in life that I totally know how to do. I am constitutionally incapable of walking into a test unprepared. Besides, this is Passachusetts. A friend told me the pass rate last summer was something like 90%. "When have you ever been in the bottom 10% of anything?" he asked.

I'm starting to feel my very first twinge of anxiety. Possibly because I was hanging out with fellow bar-takers last night, something I've been mostly insulated from since I've been studying on my own. Or maybe because I lost my Evidence notes. Or maybe even because now that I'm on leave from work, I have nothing to distract me. (Benefit #2 of working full-time while studying.)

Anyway, at this point it's just a twinge. Two weeks is plenty of time, and that friend was right. No way are 90% of the people in that room going to know more than me.

Back to work.

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Done with bar lectures!

Does it reflect badly on my career choice that the only bar subject I found intolerably boring was Corporations?

At least it was also the subject I knew the most about.

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We drew engines all morning

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Weekend baking: soft pretzels

From Smitten Kitchen. Despite the wow factor, I have to admit I prefer the ones from the street cart. And I'm less tempted to eat five of those in a sitting.



These took about four hours from start to finish, with about an hour of active time. The process is very similar to bagels -- after an initial rise, roll the dough into strips, shape, poach in boiling water with baking soda and sugar, and then glaze and bake.

I'm not used to baking bread. The rolling part went against all my baking instincts to avoid over-handling the dough. You would never knead cake batter, because you don't want to develop the gluten. But of course, bread is supposed to be chewy. I just need to develop a different set of instincts for anything with yeast.

Upcoming on my to-bake list: rolls of some sort (maybe Parker House rolls?), bagels, cinnamon raisin swirl bread. (Probably not all before the bar.)

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K's joke

K (knocking on my leg): Nop, nop
Me: Who's there?
K: Nobody.
Me: Nobody who?
K: Nobody is at the door.

He made up this joke himself.
Don't quit your day job, kid.

Another favorite K-ism of late: he'll start fake-crying and when I ask what's wrong, he'll say, "A monster ate my breakfast!"

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Prince Philip

Speaking of fraud as grounds for annulment, the Barbri family law lecturer (Schechter, my favorite) told a story about a woman who tried to get her marriage annulled because her husband was not, as he had claimed, European royalty. No dice.

A friend took the bus from New York once to visit me at college. When she arrived, she showed me a photo of her seatmate, "Prince Philip." He was an African prince who had moved to New York to experience life on his own before ascending to the throne and untold riches. (Does this story sound familiar to anyone?) He proposed that she move in with him and become his concubine. She could eventually move back to Africa with him and live in the palace and he would buy her a car. The photo showed Prince Philip with his wife in a mostly empty apartment with a TV on the floor, and had his phone number written on the back.

I guess she couldn't marry him, anyway, so it wouldn't do her any good if lying about being royalty were grounds for an annulment.

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What I learned from half a lecture on family law

1. It's called a "shotgun wedding" because the pregnant girl's father would march the baby daddy there at gunpoint. I never knew that.

2. You can marry your cousin in Massachusetts. But you can't marry your step-grandparent, your in-laws, or your grandchild's spouse. (So K's future child's future wife is safe.)

3. You can get an annulment for fraud regarding an essential aspect of the marriage. Lying about your religion, about your sexual proclivities, about whether you're able to have kids: all fraud. Lying about your salary, job, or economic prospects: not fraud.

This immediately called to mind the NYT article I read a few months ago about the woes of Westchester wives who were bitter that their Wall Street husbands were now unemployed and asking them to spend less. The wives all protested that they were keeping up their part of the deal (presumably, checking the Nannycam, making sure the kids were suitably Prada-clad, and attending regular Pilates sessions) but the husbands were no longer keeping up theirs. One of them literally said, "This wasn't what I bargained for." I think she would disagree about whether economics are an essential aspect of the marriage.

Class-baiting aside, I think the idea that economics are never an essential aspect of a marriage is a pretty romantic view for the state to have. If someone claims to be a millionaire and it turns out they're in massive debt and you just hitched your finances to theirs, shouldn't you be able to get out of it if you want to?

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Lessons from the simulated MBE

Or, what not to do for the actual bar exam:

1. Go to bed at midnight the night before. Wake up every hour and a half until being forced out of bed for good at 5:30 a.m.
2. Lose your watch.
3. Arrive at the exam five minutes after it starts...
4. ... without any #2 pencils.
5. Leave half an hour early during both sessions to enjoy the beautiful weather.

I still haven't found my watch. Anyway, I've been meaning to buy a cheap digital one for the bar. I will remember to pack some pencils, and JW agreed to drop off K at daycare on the exam days. So that should take care of #2-4. I have to check my hedonistic impulses for #5, which will probably be the hardest. As for #1, at least now I know that even if I'm sleep-deprived during the real thing, I won't just pass out like I do sometimes during my practice sessions.

I haven't actually graded the thing yet. I'm confident that I kicked ass, and I can keep thinking that until I grade it, so I have little incentive to find out the truth.

On the way out, a friend said she was relieved to be done with the grueling day. "It wasn't so bad," I replied. "We had a long break at lunchtime, and now it's 4:30 and we're done!" "That's because you're working," she pointed out. "You're used to doing stuff all day." So I guess there is an advantage to working full-time while studying. You get in the habit of sitting in a room concentrating for hours on end.

I took a long walk through the city to the T station, got home at 5:15, and hung out on the deck with my boys. JW grilled and I helped K do "gardening" (sweeping pine needles off the deck with a paintbrush, which is much less messy and more suitable as a pre-dinner activity than actual gardening). We were completely done with the bedtime routine by 7:30, half an hour earlier than usual, and curled up in bed with "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go" for a nice long read. Now I'm sort of looking forward to the bar.

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A rant about the law

Studying con law. Just like in law school, it pisses me off.

Take state action, for instance. The only way to know what constitutes state action is to memorize all the relevant decisions and guess about the rest. For instance, we all (assuming the only people who read this blog are lawyers) read Shelley v. Kraemer, the case where the Supreme Court decided that it couldn't enforce a restrictive covenant on private land.

Supreme Court, I don't like racial discrimination either. But this is an entirely private transaction. How can it constitute state action?
We are the government, and if we enforce a racially discriminatory covenant, we'll be acting. See, it makes perfect sense.
Okay. But then, isn't everything converted into state action, because the minute you ask the court to strike down or uphold it, the government is acting?
Hey, ever heard of the "case or controversy" requirement? Get in line.

More than any other subject, con law is all about the whim of nine people. All right, not whim. The carefully considered and researched but frequently inconsistent and undeniably biased, because nobody can be totally objective and ignore their time and place and life experience and ideology, view of nine people.

Even if you leave the Supreme Court out of it, the law is frustratingly hard to pin down. Laypeople get into trouble because they say, "I read the law, and here's what it said." But did you read the annotations, the cases, the regulations? You didn't realize, did you, that "exclusively" actually meant mostly and "company" only included domestic for-profit businesses incorporated under a specific chapter?

Recently I read part of a statute that said something like, "Provisions of this chapter X only apply to other chapters as expressly provided in those chapters." In the other chapter, it said, "The sections of chapter X that apply to this chapter are 1, 5, 12, 15, 18, 23, and 45." Pretty straightforward, right? I didn't find any law interpreting this and so I replied to the partner who asked me that no other sections apply. He asked me to double-check, so I emailed the entire group. Nobody had a definitive answer, but I got three responses back saying, "I've never been sure, would you tell me what you find out?"

I understand that this is why I'm employed, but normal people without special degrees and research tools SHOULD be able to read the law and understand what it means.

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More Statute of Frauds

Bar studying continues apace. Next week I start my leave from work!

K has been helping me. "Hey, K," I'll say, "do you want to hear about the Statute of Frauds?" He always says yes, and when I'm done listing all the types of agreements and defenses, he says, "More Statute of Frauds!" That kid has always had a massive attention span for his age.

By the way, did you know that fetuses are considered people for purposes of Massachusetts homicide statutes? How is abortion legal, then?

Speaking of controversial political issues, I can't wait to hear the real reason that Sarah Palin resigned. It's bound to be something juicy.

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