#7 – How I passed the California Bar Exam
My Lockdown Project
I had often considered studying for some additional qualification to enhance my credentials, such as a Masters in tax, notary public qualification or a US bar qualification, but that was a long time ago and then I settled into a busy work and home life routine for 15 years and never really gave it much thought.
For personal reasons I looked into this again last year. As a non-US law graduate, the options for qualifying as an attorney in the US are basically New York and California, because most of the rest require a US post-graduate law degree. As I always liked California more, I decided to try to qualify as a California attorney, and so started a journey down the rabbit hole in spring 2020.
I can strongly recommend a few factors supporting a project like this:
- Plan some time in (my course was basically up to 15 hours a week for 10 months) and be structured and disciplined about when you do the study
- Consider starting during a lockdown when a lack of commute suddenly gives you a couple of extra hours in the day J
- A good study program (I found barbri’s program and mentor system really great)
- An understanding family
- Endurance…
The prerequisites
The California State Bar requires sight of some (for me, historical) documents to evidence the entitlement to register as a prospective attorney.
This involved some researching in dusty boxes to find the exact dates my law degree program started and ended as well as finding a copy of my degree certificate and transcripts and other documents I’d forgotten even existed.
Preparing for the bar exam
After making some enquiries I signed up for the barbri.com extended bar prep course which is an online, on demand course paced at 10-15 hours per week. The course for my targeted bar exam in February 2021 started in April 2020. Extended U.S. Bar Prep Course Details & Pricing | BARBRI (barbri-prep.com) . Obviously there are other courses available but this one felt like a good fit.
The course provides a mix of preparatory reading, online lectures, essay assignments and interactive tests which keeps things interesting and varied and slowly builds up the level of knowledge, detailed understanding and recall needed to stand a chance of passing the exam. It seemed like there was so much material I would never be able to remember it but the program is well designed and I eventually started to see how much I could actually remember.
Each course week has assigned material but because it was online and on demand I could choose when I studied to suit my personal lifestyle and other commitments. In the end I worked out that (as long as I wasn’t commuting) I could squeeze 2 hours of study between 6am and 8am each work morning before work and then cover the rest of the material for the week on a Saturday morning before I really started the weekend. This worked well for me and there were very few times when I had to juggle my plan too much to adapt to changes. That way, I could still spend evenings with the family and enjoy something of the weekend, allowing me (cough) opportunities to do worthwhile activities like mowing the lawn and trimming hedges. More importantly I was able to still enjoy something of the weekend, still go out for runs to clear my head and relax with the family to avoid it all getting too much.
Effectively, the study plan and materials were so good that the only time I really departed from the plan was when I prepared my own final consolidated revision notes to use in the past week, because I know how I learn and it helped me to go through the consolidation process keep to my brain awake with some active learning, as well as ensuring I had about 4 pages of notes for each of the 11 subjects
It’s hard work but it’s doable and if anyone reading this is considering such a step, even after a long period of not studying (honestly my last exam was when I qualified as a STEP member 15 years ago so I was terrified) I hope this mail gives some insight into how it can be possible.
Moral character
Unexpectedly, dealing with the moral character requirements for California’s State Bar was logistically one of the more complicated aspects of the process. FBI fingerprint cards are required, and in Switzerland there are two police stations in the entire country which are accepted by the FBI as authorised to do the fingerprinting.
In the end I had to travel out to Winterthur (about an hour from where I live) 3 separate times to get my fingerprints done or redone. One time they gave me one fingerprint card where two are needed. My bad – I assumed too much. The second time, after sending the fingerprints to the US I received a message the fingerprints were on the right form, but the wrong kind of paper… so very kindly the police here didn’t charge me the third time.
Then I had to find a number of professional friends who could vouch for my high moral character and lack of general criminal tendencies as referees in an online questionnaire. Thank you to those who agreed to do this! You know who you are and I am very grateful.
I also had to find details of exactly what addresses I’ve lived at, for what dates, since I left school. I’m in my mid-40s. There have been a few. Back to the dusty box of documents…
Finally, I had to evidence that I’ve had a clean driving licence in every country I’ve lived in. I’m not quite sure why. But I knew it was a requirement so I had to contact the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency in the UK where I haven’t lived for over a decade (and I had to surrender my licence when I converted to a Swiss licence) and ask them if they could confirm I had no endorsements. I was lucky they hadn’t destroyed my records.
So, a lot of digging in the past and some frustrations along the way but all in all, doable. The process takes quite some time though. From start to finish, that process took a year, including all hiccups, pandemic-related delays and driving back and forth to get my fingerprints done multiple times.
The bar exam
The Bar Exam in February 2021 was administered remotely due to the pandemic, just like the 2020 summer exam. There was a very short list of things that are allowed to be the room in order not to be disqualified on a technicality. It was clear to me that my study room, with all the books and papers wasn’t going to work. Also I wanted to be out of the way where no children or dogs could accidentally walk in the room and accidentally disqualify me…
I therefore thought very hard and talked sweetly to my family and we were able to clear all the junk out of a spare room upstairs and make it suitable for exam conditions. This was to be my “home” for two evenings so I also took a couple of mock exams there too to check everything worked.
I also took a week off of work beforehand to focus on studying and also acclimatising to the California time zone, also switching my study later into the day to make sure my brain could still operate well into the night. It’s been a while since my brain had to be fully functioning that late. Also I was also forced to buy a laptop because using my usual desktop computer wasn’t permitted for technical reasons. Still, a good excuse to get myself a new toy.
The exam itself takes place over two days. The first day started at 5pm local time for me, with the first day ending at around 3.30am and the second day at around 2am. There was coffee involved.
The big day(s) came, I was incredibly nervous, but felt well prepared and confident that I couldn’t have done more than I did, to get through. I struggled with time on a couple of essay questions but felt I’d done ok on all but one question, where I just didn’t know where to start, to just wrote what I could to score as many points as I could gather, and moved on.
The feeling of relief when I finished was enormous. I couldn’t just go to sleep immediately but did have work the next day so celebrated with a nice whisky and went to bed…everyone else was asleep anyway so there wasn’t really anyone I could share the moment with. It was quite surreal.
The wait
February to May is a long time to wait. I didn’t want to be too confident because I’d had mixed outcomes on the practice essays, and one question I was less confident about, but I was really hoping I’d done well enough that I didn’t have to retake the exam. The California bar is known for being difficult and having a low pass rate. In February 2020 only 27.9% of people taking the test passed (!). In October 2020 the statistics spiked and 60.4% passed. I still wasn’t sure I made it.
The results were released at 3am Swiss time on 8 May 2021 (6pm on 7 May, California time). I briefly considered staying up to find out immediately but, honestly, I was too tired. Saturday morning I was conscious of the Schroedinger’s Cat problematic. When I woke up I had both passed and failed. As soon as I checked the result, it would be clear which reality remained. I was nervous. But very excited that I had passed, and relieved I wouldn’t need to resit the exam!
A huge step forward in my journey to dual UK/US qualification and I was very happy.
One final hurdle: Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam
The MPRE is the ethics test which is administered uniformly for (almost) all states as a condition of being licenced as an attorney. Most US law graduates get this out of the way during law school but I was advised to do it after the bar exam, to avoid splitting my attention between two sets of study. All good advice.
Unfortunately, the exam must be taken in a testing centre in the US. There is not remote option. It is administered three times a year. Having registered for the March 2021 test, it became clear that the pandemic restrictions would prevent me from entering the US from Europe to take the test, so I’ve had to defer to August. I really hope that, by then, it will be possible to enter to take the test so I can finally be licensed as a California attorney!
Conclusion: Old dogs can learn new tricks after all!
After such a long period of doing my learning mainly on the job, it was quite a different experience to study for, and sit a professional exam, especially one as broad in subject-matter and yet deeply detailed as the California Bar Exam, but I’m glad I gave it a try.
Not only it is nice to challenge yourself to get out of the comfort zone from time to time but I also really enjoyed learning about diverse US legal and procedural topics (some of which were kind of familiar from the TV shows I enjoy), and the more familiar topics such as wills and trusts, but California-style.
I’m now in a bit of an internal struggle. On the one hand, I’m glad I’ve reawakened my thirst for learning, but it is currently nice to actually enjoy my weekends after a fairly intensive year…
Thanks for reading!
PhilG
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