Sometimes You Eat the Bar

Chaos on the East Coast today, as the New York Board of Bar Examiners first released, then retracted, then re-released with a retraction, the results for the New York Bar exam of July 2010.

The internet first erupted sometime in the early afternoon, as anxiety-riddled, recent law graduates first caught the hint of something in the wind. That something was the work of a presumably now discharged person in charge of the NY Bar Exam website, who accidentally published to a live internet the results of the July examination.

Since the internet is where things go to become immortal, this was all it took. Despite unpublishing the list within the hour, people took screenshots of the lists and posted them to legal blogs, which promptly crashed under the weight of the collective neuroses of over 3,000 people.

Of course, no one would certify that this was the list. GChat exploded as thousands of confused and frightened neurotics asked each other the pertinent question: Is this the pass list? Is this the list of all the people who took the test? Or, worst of all, IS THIS THE FAIL LIST?

Analysis of the list quickly proved fruitless. Although it had been drilled to law students that virtually everyone passed the bar exam (with 2 or 3 exceptions in a class of 300), lawyers lead the league in worrying about shit they don't need to worry about, and most everybody was still worried sick. Seeing everyone they knew on the list should have confirmed what everyone, deep down, knew but could not grow to accept: Of course we all passed the goddamned bar exam.

And how would we know if someone was not on the list? Asking that question would be like stepping into a school bus and saying, raise your hand if you're not here. And then saying, alright, everybody is here. Let's go.

And then, of course, like a screener that is leaked to the internet before the movie is scheduled to premiere, the Bar Examiners decided to hell with it and released the official list. And a mighty sigh trembled across the land, as newly-minted lawyers raced to update their Facebook statuses in order to hoard well wishes and congratulations.

I myself was part of the chaos, and was glad to be able to break the happy news to a couple of people. I almost felt like I was calling them to inform them that they had just won the Nobel Prize, except instead of a million dollars and applause from the King of Sweden, you get condemned to a lifetime of ulcers and agita.

All cynicism aside, I, like many of you, was a ghost for the entire summer and am more than happy to see the fruit of my efforts rewarded. Although my elbow still occasionally clicks from writing all those notecards, I have finally arrived at the culmination of 20 years of formal education. We are now, and will always be, attorneys-at-law.

. . .

"Blessing or Curse" for $300, Alex.