With the bar exam now over many who sat for the bar are considering what to do. We hope that you will celebrate this weekend and we wanted to provide you with some things to do and consider over the next few months. It seems like ages ago (even though it was just two years) that I sat for the bar so I asked a more recent bar exam taker to write a guest post suggesting what you should do. He has some great ideas so take a look. The guest post was written by Salaam Bhatti. Salaam does in house counsel work for a rapidly growing rehabilitation and pain management practice. You can check out his blog at: www.lawgspot.blogspot.com or follow him on Twitter @salawm. Here is Salaam's guest post.
Welcome Back to Reality
The Bar Exam is over. What do you plan to do now? For many, the Bar Exam was the edge of the world; after it ended, who knew what lay ahead? After I completed the bar exam last year, my wife and I went straight to the mountains and camped for a week. One of the bonfires was fueled by the hard copy of my bar exam notes (rest assured, the digital copy remains safe). Fortunately, I was out of cell phone reception so I did not have to field any calls about “How do you think you did?” or “What did you answer for essay 4?” or even people saying the dreaded F word “I’m sure you did fine.”
I did something that many students do after taking a bar exam: go away. In times past when the economy was booming and lots of students had jobs in the bag before the bar exam, one could hear about students trekking across Europe for a few weeks. Times are economically tough for many, and the bar exam has not eased in any way, shape, or form. So the vacation is still necessary. If you are hanging around home (which probably has some evil bar study memories associated with it), then take a few days off to just go somewhere. Go alone, go with a friend, go with a significant other. Learn to fish, find a lovely sunrise, drive for six hours in one direction and see what you find, do something that has nothing to do with the law. Just be mindful of not breaking the law.
Here are some things not to do:
- Do not think about whether you passed or failed. I know, everybody is telling you that. Let me tell you why: For the most part, everybody thinks they failed. I thought I failed. A lot of people also felt they performed strongly in certain parts of the bar exam. And why not? You studied for about two months, of course you know certain things that are on the exam.
- Do not talk about the exam. It is the same thing as crying over spilled milk. Do you cry over spilled milk? No, right? Then stop talking about your answers. This also means to stop looking at your bar study notes to see if you had all the elements in there for the property essay.
- Do not sit on your bum all day. Go exercise. Exercising will help you build a strong, positive attitude, which will show itself at interviews and networking functions. You don’t have to join a gym. You can run in your neighborhood or do calisthenics, yoga, aerobics, etc in your own home. Besides, you probably have some bar study food to burn off.
- Do not talk about the exam on your social networks anymore.
- Stay away from websites that have depressing news.
Here are some things to do:
- Go watch the new Batman film. It’s an epic journey of a man who has to go from the bottom to the top. And yes, it is perfectly okay to liken yourself to Bruce Wayne and call Bane the “Bar Exam”.
- Look for jobs. Network. All that good stuff. Go easy on the Craigslist search. Those jobs are hard to come by because everybody is applying for them. When people say “Go ask everybody you know about a job.” They mean that literally. Go to career services first. Become a familiar, friendly face and they will want to help you out.
- Not finding a job? Then create a job. Incorporate your own small business. This will help you make a little bit of money as well as draft legal documents, which will help your brain from going into atrophy. Create a business to help people learn how to use social media, start a bakery, develop a personal website, etc.
- Go to a temp agency. There is no shame in this. SallieMae is probably chasing you, you need to pay rent, you have bills. If you jump into temp work, you will find yourself in an entirely different network. Take this opportunity to spread your name. You never know when you just might start moving up the ranks at the temp job and have something great come from it.
- If the market is tight in your area, then move. A very rich doctor told me that wealth is for those who are not rooted. The doctor immigrated here with only two suitcases, worked hard, and moved from place to place. Now he has a massive house, great job, and a wonderful family. In the words of Ms. Frizzle, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.”
- Read some non-legal books. Find joy in pleasure reading once again. I have read many books since my bar exam and am absolutely taken by Sherlock Holmes.
- Conserve your most valued resources: time and money. Stay away from Amazon Prime, Netflix, unnecessary subscriptions. Redbox is a great and cheap movie rental substitute. Do you need a pricey cell phone plan? Do you require impulse buys from deal-of-the-day websites? You’re nearly a lawyer, analyze things in a beneficial way.
- Be as productive as possible. If, in a few months, you find you failed the bar exam, then you will have created enough distance from it so that the shock does not hurt too much. Who knows, maybe you will have found a new niche where bar admission simply doesn’t matter. But if you want to tackle the exam again or even want to do another one elsewhere, buckle down and get to it. Whatever the case, keep moving ahead. And if you keep these items in mind, ahead is where you will end up.
You can find out more about Salaam by checking out his blog at: lawgspot.blogsopt.com or you can follow him on Twitter @salawm
