and evening and morning were the third day

No bar exam should be three days long, under any circumstances. Sure, there are those brave souls who sit for two different jurisdictions at the same administration; but at the end, if all goes according to plan, they're actually admitted to practice in two different jurisdictions. But three whole days of bar exam -- eighteen hours of brain jam -- just to qualify in a single state? Unconscionable. I know California's big, but hell, after this much protracted agony we should be licensed throughout the entire Western Hemisphere.

So many of our peers across the country had already finished their bar exams. We all knew this, which gave the Oakland Convention Center a much more introspective and thoughtful air today; we were acutely aware that this was a day of particularly Californian hell. Ironically, even though I'd been recognizing dozens of faces from my summer firm and my old law school, it was the third day that made me feel more connected to the place than ever before. Today, we were all Californians. "It's good to see you," a former sectionmate remarked to me as we waited on line, "back where you belong."

It was also a day for a different kind of introspection. This was the last day of the bar exam, the final consummation of eight weeks spent learning and re-learning the bones of law school. Remember law school? That place we went for three straight years, the labor unceasing, the crazy wild ride? This was the final punctuation mark at the end of that experience, the last period at the end of the last sentence. From here on in, we move into a different phase: either limbo, where we loop the loop repeatedly until we finally pass the bar, or lawyerhood, if the results come back positive in November and we can proceed onward with the rest of our lives. But law school, and the experience of studying law as we’ve known it, was coming to a conclusive end right there in that hall as we typed.

As if to mock us, the final California Performance Test (not to be confused with the far more reasonable MPT, administered in many sane jurisdictions) went straight for the solar plexus. Are you ready to be a lawyer? it sneered at us. Then prove it. Write a brief for the government arguing that a poor sweet young couple with a baby and no money should have to forfeit their only car under our new zero-tolerance drunk driving policy. That little twinge you’re feeling where your soul used to be? We’re almost done with it, and soon you won’t feel anything at all.

It is so easy to forget that the goal of all of this effort – the bar exam, the horrible two months of bar review, and all the peaks and valleys of law school – is merely to become a lawyer. At the end of this enormous ungodly race, that’s our only prize. We get to be lawyers. We will not be saving lives, we will not be saving souls, least of all our own. We will be practicing law. That’s it. We have invested untold energy in this effort, for the sole reward of being numbered among the world’s most loathed profession. “There are too damn many lawyers,” my mother tells me whenever I grouse over the harshness of the bar admission process or the low pass rate on the exam. “They should make it even harder to become a lawyer, and then we won’t need a hundred pages in the phone book to list ’em all.”

*shrug*.

Finishing the bar exam turned out to be its own reward, though. On the ferry to San Francisco with wonderful Patrick, I toasted the receding Oakland skyline with my very last bottle of amaro. It tasted as awful as ever, all the more appropriate as we passed under giant mechanical dock arms swinging massive shipping containers over our heads. The bar exam was over. Bar review was over. I didn’t have to think about studying law again for at least four months. Everything is contingent, of course, and nothing can be taken for granted; if I don’t pass this exam, I’m going to have to take it again, and even if I do, there will still be Massachusetts to confront, plus whatever other jurisdictions materialize on our radar screen as we continue to live like gypsies. But those are separate projects. For all intents and purposes, this was truly the bitter end of my law school odyssey.

It quickly got sweeter. We paced the length of the Ferry Building, a wonderful place to which I had not been back since having tea there with JuBu last summer. So much flavored syrup and olive oil and bread to sample. So many glossy counters full of expensive things like caviar and aromatic cheese and chocolate. We even managed, completely at random, to meet Michael Recchiuti himself. “I love your marshmallows,” I gushed to the Picasso Of Chocolates. “Oh, my God, the marshmallows,” he groaned. Apparently the demand for his breakthrough product had broken the fun barrier and now just meant more work. I could see that. Still, we bought marshmallows.

Already a tad bit tipsy from the amaro on an empty stomach, I had to fight the urge to rush up to the string quartet (the string quartet!) and interrupt their divertimento with a request for Ravel. “Later,” Patrick told me, knowing full well that I’d be distracted by the jazz quintet and the Spanish guitarist spaced evenly down the rest of the long hallway. It worked. We found the wine bar, munched on a cheese box, and toasted with Riedel glasses of French champagne, in homage to our old stomping grounds on the Tolkien boards: “I’m glad you’re with me here at the end of all things.” Then came the dolcetto, and then came my husband, who had made it up to the city just in time to join us for dinner at the Market Café after the wine bar closed. I had a martini called the “Southsider” (Stoli, lemon juice and wild mint) in honor of my law school, then a glass of chardonnay solely to achieve complete inebriation. The bar exam was over. The bar exam was over. Law school was over. It was all over.

And the more I repeat this, the more likely I am to believe it, eventually.

thus spake /jca @ July 28, 2005 11:47 PM