It’s unfair the Bar exam has a reputation as the toughest test in America.

Sure, the occasional straggler doesn’t pass, such as Kathleen Sullivan, who failed the California Bar in 2005 despite having served as — I swear this is true — dean of the Stanford Law School the previous five years.

But most people who take the test do just fine, provided they study day and night for months on end and forgo sleep and sacrifice small animals to Legalia, goddess of the motion to dismiss.

For the benefit of those outside the field of law and lawyers who repressed the whole thing from their memories I present the answers to some common reader-submitted Bar exam questions I just made up. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I wrote about the character and fitness requirement to passing the Bar, about which I’d like to remind Bar examiners I was just completely joking around in a totally good-natured way and would like to be removed from the blacklist now, please.

But the hardest part of becoming an attorney is the Bar exam, a 12-hour test given over two days so difficult and requiring so much technical legal know-how that you have to study a lot. Read the rest of this entry »

Not just anyone can become an attorney in Illinois. It would be embarrassing if the state certified someone who later lied or stole or extorted children’s hospitals for campaign contributions.

That’s why there’s a “Character and Fitness” component to passing the state Bar. See, this is Illinois, and we don’t call ourselves the Land of Lincoln for nothing: it’s because Lincoln-Mercury gave Rod Blagojevich $150,000 in unmarked bills. Also because we’re the exclusive home of Abraham Lincoln, so his birthplace (Kentucky) and boyhood home (Indiana) can just shut up about it.

It’s a high standard for lawyers to live up to. One time a woman accidentally overpaid Lincoln by two cents, so the future president walked six miles to the woman’s house to confess to chopping down her cherry tree. Read the rest of this entry »