As I write this post, there are exactly 31 days until the bar exam. That's a month. To inspire the requisite fear in us to start studying even harder (and allegedly give us an idea of where we are in our progress) BarBri gave everyone in Pennsylvania a simulated Multistate Bar Examination today. It was extremely difficult. Tomorrow and Monday we get to sit in a classroom for 8 hours listening to someone explain why we got a huge portion of the answers wrong. This is enough to depress a guy. Or girl. I'm not discriminating, or maybe I am? Based on that test I don't know.
While I was in the shower washing away my depression, I remembered something very important: I want to be a lawyer. I've wanted to be a lawyer for a very long time. In fact, I've wanted to be a lawyer for as long as I can remember. There are myriad reasons why, and the reasons have changed and evolved as the years have gone on. However, over the last two years, while studying ethics and training to become a prosecutor, one of the more important reasons became clear: law is an honorable profession.
Nonlawyers may (and most likely will) disagree. Even a good number of lawyers may disagree. Nonetheless, when people are in a moment of need and must reach out for help, they turn to lawyers. When they need advice about how to make sure their wills are sorted out properly, or when they're in trouble with the police, or want to buy a home, people call lawyers. This is a great responsibility to take up, and the bar examination is a necessary step before one can don this mantle of responsibility.
Once one takes on this responsibility, he or she must wear it all the time. As our lecturer on professional responsibility explained "You're a lawyer 24 hours a day." Even when a lawyer is not representing a client, she has responsibilities.
As a public citizen, a lawyer should seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice, and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession. As a member of a learned profession, a lawyer should cultivate knowledge of the law beyond its use for clients, employ that knowledge in reform of the law, and work to strengthen legal education. In addition, a lawyer should further the public's understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system because legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority.1
Many of the people who will sit for bar examinations across the country this summer have wanted to be a lawyer as long as I have. Many of them are down in the dumps over studying for the bar. We cannot look at it this way. Instead, for the rest of the summer, we should all remind ourselves why we want to become lawyers. If you're anything like me, it's because you love the law. So why so down? When you're sitting in that lecture hall, remember that you're learning about something you love: the law. Today, and tomorrow, and for as long as I can foresee, I get to learn about the law.2 It will be an awesome time. Let it begin.
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2. We never stop learning, especially when it comes to the law. Even from one case, we hardly ever wring out every last drop of education, according to my Ethics professor.
