It's Bar Time

It's right about the time that recent grads start stressing about the bar, so here is a thread to help spread, er, diffuse the anxiety.

You'll find lots of information about the bar exam -- which is essentially the same repackaged blivit each year -- by clicking here.

Your more specific questions (like what to do if you go into labor, will you die if your laptop melts down, or how to answer the 15 most common bar exam questions) are fair game for the comments section below. Responses, though maybe not answers, are sure to follow.

Good luck, everyone!

[Dead hand control update:  Anonymous reminds me this is a good time to move this thread up.  Good luck everyone.  Rest well, eat well in the morning (as in healthy and not the crappy eggs and bacon at the Hilton Garden Inn or whatever), follow the directions, and when you read the first question you will realize how much material you have mastered in about 2 months. -- Armen]

Pinky and the Brain

Apparently DE is trying to take over the world or at least become chancellor.  And apparently it's also that time of the summer when rising 2Ls freak out about CLR.

The former topic is something I have not heard anything about.  Is it true?  I don't know.  Why would DE do this?  Perhaps he has an itch to spam every Berkeley student's email inbox.

The latter topic has been beaten to a bloody pulp on these pages.  Bottom line:  very little of what you do in law school matters.  CLR doesn't matter for firm jobs.  Some judges still put stock into law students working on the flagship journal but only because it's some crude proxy for your academics, not because of anything you learn while working on a journal.  Justice Scalia for example hates the writing habits his clerks pick up while working on a journal.  If you write like people do on journals while in practice, you'll have some awkward conversations with whoever is reviewing your work.  Seriously, I cannot stress this enough...IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Now, if you are a nerd, and the betting public thinks you are, and you want to dig into some substantive areas of the law, by all means, join CLR or any of the other great journals (shout out to BJIL).  If you enjoy the camaraderie, go ahead, join a journal, a club, a circus, whatever.  But if you don't get on CLR, don't think your legal career is already doomed.  In the words of Tupac, "life goes on."