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caliboy888
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Name: Caliboy888
Location: Berkeley, California, United States
Birthday: 6/11/1978
Gender: Male
Interests: Rice Bowl Journals
Expertise: -- Asian American anything. I was formerly an editor at a major (as if any of them could truly be called "major") Asian American magazine. I've also been known to be an Asian American performance artist and a student activist. -- Finding endless ways to procrastinate on the Web (like blogging!)
Occupation: Student
Industry: Legal
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
5/17/2003
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| Prominent firms have hit a controversial high: about $3,100 a week for summer associates, or what would be just over $160,000 a year for fresh law school graduates. Perks are plentiful and full-time job offers all but guaranteed.
"I feel like I deserve it," said Vincenza Battaglia, 25, a rising third-year law student summering at Steptoe & Johnson. "We work really hard in law school."
No Objections Here - washingtonpost.com
Please Mr. Battaglia, get over yourself. If you think the "difficulty" of law school entitles you to your big bucks, I'd like to introduce you to the working poor in America. Or if that's below, I can point to really hardworking professionals in other countries who will make a mere fraction of what you're earning as a summer associate.
As for me, I'll defeinitely be appreciative of my Big Firm salary when I get it in the fall. Yes, I will bitch and moan if we're paid below market, but never for a second will I feel an overall sense of entitlement for what I'm going to be earning as a Big Firm attorney. I know that I am extremely blessed and fortunate to be in this position. As we were told in our Bar/Bri lectures, most people in the world would trade places with us in a heartbeat.
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I guess Scarlett Johansson wasn't hot enough.
More on this redonkulous news in the New York Times. | | |
| So the next couple days are supposed to be where I'm supposed to be super focused and have everything come together because the risk of failure is enormous.
So why am I on Xanga?
Well apparently, I'm not the only one, presenting Search Engine Referrals to Repatriated Expatriate: California Bar Edition.
bar exam [well that's simple enough]
california bar [another straightforward search]
open container ticket new york character fitness bar [Open container? Does this guy wants to sneak a 40 into the NY Bar? Does he plan to sip his beverage out of a brown paper bag? I'm sure that will bode well for the determination of the fitness of his/her moral character.]
list of approved items for bar exam and california bar [The Cal Bar website is a pain in the ass to navigate as its design isn't very intuitive. I did find the information here. BTW - WTF is up with all of the PDFs on that site? Also, Mr/Ms Searcher, what's with the search terms "bar exam and california bar"? Redundant much?]
2007 july california bar exam essay topics [My magic 8-ball says a Remedies-Torts-California Evidence crossover-with a Civ Pro issue stemming from a federal district court hearing the case in diversity in California applying California choice-of-law rules, which will force us to apply the law of Mauritius...That's essay 1....]
silent analog clocks bar exam [Yes, California forbids exam-takers from bringing in digital clocks or watches into the bar exam. Maybe I should start a business selling "Bar Legal" Clocks.]
Good luck everyone!
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| UPDATE: I posted this last summer, but I thought it would be appropriate for a re-post considering that I am now actually on the way to taking the bar.
[Holy crap, only 3 more weeks...] 
*****
OK, so this is a bit late, as this summer's bar exam season has come and gone. Congratulations to the bar passers (I know you all passed, so stop thinking about your bar results...) 
This ran in the Wall Street Journal last month. It's by Jeremy Blachman, of Anonymous Lawyer fame. Simply hilarious. Hopefully, this will be helpful to look at come my turn at this torturous ritual hazing within the legal fraternity.
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Trials and Tribulations:
What to Expect While
Taking the Bar Exam
By JEREMY BLACHMAN
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 13, 2006
True story: my assigned seat for the New York State bar exam last summer -- seat 1734 at Pier 90, if you're curious -- wasn't far from one of the bathrooms. I used it before the test. It wasn't anything special -- no hand soap, no paper towels, a not-entirely-pleasant smell -- but it was all in functioning order. I didn't think much of it. But at some point during the exam, I heard a crash coming from that direction. People looked up for an instant, but no one really reacted. A few hours later, I went to use the bathroom again. The stall door was no longer attached to the stall. I suppose it could have broken on its own, but I prefer to imagine some nervous test-taker came across a particularly thorny set of commercial paper questions, panicked, and in a fit of frustration, went to the bathroom and ripped the door right off its hinges. A little while later, I noticed a uniformed official checking out the bathroom and calling for backup. I don't know if they ever found out who did it. Or, more importantly, if he (or she?) ended up passing the exam.
If only the bathroom assailant had been wearing a catheter, the damage would have been avoided. Seriously. You hear rumors in law school about people wearing catheters to the bar exam so they don't lose precious minutes going to the bathroom. If only he (or she!) had been wearing a catheter, perhaps the stall would still be in one piece.
But no. The assailant couldn't have been wearing a catheter. How do I know this? Because you're not allowed to bring a catheter to the New York state bar exam. It's not on the list of approved items. The examiners are very specific about it. A gallon-sized clear plastic food storage-type bag containing your admission ticket, a government-issued photo ID, your wallet, tissues, pens, number two pencils, a beverage in a plastic container or juice box, a quiet snack or lunch, and hygiene products. No catheter. Unless that counts as a hygiene product. Maybe it should. I have a hunch what they mean by hygiene products -- males probably don't have to worry about them -- but everyone in the test center went to law school, so of course we're all going to wonder where they'd draw the line. What about a couple of q-tips so you can clean your ears in the middle of the exam? A toothbrush? A hair dryer? It says only the snack has to be quiet, not the hygiene products.
New York test-takers are pretty lucky when it comes to the quiet snack. All it needs to be is quiet. Pennsylvania requires that snacks be small -- they give gum and mints as examples -- and unwrapped. It makes me feel sorry for all those folks in Harrisburg who, when hunger hits six hours into the multiple-choice section, have no recourse other than to reach into their pockets for a handful of warm Hershey's Kisses. Other states have fun rules too. Virginia requires test-takers to wear suits (or a tie and jacket) to the exam. And it encourages soft-soled footwear, like tennis shoes. Suits and sneakers: the classic grade-school prom costume. My first inclination was to think the soft-soled policy was for comfort. But this is Virginia, in July. If they wanted the test-takers to be comfortable, in the hundred-degree heat, the suit's a bigger problem than the tennis shoes.
The California Bar provides a list of twenty-three approved items, including "up to two pillows without cases," "silent analog watches, timers and clocks not measuring larger than 4x4 inches or smaller," and "ear plugs or plastic material normally associated with the sport of swimming." Huh? Is there a swimming section on the California bar exam? Maybe that's why so many people fail. Or maybe they fail because the questions are written by the same guy who wrote the "not measuring larger than 4x4 inches or smaller" clause. That leaves clocks measuring… exactly 4x4 inches? I guess so. It must stem from some episode in which a test taker tried to wheel in a "good luck" grandfather clock. Or something.
Even putting aside the hours of enjoyment you can have packing your test-day clear plastic storage bag, preparing for the bar exam isn't a heck of a lot of fun. Most people say the worst part is doing hundreds and hundreds of practice multiple choice questions, but I think the worst part is how doing those multiple choice questions makes you feel about the world. Nothing good ever happens to the people in practice bar exam questions. Everyone who crosses the street gets hit by a car, every doctor botches the surgery, parachutes never open, contracts never get fulfilled, anyone who uses a lawnmower ends up in the hospital, as soon as you write a will your whole family dies, employee benefit plans never pay out their benefits, computers all get viruses, your friends are always intoxicated, stealing your farm equipment, and driving it into the barn, police search you all the time for no good reason, you can never find a good place to hide your weapons, banks never recognize a signature as a forgery, and the forger always flees the country.
Not that it's any better for criminals. Arsonists never burn down what they mean to, thieves always end up murdering someone, conspirators can never convince their fellow criminals to back out, no one is ever given access to their lawyers before questioning, and spring guns go off in everyone's garage, each time killing the neighbor kid who just meant to return the tools he'd borrowed.
On the other hand, the best thing about taking the bar exam is that eventually you get to stop studying. The morning of the exam, I got off the subway and walked over to my test site with some ripped-out pages from the Conviser Mini Review (how is a 900-page book a mini-anything?), trying to cram some last-minute knowledge into my head. I realized as I was about to cross the street that the review pages weren't on the list of approved items (unless I was going to eat them, quietly). So I threw them out. And, of course, they landed on top of pages and pages of other people's study notes. If you're taking the bar exam later this month, and you want free review materials, just go find some garbage cans on the west side at nine in the morning on July 25th. More than you'll ever need.
But I can do even better than telling you where to find review materials. I can give you the answers, despite the stern warning against it. One of the first things you hear when you enter the bar exam test site is a disembodied voice telling you that "revealing any of the answers in any written, oral, electronic, or other medium is a violation of the copyright and grounds for failure of the exam and disqualification in the character and fitness portion of the evaluation." I understand they want to keep the questions secret. But the answers? What good are the answers without the questions?
I've decided to violate the rules. The answers to last year's New York bar exam were, in no particular order: A. B. C. D. A. A. B. C. D. D. D. D. C. B. B. C. D. A. A. D. B. C. A. D. So there you go.
I promise they're as accurate as the Bar/Bri lecturer who thinks he knows what the essay topics will be. Or the tarot card reader who sees "easements, lots of easements" in your future. A few final words: Don't wear a catheter. Unwrap your gum. Make sure you bring your swimming goggles. And you're all ready to pass the bar exam. Good luck.
Send comments to lawblog@wsj.com1
--Jeremy Blachman is a 2005 graduate of Harvard Law School and the author of the Anonymous Lawyer Web log (http://anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com). His forthcoming novel, Anonymous Lawyer (Henry Holt), will arrive in bookstores on July 25.
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| Does this make any sense to any of you?
Did my package really need the side trip to South San Francisco, with the accompanying carbon emissions?
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