Law School Life
socket in my hotel room. AND IT WORKED. That same cord
continued to work after its bar exam failure for another year
or more!”
WARNING: Practice handwriting your exam answers—just
in case.
LOTS of horror stories included various strange events that
required test-takers to handwrite portions of their exams, as
the stories below show. Practicing handwriting answers and
essays might have eased at least some of their pain.
the Law that night. There was no noticeable or announced
cessation of testing. MBE > bat/potential vampire.”
Future test-takers, as the narratives above show, taking the
bar exam is going to be tough. It’s going to be a stressful
experience. Wacky, unexpected things are going to happen.
Take a deep breath. Heed the warnings laid out in this article.
Practice your favorite stress-relief techniques. Just think: if
the lawyers who shared these horror stories lived through
(and passed!) their bar examinations, there is great hope
that you will too. Best of luck to you all!
• “When my friends were taking the North Carolina Bar,
there was a huge storm, and all the power went out. They
had to stop and restart by hand where they left off on their
essays, so naturally, everything was messed up.”
• “My horror story was also
computer-related: I paid for
this stupid software to type my
exam, properly tested it, and
everything worked just fine.
Even so, I could not get it to
start on my computer on the
day of the exam. The IT guy
on site couldn’t figure out why.
I ended up handwriting the
whole thing.”
WARNING: Develop nerves of
steel. You might need them.
“Expect the unexpected,” and
“hope for the best; prepare for
the worst,” are two clichés that
bar exam takers would be wise
to follow. There was simply no
way to predict or prepare for some of the sagas below.
• “Somebody near me fainted in my bar exam, and we
couldn’t get anyone to come over and help for the longest
time. Finally a proctor came over, but was annoyed at us for
creating a disturbance. Eventually they called an ambulance,
and paramedics came in and removed the person—all while
our clock was running.”
• “You can ask any of the February 2013 takers about getting
a 10 minute warning when there were 90 minutes left on the
clock. That was unnerving.”
• “There was a bat flying around the back of the room in my
bar exam in Indiana, July 2012. I was in the front of the room
and didn’t even know about it until I read an article on Above
The Official News Publication of the Atlanta Bar Association
April 2015
THE ATLANTA LAWYER
11