Are the mnemonics to remember bits of New York Practice, specifically, MY LEGS: contracts that are important so you have to write them down to be valid, eg the M, is for marriage, and secondly, the grounds for a CPLR 3211 pre-answer motion to dismiss an action (DOWNFALL) and the corresponding affirmative defenses (SPARERIBS – apparently bar exam favorites are the two s’s: Statute of Frauds and Statute of Limitations).
This has been my life pretty much since December 21, when I sat down to day 1 of bar review lectures. Since then, I’ve been to class for about 3 and a half hours of lectures every day, memorized, and memorized until I was at one point contemplating just eating the note cards, written essays, done hundreds and hundreds of multiple choice questions and outlined, summarized and highlighted. And now its over.
This is also the first time I have sat at my desk, in the morning with a coffee, watching the snow fall – when I have not felt like I should be memorizing something.
Its lovely.
That’s not why I’m writing this post though – to bore you with the details of bar review. In England, we don’t have a bar exam. You go to law school, take exams there and then practice for 2 years, in a law firm, under close supervision, completing a sort of baby-lawyer skills syllabus, attending training, and being paid half the salary of an associate – after those 2 years have passed, if you haven’t screwed up, you are admitted to the Roll of Solicitors and get a big pay rise.
All the law exams you do though are within the academic institution you are part of, so there is no coming together like I was part of over the last 2 days, of everyone in the area, to take the same exam. Last week I saw my therapist, and he made the comment along the lines of “wow – how strange, all those people, in one place, all.wanting.to.be.lawyers.” I didn’t twig at the time what he meant. But yesterday, as I was surrounded by hundreds – probably thousands of other people, all having gone through years of law school, months of bar review, from all over NY and farther afield, nervously shuffling into the exam room, smiling, commenting on why we were doing this again, I got what he meant. Its a shared identity. Ok – a shared identity that everyone makes jokes about, but it is an identity.
I’m glad for that.
Am realizing I’m a bit of a solitary fish: am quite separated from my family, I live in a different country to the one I was born in and I’m doing a degree where I don’t do a lot of the stuff everyone else does, am certainly not the person to ask what to do with an Arduino. A novel outsider perhaps. But yesterday, I felt I was with my tribe. Disheveled and tired as we were. I felt I belonged. Not bound together by the fact we’d swallowed the same amount of facts over the last 2 months, or been to law school – something more than that, I get the same feeling when I’m at home with my friends from the law firm, or this summer working at a law school – our minds work a certain way, through a barrage of training yes, but also a natural inquisitiveness, and desire to solve problems, a pedantic rigor to delve to the very heart of something, and discernment to take a broader view. Being a lawyer is part of my identity, and I’m beyond glad for that, when so much else shifts and changes. Its very solid, tangible, I worked for it and I have been changed by it.
So MY LEGS, SPARERIBS AND DOWNFALL ASIDE, having a proctor actually IN THE BATHROOM, honor codes, being blasted over loudspeakers, wristbands, being herded like sheep, suppressing panic attacks for over a week now – was all worth it. Pass or fail. It was worth it.
The second reason for writing this post, in case you are still with me here after my ode to the legal profession, is that, I learned a lot about my adopted home doing all this studying. The obvious bits yes: the Constitution – due process, equal protection, the Bill of Rights, Miranda, search and seizure – its a long list. That’s not what I meant though. What I meant is that I learned, that, well, why I moved here – that Americans are really, really nice people. Clearly not all of them. But – my taxi driver the other day wishing me the best luck, the lady in the rest room with amazing shoes who also wished me best luck, my bar man at my local restaurant, Ross who gave me a glass of wine on him last night, the proctors in the exam, who smiled and told me “they” (I think the NY State Bar Examiners) “wanted us to pass, and not to worry” – all of them nice, kind, friendly, encouraging. Not to mention my professors who have high-fived me, taken me to tea, listened to me wail about the Non-Resident Motorist Statute, and my friends (who think I’m nuts for doing this at the same time as doing ITP – and who are completely right) – who still have been seen with me in public despite roots in my hair that quite frankly should be a misdemeanor.
People are friendly and warm and nice here, yes – even in NYC. In England too, but we’re less expressive en mass I think, especially to strangers.
That’s my review of bar review. Now I can get back to a life without latches, mandamus to compel, res judicata, conversion – incidentally, the conversion of a dog hypo (law professor leaping around yelping “NO – I DO NOT MEAN THE DOG IS NOT AN EPISCOPALIAN – THE DOG IS DEAD!) is something that will, make me laugh forever. Thanks BarBri.
