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When It Comes to the Bar Exam, Tom Petty is Right

Published: Mar 10, 2009

 Law       
The waiting, Tom Petty tells us, is the hardest part. Any new lawyer waiting for the results of the bar exam to be announced would agree. Every year, thousands of students graduate from law schools across the country, sequester themselves in libraries and overcrowded, pricey review courses for three months, only to spend two or more days disgorging their legal knowledge in the peculiar ritual known as the bar exam. But the suffering is hardly over after the exam. These intrepid men and women must spend months waiting for their fate to be revealed.

Preparing for the exam is a three-month long process, and it begins with the notorious bar exam review courses. Review courses often commence on the very next day following law school graduation, which affords graduates only one short night to celebrate the close of three years of legal study before buckling down to prepare for the exam. Bar review courses are expensive and tedious affairs, but they are considered a necessary expense by most studying for the exam. Students are taught the subjects most likely to be tested on the exam, as well as test-taking tactics. Evenings and weekends are spent completing practice exams and obsessing over outlines created from the in-class lectures.

The exam itself, which takes place over the course of two days, is offered at the end of July, as well as in February. Test takers across the United States face both the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and an individual state portion. In New York, the state portion is given on the first day of the exam and consists of six essays and 25 multiple choice questions. The New York bar exam covers approximately 17 subjects, including contracts, constitutional law, criminal law and procedure, evidence, property, torts, family law, professional responsibility, trusts, and wills and estates. The MBE portion, given on the second day of the exam, consists of 200 multiple choice questions covering six subjects-contracts, constitutional law, criminal law, evidence, real property, and torts. Bar takers in all jurisdictions face the same MBE questions.

Afterwards, there is nothing to do but wait.

~For many would-be lawyers, the possibility of failing the exam is too awful to contemplate. The bar exam is more than a test; it is a rite of passage. But now imagine having to undergo this gauntlet - the endless studying, the bar exam, the waiting for results - again (much less a third time for the unlucky few).

Who will pass the bar and who will fail? New Yorkers will know this week. On Thursday, November 9th, the results of the July 2000 New York State Bar Exam will be announced on the New York State Board of Law Examiners web site at 12:01 AM. With thousands of lawyers desperate to view the results, the site routinely experiences a tremendous amount of traffic during results time and in years past has crashed from the increased load. This year, though, web site administrator Armand Canestraro is confident that the site will withstand the augmented traffic. Says Canestraro, "It is kind of unpredictable as far as numbers that will hit the site. I just can tell you we are prepared for a heavy load."

To obtain results online or to see if a friend (or enemy!) passed the bar on the first go-around (yes, you can check results for anyone who's taken the bar in the last several years), bar takers in New York and legal voyeurs everywhere can log on to the official web site of the New York State Board of Law Examiners at http://www.nybarexam.org/index.htm.

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