September 5, 2006
More bar exam-related ridiculousness ::
legal — tagged bar exam, bar study, legal, personal and rant
8:22 am
I noticed that James started posting more regularly again. How nice! One post that particularly caught my eye was this one, on the stupidity of bar review courses. He notes specifically the lawsuit that the National Conference of Bar Examiners brought against PMBR, the self-appointed “leader” in Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) test preparation, which PMBR lost. In the opinion, the federal judge presiding over the case noted that PMBR lifted a test question directly from the MBE but actually got the answer wrong.
I remember when I was debating on whether to take the PMBR course, one of the sales representatives noted that lawsuit as a selling point for the program. The inference I was supposed to draw was that PMBR’s questions were so good that NBCE was actually scared of the program, and thus brought a (frivolous?) lawsuit to protect themselves. The disingenous way in which the rep tried to present this suggestion immediately turned me off to the possibility of taking the exam. In the back of my mind since then I’ve found I’ve had a little regret for not taking the exam or, more generally, not taking every opportunity to prepare myself for the bar exam. But after hearing this story, I don’t feel so bad at all.
Which I guess goes to show that some opportunties are best left unexplored.
September 2, 2006
Bar exam results coming soon ::
legal — tagged bar exam, bar study, legal, personal and rant
9:01 am
With September here and the Vermont Bar Exam results most likely being released in just a few weeks, I’ve been thinking more lately about that test (and of course more specifically, whether I passed it). With that, I thought this WSJ essay, written back in July and linked at the 2006 Bar Exam Blog is becoming relevant—and to certain degree kind of funny—once again:
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.
