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Law Students

: Thanks, But No Thanks.

The bar exam, by the numbers

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....Or, "How The Bar Exam Saved California's Budget Crisis."

I am taking the California Bar in July (to clarify: in May, June, and August, I will be going to California bars. This is not the same experience, though both leave you poorer and headachey). I've been bopping along this spring, doling out all of my shiny new tax refund right back to the fine state of California. I'm in the fortunate position of having a bar-study stipend, so long as my firm doesn't fire me (I love you, Work Hard Play Hard, LLP. Call me.), so mercifully, this will eventually get reimbursed, but the idea of shelling out this much money for 3 days of total misery still smarts.*

In the meantime, I'm absolutely certain that bar fees are a tremendously good indicator of the fact that the legal profession only vaguely remembers what it was like to be a starving student. That, or lawyers are just assholes.

Read it and weep, 2Ls. This is you next year. Save your birthday money.

Registration ($97): Presumably, California needs fair warning that sometime, in the not-too-distant future, I will be sending them more of my money. I can't figure out another good reason to be paying this fee. Also,

Laptop Fee ($125): This makes sense, because it is the only normal looking number in this list, and after all, it is so much more expensive and time consuming for the bar examiners to read a printed version of your answers, rather than your manic scrawling. Right? Of course right. Or there's the blood-sucking money leeches approach, but the first idea makes more sense.

Bar Exam Registration ($556): For this much money, how much fun would you expect? I haven't done the research, but it seems like this should go pretty far in a strip club. I know it's several bottles of nice wine for me, and a couple of terrific dinners out. The hidden cost here is that the State Bar has to put all of these people in rooms, see, with these tiny desks, and turn the lights to the right level of irritatingly low/glaringly bright, and then pass out paper. And paper, you all know, is very expensive. So are lights.

Character and Fitness Application ($453): Yes, it does cost $453 to call each of my former roommates (thanks, guys!) to have them aver that, no, she doesn't have a substance abuse problem, and no, we don't think she's committed any felonies. That she's been caught for. Or something.*

Sidebar: Is anyone else irrationally afraid that, during this process, there will be some terrible mistake, and some dark, not-you record will come out of the woodwork, and then you won't be able to be an attorney because someone with your name robbed a nursing home and then declared bankruptcy and then got convicted for dealing cocaine to school children and oh god how will you pay off your student loans with Not-You running around keeping you from being a lawyer oh no oh no?

Just me?
Right. Ok, then.

Moral of the story: I think the California State Bar might be running a pyramid scheme. Someone alert the authorities.

*I know! I'm still employed. Believe me, it's as crazy to me as it is to you. This is due entirely to dumb luck, and has very, very little to do with my actual credentials (although I think the hiring partner was looking for someone who could pick out a nice bottle of wine for him).

Full post as published by Thanks, But No Thanks. on March 22, 2010 (boomark / email).