Bar Exam, Day 1

Last night I couldn't sleep (they told me that would happen) and I finally got up about 1:00 am and watched about a half an episode of Monk. The mattress hurts my back, and I've thinking wistfully of those Doubletree(?) "get a good night's rest" commercials. The morning began with a "contenental breakfast" of some terrible coffee and a banna-nut muffin. I think.

The first thing people probably want to know is "how was it?" And I can say that it was about what I expected. The first part of the test was the multistate performance test, in which we are assigned a task to perform. It was a memo. I think I did OK on it but I was running out of time and had to cut it short. Everyone was typing right up until the end. Well, except for one guy whose computer seemed to have issues and the Examsoft geeks in attendance couldn't fix. He had to hand-write his answer. A few other people had problems with it as well, but I guess those were resolved since he was the only one I saw handwriting.

Then they brought out the Texas Procedure and Evidence portion. I knew most of the answers, and made wild guesses on a couple. Probably the same as everyone else. I came out of there feeling more hungry than beat down, and I was hoping some of the people I knew there would want to get lunch. I was disappointed no one lingered to talk about lunch plans. Everyone ran out of there for points unknown.

So I drove around. Some of you remember I lived in Austin for a couple of years, but that was in the 1980s. I don't remember my way around that well. I drove around looking for a restaurant, I wasn't finding anything on the interstate, so I used the force and followed my instinct. It led me to a Chinese buffet on a small hill that I had forgotten about.

Ever since I signed up for the laptop exam I kept getting emails and letters from the Board of Law Examiners. They would tell me "You no longer need a floppy drive to take the laptop exam." Then you read down and it says "bring your laptop, power cord, mouse, and floppy drive." Wha? So when I got there I asked them. Official position: you don't need it.

Tomorrow is the multiple-choice portion. It covers six topics (seven if you count criminal procedure separately from criminal law). The questions are supposed to be randomly mixed among the topics but from what I hear I should expect an easier morning of criminal questions and torts, then a killer afternoon of lengthy contracts and property questions. I can already tell you that I will have no idea how I do on those. You can think your answer couldn't possibly be wrong, and yet be wrong! I'll look over some of it after a nap.

I know this is a somewhat random and cranky post; I'll try to do better tomorrow!