0L Prep: Taking Care of (Your Body's) Business

Over the last week, I've started really getting into the swing of the whole "I"m moving to Dallas and going to law school in less than a month" thing. I've started actively packing up my room, and I'm slowly but surely checking things off of my to-do list. 

One thing that I can count as checked off as of today? Getting my health care stuff in order. You see, any law school that you attend is going to want to have a health questionnaire filled out by your doctor. But you should also take this opportunity to make sure that you are in tip-top shape before you leave the comfort of home and your family doctor.

You should review all of your immunization and booster records to make sure that you're not due for something important. All educational institutions require that you have your MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccines. Most people get them as kids...I got mine when I was about a year old.

Tetanus boosters should be given once every ten years, so if you haven't had one since junior high you'll want to get that taken care of . The tetanus booster is often administered in conjunction with the vaccines for pertussis (whooping cough) and diptheria, all together called a PDT or TdaP vaccine. I got mine last Thursday, and I'm no wimp, but BOY was my arm sore! For three or four days!

You'll also want to make sure that you're immune to Varicella (chicken pox) and Hep A and Hep B. Most colleges will have required you to get vaccinated against Meningitis, so odds are you've had that done in the past, but it doesn't hurt to take a look at your records just to make sure. 

Lastly, you will be required to show proof of a negative TB test. The test, known as a PPD skin test, is pretty simple -- they insert a small dose of tuberculin units into your forearm, and in two days you go back to have the test "read." They just check to make sure that you haven't had any sort of bad reaction to the injection, and that the bubble has receded. 

Another thing you should do is make sure that you get your "yearly" visits out of the way before you leave, so that you don't have to worry about scheduling them during the school year. Eye appointments, dental check ups, lady-parts visits, physicals -- they can all be taken care of in July and August.

If you have contacts or glasses, make sure that your prescription is valid for a whole year from the summer, that way if for some reason you do need to order new glasses or contacts you can do so without having to schedule another eye exam. I personally wear contacts, so I'm going to make sure I have no less than a six month supply before I leave.

It pays to make sure that you have all your ducks in a row, that way you aren't scrambling around like a crazy person once you make it to school and realize you only have a couple of days to get the different shots or inoculations before school starts. 

0L Preparation: Hanging with the Fam-Bam

When I was in undergrad in Ohio, I pretty much saw my family every 8 weeks or so. I went to school at the end of August, saw my parents in the beginning of October for Parent's Weekend, came home at the end of November for 10 days of Thanksgiving, went back to school for a month before I got a month-long break at Christmas, had Spring break in mid-March, and was home for the summer by the second week of May.

This is not going to be the case while I'm in law school. There's no Parent's weekend, Thanksgiving break isn't 10 days long and I'll have other stuff to do during that time off, my winter break isn't as long either, and I may or may not come home for the summer. Taking in to consideration that all of my sisters are off doing their own thing too, and you'll come to the conclusion that this summer may very well be the last time that we'll all be able to get together for a while. And so I'm preparing for my drought of family time by doing some very family-centric things this week.

We're taking family portraits for the first time since I was in high school, we're going to our beach condo without our cell phones (ha! yeah right) in order to spend some time with each other without the temptation of running down to the office to tie up some loose ends, we're going to go see a play in LA (my dad and sister are obsessed with Les Mis, we've probably seen it 6 times at least!) and just generally enjoy each others' company.

I think that even though tempers might flare at one point or another during this upcoming week, the time that I spend with my family now is what will get me through some tough times during 1L. I'm sure I'll enjoy law school, but I'll always miss my family.

0L Preparation: Updating Your Résumé

So, you all know how I read Law School: Confidential (LSC) a few weeks back...I wrote a 0L prep blog about it! Well, in LSC, the author argues that the best time to start targeting firms for mailings regarding a 1L summer associate (SA) position is well before you even get to law school.

Here's why: as 1Ls apparently we won't even be able to meet with Career Services until November, after the 2Ls go through their OCI and everything. It's against the rules. And as such, we will be gearing up for finals when the proverbial poop hits the fan. I don't know about you, but I'd personally rather worry about getting good grades than figuring out what firms will have SA positions open for 1Ls...you can't get an SA position anywhere if you bomb all your exams!

But, if you don't worry about firms and résumés and all the good stuff then, you'll be seriously behind the curve, and probably won't be able to get any interest from potential employers. No bueno. It's a real Catch-22.

...Unless...You get a head start during the summer leading into 1L!

Sure you don't know your GPA, or class standing, but you won't know that in November and December, when you should start sending out your letters and résumés, anyway. You can still learn about the different firms that  you might be interested in targeting, look at geographic areas where you'd be likely to find a job or where you'd be interested in living, determine judges that might take you on as an intern or clerk, etc. That's all stuff you can do poolside with a little internet searching and a margarita in hand...and will be a future 0L Prep post on the blog.

Another thing that's super important to do is to reformat and update your résumé. It's not enough just to add your summer employment onto the bottom, or change your degree from "expected" to official (no matter how satisfying that may be). Legal résumés are a very different, very specific animal, and you will most likely have to completely overhaul your current résumé.

The best way to get a jump start on this is to just generally reformat. The Career Services office at your school will help you with the particulars, but it will be easier to do that if you at least have the correct bare-bones there to work with. I've found two or three guidelines particularly helpful when it comes to drafting a legal résumé:

• The Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University has prepared this little write up all about what a legal résumé is, should do, and should look like. It doesn't have any samples or examples, but is still good.
• Syracuse University College of Law has done something similar, if a little more exhaustive. They have a good list of action verbs that may be helpful, especially to people who haven't ever really prepared a résumé before. They also have a couple of different sample résumés at the end, which is both helpful and entertaining (the student is named Elle Woods Secondyear. It made me giggle).
• The George Washington University Law School Career Development Office has a power point presentation that they gave all about the legal résumé. It's helpful to take a look at, even though it does repeat a lot of the same information.

Overall, it seems to me that a lot of the fluff from normal undergrad résumés needs to be cut out. Legal résumés tend to be much more conservative than résumés in other fields, and as such need to strictly follow the conventional and accepted guidelines. 

No silly "skills" section (I would say only language fluency or something that will really catch the eye of an interviewer without casting aspersions on your commitment to education/legal work). No crazy fonts -- no matter how pretty (sad face). Don't put any sort of high school education or achievements on there. And definitely DON'T go over two pages -- in fact, try your very hardest to get it down to one page. 

You only get a first impression on a résumé, and that first impression only lasts about twenty seconds, so you really need to make sure that your legal résumé is easy to read and aesthetically pleasing. Getting it down to a good format and decent length now will make your life so much easier come November, when your Career Services will sit down and go over it with you. 

0L Preparation: VACATION!

There are lots of types of 0L Prep that people can do in order to get a leg up on the competition before entering the hallowed halls of whatever law school you'll be going to. You can go to classes, start studying cases (which I don't advocate), watch a few documentaries or movies, and read a slew of books -- some are good, some are awful.

But one thing that is important and that everyone, be you straight from undergrad or a working professional, should do: RELAX!

Law school is going to be stressful, and 1L is going to be insane, especially around exam time. Why would you want to compound the stress you're going to be feeling in six months with the stress you're going to acquire over the summer if you study about law school every day? That's silly, and I doubt it's good for you. So, if you are at all able to, take some time off to focus on you. Get a massage, a mani/pedi, go to the driving range or the batting cages.

Better than those suggestions: take a trip somewhere fun. It doesn't have to be far away, but it should take you away from the stressors of your daily life. Personally, I think camping outdoors is more stressful than relaxing, but if that's your cup of tea, go for it! If you have the money to go backpacking through Europe, for the love of God do it!!! Such a great experience. I'm more of a beach girl, myself, when planning a quick getaway.

I will (probably) be taking a few vacations this summer, in order to make up for probably not being able to take a good vacation any time in the next three years. And guess what? My first one starts today! I won't be updating at all (I don't think) for the next week and half because one of my dear, dear friends from college (a Twenty-Something Nursing Student) is going to be flying from Boston to California to spend some time with me!

I want to relax while she's here (she's in dire need of some relaxation after a solid year of nursing school), so we're going to be spending most of our time at my family's beach condo, just laying out and relaxing.

Our plans include: going to the Getty, lunch in Santa Barbara (maybe I'll take her to my old work place to meet some of my friends), shopping at the outlets, SERIOUS beach time, maybe a side trip to Hearst Castle, wine tasting in Paso Robles (it's no Napa, but I'm not driving the 6.5 hours up there for just one day), and then relaxing pool side at my house without going in to work. We'll probably squeeze in a day for Disneyland (she's never been!) and dinner at Medieval Times somewhere in those 10 days, too.

I think anyone who is planning on going to law school would be foolish not to take some time to decompress over the summer -- however you do that. After this trip I'll probably work for a few more months before my last "hurrah" vacation -- hopefully a trip to Cabo, where my family has a home and my grandmother lives. That way I'll be able to move to Dallas calm, cool, collected, and VERY tan! Sure, I'll be stressed within a month of starting school, but why be more stressed than I need to?

So, what are your vacation plans this summer?

0L Preparation: Browsing TLS Threads

One thing that I think has been incredibly helpful to me in the past, and will continue to be incredibly helpful to me over the next several months, is looking at the advice and opinions given by TLSers who are currently in law school. They're living the life I'm going to be living in 6 months, and they're willing to pass on their knowledge to lowly 0ls like me!

Life is too short to make all of the mistakes yourself, so you should learn from the mistakes of others. (Or, conversely, you should copy the successes of others in order to be successful yourself.)

Now, a lot of different TLS users have waxed poetic about their own path through 1L, and a lot of times it's interesting, but not very helpful or applicable. But that's not always the case, and when you find those threads that are just AWESOME, you need to bookmark them, print them, or tag them so that you can go back time after time and reap the benefits of what they have sowed.

If you don't want to spend the time searching through years of links and comments (although I would recommend it!), I'll give you a few a whole bunch of my favorite threads here. These are the different threads that I think will be incredibly useful to 0Ls and 1Ls, and I'm sure I'll be referencing them time and again starting in August.

Let's try to put them in some kind of order, shall we? Starting out, here's a list of links helpful for people who are considering applying to law school, or have yet to get in/go anywhere.

• First off, we have bk187's Compendium of 0L Follies. I actually tend to think that bk187 is pretty extremist, and disagree with several of his posts on TLS, but I think that this is important to read if you're considering law school. The world is not as black and white as bk187 makes it seem, but you should definitely know that what he says is a serious possibility.

• Next, Knock's Useful Links Thread. This is a list of helpful links for people considering applying to/attending law school. Everything from LSAT information to Employment stats can be found in a link on this list. Well done, Knock (and others).

• Then we have lishi's links for 0Ls, which has a GREAT list of E&Es and Hornbooks, as well as links to a ton of 0L prep questions and suggestions. I'm a fan.

• Lastly, an interesting list of books to read before 1L (if you're so inclined) can be found in the discussion answering chicagored's question in this thread.

Okay, so say your cycle didn't go so well (or even if it did and you're just crushed by that one dream school's rejection)? Reading through The Ding Bar thread will definitely make you feel better. Feel free to post something scathing about that awful school that dinged you, biting wit is the name of the game on this thread.

Now, once you get into law school, you're kind of on your own. I mean, there's not some book out there that's called "A Guide Just for Twenty-Something Law Student About How to Do the Best and Get the Most Out of Her Law School Experience," is there? No. But you can get some pretty good advice on TLS. Just make sure that you're taking advice from the right kind of poster.

• First in this category, we have Talon's guide to success in your first year. Talon was top of the class at a T10, and this guide is incredibly thorough and well-written. In it, Talon specifically discusses 0L prep (a tiny bit), learning the law, the law school exams, first year classes, and a bunch of other stuff.

• I think Arrow's Advice for Doing Well in Law School (at a T2) was the post that a bunch of these other advice posts are based off of. Arrow was top of his class at a lower ranked school, but then transferred to a T10 school (if you're interested, he went from Loyola LA to Berkeley). His post is really thoughtfully laid out, and covers everything from deciding where to go through how to get through finals (there's more info about 1L than 0L, so that's why I stuck it here). This is a MUST READ. It's been edited 106 times over the years to include some seriously amazing links and file shares, so take some time to look it over.

• Another great resource is MegaTTTron's Advice for Doing Well at a T1 (although I'm sure it applies to non-T1 students, too, don't worry). I found his advice on class prep and outlining particularly helpful. MegaTTTron transferred from a T1 to a top 6 school.

• Wahoo1L's Law School Advice (T10) is also really helpful. It's similar to MegaTTTron's advice, with a little bit of a different take. I think it's important to read everything, even if it's similar to other advice you've gotten already, because it makes you realize how important that piece of information actually is. Wahoo1L was top 3% at his T10 school.

• A fabulous post, xeoh85's Advice for Doing Well in Law School is solid. Xeoh85 was top of his class at UCLA. I *think* xeoh85 then transferred to Stanford (but I might be wrong). Since xeoh85's posts were spread throughout the thread, and the thread was then locked, Protolaw thankfully compiled all of the advice into one (longer) post. But you should still read it.

• SLS2012 (obviously a Stanford Student) wrote Another Advice Thread for 0L, which is very much like those before it. There's really not much else to say. Just read it.

• MTU is in the 10% at Cornell (say hi to the NardDog for me, MTU!) and has laid out a shorter post giving us his (or her) Two Cents About Law School Success.

• Here's another Arrow post...answering someone's question about E&Es and Hornbooks. Definitely worth a read if you're confused a little bit about what, exactly, those things are.

• Instead of a single thread, JayCutler'sCombover's Complete 0L Guide to 1L is a blog, so you should read from the bottom up. It goes over everything from the typical 0L prep suggestions through class prep, exams, random 1L advice, and even transferring (he was accepted as a transfer to Columbia, no idea if he went or not).

• Lastly, the official TLS article, Success in Law School -- A Unique Perspective. It's good.

Up next: the few threads that are about random/specific topics that didn't fit in either of the two categories above but are still important.

• You can't go to law school without paying for it, and unless you happen to have $200k laying around, you're going to have to take out loans. (If you do happen to have $200k around, let's be friends. I make yummy cupcakes.) Rman1201's Law School Loan Financial Calculator is super helpful. It's not his fault that those numbers are so high, so don't blame the calculator when you go into sticker shock and need a paper bag to breathe into.

• I personally use a Mac, but I'm considering switching to a PC (oh, the horror!) just so I can use OneNote during law school. It's the best outlining software out there, and everyone I know swears by it. If you are lucky enough to have a PC but aren't yet familiar with OneNote, you probably should get familiar with it quickly. Inchoate_con's OneNote & Law School: Beginner's Guide is AMAZING. So well organized. So thorough. So helpful! READ IT RIGHT NOW.

• Obviously, the end-all be-all of law school grades is the exam. And this exam isn't like any exam you've ever taken before (or so I hear). Scribe has put together a great guide on How To Learn How To Do Well on a Law School Exam, so before you get to the exam portion of your first semester as a 1L, you should probably take a look at it. In fact, you should probably peruse the thread before you get to school, just so you can know what to be on the look out for.

WHEW! That's a lot of linkage, right there! I hope you enjoy taking the next six weeks to read through all of those! Hahaha. But really, you would be well-served to at least glance at all of these threads.

How cool would it be if TLS printed these all out and published them as one advice book? I'd be the first one in line to buy it, I swear. Anyway, good luck and godspeed!

0L Preparation: Increasing Your Typing Speed

So, you're planning on going to law school? Well, then, Mavis Beacon should be your homegirl. (Yes, that Mavis Beacon, from 5th grade computer classes -- ah, the good old days of Oregon Trail).

I know, I know, this sounds completely ridiculous. Who cares, right? Trust me, you will. Now if you're typing at a decent speed, and you don't need to focus on the keyboard to be able to type a sentence, then you're probably fine -- no need to become Sally Speed Typer. But if you're employing the "two finger" method (or worse, the "one thumb" method that my uncle tends to use), then you should probably look at brushing up your typing skillz over the 0L prep period.

Having been in a typing-heavy, high-pressure, fast-paced environment for the last year, I don't think that this is something that I personally am going to need or do over the summer, but for those 0Ls who haven't been in that same position increasing your typing speed and accuracy is important. It will make you more productive as a student, you'll be able to take more comprehensive notes, and you'll be able to focus on what the professor is actually saying (rather than which key is where).

There's no need to spend money on a fancy computer program, or take typing classes geared towards octogenarian ex-stenographers, either. You can get really basic, helpful tutorials for free online. Just google "typing lesson" or "typing speed" to get a glimpse of some of the different options available.

Truthfully, most of the people in my age bracket (26 and younger, in general) are probably pretty okay typers. We grew up in the era of AIM and chat rooms, so we can probs type pretty speedily. Whether or not you think you need help, you can run a fun little typing speed diagnostic. My favorite is this one. Even if you don't need typing tutorials, try doing the online test (it refreshes to a new literary passage every time you start the clock again) once or twice a week, just to make you aware of how fast you type, and how accurately you type.

I swear, it's helpful (and fun for the slightly OCD, competitive 0Ls out there).

Gentlemen (and ladies), flex your fingers!

So, how fast do you all type?

Worth the Money? - 1L Prep Classes

There are a few prep classes out there that are worth the money. Bar prep for sure. LSAT prep? Possibly.

I didn't take one, so I wouldn't know, but I had a few friends that scored pretty low on their first go around, had the $1200 lying around, and decided to take the class -- their scores went up on their retakes and they were happy. As such, I'd probably say that sure, LSAT classes are worth the money (if you have it and the time).

But one sort of prep class that I'm really not sure about would be the 1L prep classes. Law School Preview, LSE, and a host of other companies host 1 week law school "boot camps," if you will, that mimic a week in the life of a 1L student. You study a majority of the courses that you will be taking as a 1L to try to familiarize yourself with the concepts, theories, and methods inside of the classroom. Several of the sites "guarantee" higher grades (although how you can guarantee higher grades when you don't have any grades at all to compare them against baffles me) and a lot put out testimonials from people who are in the top 10% of their class at XYZ law school, swearing up and down that it was the preview week that really helped them get there.

And all for the bargain price of $2k (plus travel, lodging, food, etc.).

I have talked to very few people in real life who have gone to prep classes like this, and the anecdotal evidence I have been given is that these prep classes are NOT worth the expense and time. I would, from my own research, tend to agree.

The thing is, I can't imagine that you would be able to do all that much substantive learning in this format. And the little substantive learning you would do probably could have been done at home with a book or commercial outline (although I wouldn't recommend this -- like I said, trying to prep for 1L with actual substantive material is like trying to fly a plane after only reading the manual). You really wouldn't come out (knowledge-wise) any further ahead after your one week of prep classes than you would after reading a book at home by yourself.

Now, as far as tips and tricks go -- you know, outlining, briefing, writing, exam-taking, etc. -- these things might be important to at least come into contact with before you get thrown into the fire in your first week of class. But is a prep class the best way to come into contact with them?

I mean, sure, a prep class will teach you THEIR version of note taking, brief writing, outlining, etc., but you'll have to play around with it a little to find a method that works best for you. You could probably get just as much information about this sort of stuff from books like LSC or the forums on TLS as you would from a prep class, and at a MUCH lower cost.

I just don't see a scenario (outside of a pure panic meltdown) in which 1L prep classes would be worth the time or money. I don't think that they'd particularly be helpful or give you that much of a competitive edge over your classmates. The edge they might give you is an increased familiarity with the format of a class, but isn't that part of the learning curve with law school? And at some point everyone is going to be at your level -- probably within two weeks of the first class!

I talked about this with a local judge at the recent Atticus Finch Award Dinner here in Bakersfield. This judge said to me, "Do you want to be a lawyer after law school? Only the people that are super concerned with being #1 or #2 in their class go to those things, and those people don't want to be lawyers. They probably can't be lawyers. They'd never relate to a jury or a client. Those people tend to be anti-social freaks."

(I swear, that's word for word what she said. I love this particular judge. She's freaking hysterical.)

Even though I'm sure that one or two programs are being offered in Dallas, and several are available online, I will NOT be paying for a 1L prep class. I'll do a little light reading, but that's probably it. Just reminding myself not to panic and taking an extra yoga class now and again will probably do just as much, if not more, for me than an actual prep class would.

Does anyone have any experience with these prep classes? Do you think I'm wrong, or do you all get the same sense about them that I do...not worth it?

0L Preparation: Law School Confidential

Lest I get the reputation of "gunner," I just want to clarify that I have been preparing in a slow, meandering sort of way, and I DO in fact plan to take a majority of the summer off to go shopping, go to the beach, go to Cabo, drink, read trashy romance novels, watch bad reality tv, work on my tan, and play in a semi-professional sloshball league (yes, sloshball is srs bizniz.)

However, I do think that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, and while I might not spend my summer reading casebooks that I won't remember, I will continue trying to get a grasp on a few of the more fluid and technical aspects of law school, rather than the black letter law itself.

One book that I've been reading for a while is the highly-recommended book Law School Confidential by Robert Miller. Written "by students, for students" this book gives a blow-by-blow account of the entire law school process, from making the decision to be a lawyer through all three years of law school. It includes LSAT study tricks, law school exam techniques, and interview tips for OCI.

To be quite honest, I kind of skipped over the entire section on the LSAT and prep, because it didn't really apply to me. So if you want to know about that section you should probably just pick up the book. It's widely available at Barnes and Noble and Borders (although the Borders in my hometown is shutting down -- I like B&N better, anyway).

My overall opinion of this book is that it probably takes an honest, if somewhat overdramatic look, at the law school experience. I imagine that the tips and tricks in this book are probably things that I (and my fellow 0Ls) would pick up during the first semester of law school without a "how to" guide, and that, while informative, this book was not necessarily substantive.

For gunners, this would be bad. For me, this is good. At this point, I think that the way that LSC presents information of the format of an exam, what an outline can/should look like, and where you should be in your work at a give point during the semester is what will probably serve me well, without getting me too panicked or confused.

The most relevant things that I saw (and remember, relevance is in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder has zero experience at an actual law school, so take it with a grain of salt) were the descriptions on briefing/highlighting, the description of a (super gunnerish) study schedule for the weeks leading up to finals, and the list of commercial outlines Miller recommends. To synthesize:

Highlighting/Briefing:

• Buy five different colored highlighters: yellow, green, pink, blue, and orange (but I hate orange highlighters, so I'm going to go with purple).
• Each of the colors should correspond to a different section of the case: GREEN - facts, YELLOW - critical legal reasoning, PINK - holding/court/judge/procedural posture, BLUE - important precedents cited and their holdings, and ORANGE(PURPLE) - important dissenting remarks.
• After skimming the case through once, go back through and highlight in the color-code listed above, but do so sparingly. That way if you're called on in class to discuss a case, your eye immediately knows where to go on the page.
• Miller also suggests drawing a small figure at the top of your case to remind you what the case was about, but I really don't think that this is necessarily a tip that I will use.

Commercial Outlines:

• Civ Pro: Glannon, Emanuel
• Torts: Gilbert, Glannon
• Property: Gilbert
• Contracts: Emanuel
• Constitutional Law: Emanuel
• Criminal: Gilbert's

While the section on preparing for law school and the section about the first semester of the 1L year were probably the most valuable to me, I went ahead and read through the rest of the book, just to familiarize myself with the concepts and etiquette -- this way when I go back to re-read the different sections as they actually become relevant to me, I'll already have the groundwork done. I just think that the more I read about the abstract "law school experience" the less likely I'll be to panic at the starter's pistol, you know?

I've just ordered a copy of Getting to Maybe (which is, apparently, all about the exam process), so it should be here soon-ish. Plus one of the profs at SMU put together a "Suggested Reading" list that I'll probably take a crack at...at least the ones that look easy.

Anyone out there have any good suggestions for other 0L prep (besides the beach/sloshball) that they found useful?

0L Preparation: A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar...

Law students, in general, tend to be high-strung overachievers with slightly neurotic tendencies. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. And in a majority of cases, future law students are desparate to find a leg up on the competition, even before getting to the hallowed halls of their chosen institution. They try to prep for law school before ever setting foot in a classroom.

This is like trying to learn to fly an airplane JUST by reading the owners manual for a Cessna. It's just not possible.

Unless this 0L has had a LOT of legal experience in the past, odds are that they are not going to know how to brief, or even how to read a real case. And so ordering casebooks and hornbooks and sitting down with them is going to be like a 6 year old sitting down with War and Peace. Odds are they're NOT going to get it, and just end up more confused than ever.

As a 0L, I have these same tendencies to try to get ahead. But I know myself, and I know that trying to slog through a commercial outline or a casebook without going to a class where they're explaining it is just going to make me even more neurotic and depressed about the challenges I have to face in a few months. So I'm trying to stay away from the actual prep work for 1L by preparing for law school in general, as well as an eventual career in law.

Every so often, I'll read a book or watch a movie and file away some information for future use. And now I'll share some of that information with you. A movie that I recently streamed on Netflix was particularly interesting (and anxiety-inducing), and I felt compelled to share it all with you so that you, too, can feel this particular brand of fascination mixed with panic. A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar... is a documentary film following 6 California law graduates all attempting to take and pass the July 2006 bar exam. We follow them in their daily lives and studies for a 12 week period leading up to the exam in Ontario, CA.

So who do we get to know on this journey? Well, two subjects (Cassandra and Megan) both graduated that year from Loyola Law School, one (Tricia) had just graduated that year from UCLA, one (Sam) had graduated two years earlier (also from Loyola, I believe), one (Magda) believed that she had just graduated from People's College of Law, and one (Don) had graduated from Western State College of Law in 1980, and was taking the bar exam for the...are you ready?...42nd time.

We follow these six subjects through their bar prep courses, while the 4 new grads prepare for the 1st time, Sam for his third attempt, and Don for his (I still can't believe it) 42nd go. They relay their fears and anxieties, the stress of studying for an exam that's not just knowledge-based but also a competition (only so many can pass in a year), and address the sacrifices they've had to make in order to prepare.

They show the cameras where their hair has literally fallen out in clumps, fall into fits of laughter to keep from crying, and express what the massive amount of caffeine is doing to their nervous system. Cassandra's young son falls ill and has to go to the hospital, and she has to wrestle with her feelings on inadequacy when she chooses to stay in and study rather than spend another day with him during visiting hours.

I think every person considering a career as a lawyer should take a look at this film. Aside from just following the six exam takers, there are also interviews with famous trial lawyers, law professors, and television personalities about the type of person it takes to be a serious litigator, which is VERY interesting.

This movie shows a potential law student what they can realistically look forward to after graduation. The stress, the drama, the anxiety...it's all worth it if you pass, but what if you don't?

SPOILER ALERT: For those of you wondering, Cassandra and Megan both passed the July 2006 exam. Tricia failed, but passed in July 2007. Sam and Don both failed (again) and have yet to be admitted in California as of today. Magda was unable to sit the exam because it was determined she didn't have enough credits at the law school to be able to take the bar. However, a Cal Bar Attorney Search shows that she was admitted to the bar in 2009.

Only 1/3 of our subjects passed the exam in July 2006. This is about even with the pass rate for California over all, which was (I believe) 36% for this exam. That's so crazy when you think about it!

It's important to know, as a 0L or a 1L, that this is what you really want to do, and that you'll be committed and see it through to the end. Being aware of the end goal (namely, passing the bar exam) from the start will help you see the light at the end of the law school tunnel, and hopefully get through the next 3 years (and the exam) with a steady head.