Law School Graduation: Deja Vu All Over Again
From J. Craig Williams:
Going home to the University of Iowa has a double meaning this time. For the last 20 years, it’s been a homecoming with my law school classmates, professors and friends in Iowa City. Steve and “Steve Army,” Deb the Registrar, Jerry, Linda, Rick, Kyndra, and Robert - along with “the gang” - have been regulars for the most part at the annual homecoming each Fall when watch the Hawkeyes play and occasionally win at football and we all sing (yell) the Iowa Fight Song at The Game. “Steve Army” got his nickname from my kids, who were trying to distinguish my two roommates, both named Steve, and the nicknamed Steve was the clean-shaven, square-jawed jarhead on an ROTC scholarship.
You know the group. They’re your buds. The ones who went through the train wreck of law school with you, quizzing each other on jargon-laden Latin phrases, reading 100+ pages for each class every night, suffering through endless hours of bleary-eyed studying, outlining 80 pages to summarize property, torts, contracts, criminal law and something called civil procedure that’s far from civil, filling up four blue books for each of the five finals at the end of the semester, tolerating overbearing professors because you have to, rules and regulations about what classes had to be taken when and where and occasionally went to the Airliner on Wednesday after class to lose ourselves in the oblivion otherwise known as pitchers of the cheapest beer we could order, talking over music turned down to allow spirited legal arguments between budding scholars of law.
Law school.
Not to paint a rosy picture, but while you may have thought Scott Turow gave you the real insight in his book named One L, if you rely on that whitewashed view, then you may want to get the real story first. Call me, take to me to lunch and I’ll warn you off, or at least give you a reality check before you check in to Fall registration at your torture chamber of choice, er , I mean the law school that admitted you.
It didn’t work for my son, Michel Ayer, who despite my best advice to the contrary enrolled in my alma mater and graduated this past weekend. OK, you’re right. I didn’t wave him off, I offered the advice that only someone who had gone through the same train wreck could. I let him in on all the inside secrets of which professors to take and which to steer clear of, which classes to take, what groups to join, how to study, what not to study and generally everything I wish someone had told me, but didn’t.
But don’t let me fool you here. I wasn’t the one who went to law school all over again. It was Michel who went and achieved what I didn’t: Captain of the Moot Court team, winner of the Best Brief and Best Oral Advocate awards in the Jessup International Moot Court competition, Administrative Editor of the Journal of Corporate Law, a Summer Clerkship at Quarles & Brady in Phoenix and a separate Masters in Urban & Regional Planning, all while managing to maintain his marriage to Stacy, a very beautiful, charming and intelligent bookkeeper for a large insurance company.
Can you tell my vest buttons are popping?
Yep, this weekend is Michel’s graduation from the University of Iowa College of Law along with a U&RP Masters degree. Then on Tuesday, he’s off to Phoenix for several months of studying for the Arizona Bar and in September an Associate position at Quarles & Brady.
Twenty years ago today, I graduated from the same law school, looking forward to the challenge of a bright new practice in California. While I was proud to have survived law school and landed a job, the pride I feel today has no comparison.
It’s everything you hope for your children, and more I can’t even begin to explain. If you’re a parent, then you already understand. If you’re a graduate, just give yourself some time.
Your buttons will pop, too, and although your eyes will water when you watch the Dean hand him his diploma, you’ll just say that something got in your eye.
Then you’ll realize.
The Law Student Crisis: What to Do After Graduation
Is there really such a thing as a Quarterlife Crisis™?
I decided to trademark the phrase in case you noticed the ™ symbol. You can pay royalties payable to LawVibe, Inc. Non-negotiable by the way.
So what do you think - do law students fresh out of law school go through a Quarterlife Crisis™?
Quarterlife Crisis™ vs Midlife Crisis
Ok, hear me out, I’m not talking about a mid-life crisis. A mid-life crises is when someone in their 40s-50s gets into this serious period of self-doubt. They start thinking about their life being half-over. They start thinking about all the goals and accomplishments they wanted to do but never got around to. That’s when you start getting the leather jacket, Harley Davidson motorcycle, and you start hitting on young blondes. Neat midlife crisis fact: Japanese and Indian cultures don’t seem to go through mid-life crisis! Meaning that I don’t even think they have a word for the term. I know that in Japanese cultures, the elderly are revered. So if you’re hitting the 50s, consider moving to Japan or India. That’s a helpful LawVibe tip.
Back to the Quarterlife Crisis™. You’re in your mid-twenties. As a law school graduate, you’re gonna be feeling this soon. You leave law school, you leave the classes behind, the professors, the classrooms, and you think to yourself, “What the heck am I going to do with the rest of my life? Is this all there is?”
Are we ready for the real world?
I mean, really, are we prepared for the “real world” as law school graduates? What is the real world anyway? Is there an actual moment when we are actually in the “real world”? All this time we’re in college and we’re preparing for the “real world”… but when we leave are we actually ready?
So what do we do as young graduates? Are we supposed to plan every minutiae of our post-graduate life? Are we supposed to know exactly what we want to do and will do for the rest of our lives?
Is life really that short?
I’ve heard so many times, “Life is short, make the most of it!” But is it really? Is life really that short? Cause it sometimes seems so damn long! And when you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing next, it’s pretty long! Minutes stretch to hours, which stretch to days, which stretch to weeks, which stretch to months, which stretch to years, which stretch to decades, and pretty soon you’re a 110 year old law school graduate and you still don’t know what to do with your life. Ok, maybe not so bad but you get my point.
So what do you want to as a fresh law school graduate? Do you want to go into criminal defense and trial preparation? Maybe you want to do corporate law and go to work at a big law firm? How about being a law professor at a prestigious university? Perhaps opening a solo law practice?
Don’t let anyone pressure you into doing something you don’t want to do. Do what you want. After all, you have to live with the next three quarters of your life. And trust me, you don’t want to go through a Century-Crisis™. That’s when you’re 100 years old and you still don’t know what to do with your life. And yes, I’m trademarking that too.
How to Pass the Bar Exam
From Hastings-I:
Attention 3Ls: you can, you will, pass the bar. Here’s a simple exercise you should do, daily if it makes you feel good, to help you reach that goal.
Find a mirror.
Look into it.
Say, “Of course I can pass the bar. Everyone knows that.”
OK, you think I’m being silly. I would have thought so too, if I hadn’t had a chance encounter at an airport with one of you during spring break. An encounter with a student who is very bright, who was very successful before starting law school, who is doing perfectly well here – right there in the middle of the pack, GPA-wise, with most of you who are similarly bright and talented. And there it was: tremendous anxiety about passing the bar.
These past three years focus on the “bar passage” issue has been a bit intense. I recall some of you as freaked-out 1Ls who read a Dean’s letter early in your days here as saying, “study three years, then you flunk the bar.” Can we focus on the facts? The truth, I believe, will set you free (to concentrate on studying for the bar …).
You don’t need to get an “A” on the California (or any) Bar to pass. You only need the functional equivalent of straight-C’s, or even below. Bar exams test competence, not excellence. You’ve been far more than merely competent in most of your law school work.
I know it’s hard to look around at one’s own group of friends and wonder, where are the 38 percent or 40 percent or whatever, destined for failure on that first try? I felt the same way: everyone I’m studying with is really bright. Who’s going to flunk?
Insight arrived during the lunch break after the first morning of what was then a 2 1/2-day all-essay test. On line at the women’s restroom, a friend and I listened to a group of women ahead of us, renewing their acquaintance: they apparently had met before, more than once, while taking the bar exam. They were sharing their strategy for success: “This time I studied Contracts, Crim Law, and Corporations,” one said. Another chimed in with her 3 or 4-course strategy. Ten subjects were mandatory that year, and four optional. What a relief: we had found the flunk rate. . . .
Most critically, while most bar statistics are not where we want them to be (every failure is painful to that individual and to all of us), look at them more carefully. Students in the top half of the class pass the California Bar at a rate very close to 100 percent. The next quartile isn’t terribly far behind. I’m certain that if we were to interview everyone who flunked in this group, we’d find that Something Happened. Parents and grandparents get sick or die, spouses and lovers leave, friends or family members get diagnosed with dread diseases. One of my advisees in the Class of 2005 got sick herself – with symptoms that were both disturbing and anxiety-inducing and also interfered with her ability to study. She took the test anyway; she didn’t make it, but gained familiarity with it that was useful when she took it again in February. Bad things happen – beyond our control.
Good things can interfere with the bar, too. A young relative of mine (with great grades from a top law school) happily arrived in San Francisco after graduation to study for the bar – and to reunite with her fiancee after a year’s separation. Togetherness and wedding planning were joyous, but distracting. (The wedding was lovely, the young marrieds are happy, and she passed the next time.)
What about the bottom quartile? Yes, their bar pass statistics are lower – but that’s no surprise. The bar exam tests the same limited subset of skills necessary for successful lawyering as we test in law school, and in basically the same ways. But the glass is half full, not half empty. You’ve made it through law school! You can jump over this hurdle and into a successful career too. You absolutely can. (And if you don’t believe me, contact me and I’ll introduce you to one of my favorite recent graduates, who struggled mightily at Hastings and inhabited the bottom of his class. On his second, but not first, attempt he followed the advice below, passed the bar, and is now practicing law. I’m sure he will tell you: you can do it too.)
Here’s what you must do to pass the California Bar, whatever your GPA.
1. Take a bar review course. Yes, yes, I know – you’ve spent a fortune on law school, and now we’re telling you to take a crash course to pass this test.
I’m willing to bet that virtually 100 percent of law school faculty took a bar review course (yes, we all were hot shot law students). Law school classes are about knowledge in depth. The bar is about the basics of a whole bunch of courses all at once. Bar review employees spend their time studying bar exam questions, figuring out what issues are “hot,” working on the tricks of the exam trade. That’s their niche, and they’re pretty good at it.
But bar review courses are expensive. Please consider what it costs you not to pass. It puts off your marketability as a lawyer for six months, which has an even bigger price tag.
If you can’t afford/can’t get a loan for bar expenses: get ye to Financial Aid. There’s even a brand-new faculty-funded loan program for this very purpose. Check it out. We think you can pass – and we’ve put our money on it.
2. Give yourself over to the advice of the bar review people, even when it feels odd and anti-intellectual. I felt like a total fool spitting back the two short paragraphs I’d memorized on choice of law at the behest of a bar review instructor who explained that the issue had come up in 3 of the last 4 bar exams (even though choice of law/conflicts wasn’t itself a bar course). But I did it (not that I had much choice: I didn’t know the subject), and so did all of my bar study buddies.
Also keep in mind that the bar exam does not, cannot, reward creativity. Each essay by necessity has a group of graders, who must score in as close to an identical manner as is humanly possible. So if you are the person who usually sees, and wants to follow, the unusual path – even though professors may often have responded with delight that you’d seen something they had not even considered – turn it off for 3 days. On the bar exam, go for the standard route.
3. Give yourself the gift of time. Clear the weeks between graduation and the bar exam of everything possible except bar study, and time to clear your head with exercise and a bit of leisure. Do not work; even a boring, mindless job is a bad idea. Yes, this will cost you, but it will cost you more not to pass. You’re already in debt: borrow some more to give yourself two critical months.
If you have family responsibilities, think creatively now about how to be released from them for just two months. Call in every chit you have from friends and family members you’ve helped in the past. If you are the responsible one in your family – and have always taken on burdens others haven’t been willing to accept – you may feel you are not entitled to assistance. But you are. This is the time when your family needs to step up and help you. Since your success will be to everyone’s benefit, don’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt for asking (insisting!).
Your spouse will surely understand your need to “disappear” into bar study for two months (not to mention — under the laws of community property he or she will have a lot to gain from your enhanced earning capacity). You can’t “disappear” from children (nor will young ones really understand why you need space and time). You can, however, recall all those friends and family members who’ve said, “Your children are so much fun.” Offer them more fun – let them help! (The grandparents are too strict/too lenient/too spoiling? Your kids will survive for two months. Take the help.) If your children are too young to fully comprehend the passage of time, consider making something like one of those little advent calendars for them. You can check off each day, and they can see time move toward when mommy or daddy will be fully human and “with them” once again.
4. And, to return to the message at the beginning: believe in yourself. You can and you will pass the bar. If not on the first try, then on the second (many fine lawyers have taken it more than once). Putting in the effort, following the advice of the bar exam prep experts, and seeing that person in the mirror as a success are the prescription for bar passage.
Congratulations on graduation! I hope you have an uneventful but productive bar pass summer.
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