Legally Fabulous

Life Updates

2012-01-26T09:44:00.001-06:00

Hola Amigos.

Long time no chat.

Things have been super busy. Busy is good. Work is awesome. Big trial coming up, and sentencings/appeals/habeas hearings. Lots of trying to get innocent people out of jail, which is a pretty cool way to spend your day.

Went to the STS9 show at Congress in Chicago on Friday. It was incredible. I now know why my brother is basically an STS9 groupie.

Here's a video from a show for those of you who are not familiar.

Amazing.

I purchased a fluorescent pink Cambridge Satchel with my initials embroidered on it. It's amazing and I'm obsessed.

I miss this girl a lot.

Those pics are from 2007 when she was about 9 or 10 weeks old. ahhh so cute.

I suppose the big news on that front is that I've talked to a breeder about getting a puppy. Basically I've picked the breeder and am going to get one of her puppies, I just have to be sure of the timing. There are about a gazillion factors to consider... number one at the moment being that Elle had about $10,000 worth of medical bills in her last 6 months of life that are notquite paid off yet. And puppies are super expensive.

I will probably/likely/maybe be getting a puppy from a litter that is due March 9, which means ready to come home in May. And getting a puppy in May is ideal as far as weather goes because then it could be basically housebroken before next winter.

I really really really miss having a dog. But at the same time I don't miss taking the dog out at 5:30 AM before work. And I vividly remember how awful housebreaking was. And the thought of a puppy chewing up my brand new hot pink embroidered Cambridge Satchel makes me wanna cry.

But I think about all the stuff that Elle chewed up when she was a puppy and it doesn't bother me. It was worth it.

And the momma of the puppies that I might get is absolutely stunningly gorgeous.

And she was inseminated with sperm from a dog that has been dead for 4 years, which is pretty freaking awesome.

The breeder actually has another momma due March 5th. I am probably going to go meet them both and see which of their personalities fit me best and let the breeder help me pick out a puppy. I told the breeder I want a boy this time.... I definitely want another Dane (duh), but I feel like getting a fawn male with cropped ears would be kind of the "opposite" of Elle so it wouldn't feel so much like I was trying to replace her? Which I realize is kind of dumb, but whatever.

Oh and also - before anyone tries to tell me that getting their ears cropped instead of leaving them natural/floppy - save it. I've heard it all before. Don't care if you think it's inhumane or whatever.

This sure seems like I'm definitely getting a puppy in May, huh?

Phew. Okay. So that's what's new with me.

To my future daughter

2012-01-14T21:06:00.003-06:00

Dear Future Daughter,

I vow to take you to a women's college basketball game every year the same night as Miss America.

Because I want you to look up to these girls

Not these girls

Fist bump,
Z

Spoiled Rotten

2012-01-13T02:50:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a weird day.

I arranged for a girl I met at the dog beach with a 1 year old great dane to come pick up Elle's crate.
I threw out about $100 worth of dog food (ouch).

I got all of Elle's small stuff out of "her" cabinet to send to my mom. Thundershirt, winter jacket, collar collection...

Yes that would be three different Valentine's collars. And an Easter collar. And a Halloween collar. And a 4th of July collar. Christmas collar not pictured because it was the one she was wearing and was in a different spot when I got all the stuff out.

And of course what dog doesn't need a monogrammed drool rag to take to the beach?

I'm sending it all to my mom so that Satin can get some use out of the stuff I spent a gazillion dollars on. Also that way I can get it back if I ever need it. But I think that I'm going to get a boy puppy next (maybe?) so I'm not sure how much of it I'll want back. Of course boys can wear pink too. Lord knows Elle got called "he" almost every day of her life despite being named ELLE WOODS and having hot pink leashes, collars, and monograms, so it doesn't really matter what color collar you have them wear.

And now that I look at all this stuff I'm realizing where a big chunk of all my money went over the last 4.5 years. Ha!

It was all worth it though... Miss those puppy snuggles a lot.

Hair Dryer Review!

2012-01-12T11:58:00.000-06:00

I was contacted a few weeks ago by Misikko to review their Hanna hair dryer.

They sent me a dryer and here are my random thoughts about it:

Full disclosure: I have pretty straight hair to begin with. It's basically straight no matter what I do. I have to spend an hour in hot rollers with about a half a bottle of hair spray to get it to be anything other than straight.

The first picture is a pic of my hair after washing and letting it air dry for a little while.

And here is after using the dryer! With no straightening and no other product. I usually run a flat iron through my hair after drying it because I'm lazy and don't want to take the time to dry it "nicely", and this steps seems to be eliminated.

My two favorite things: This is probably stupid but it has a really long cord. My old dryer had a really short cord that was always driving my nuts. And it definitely cut drying time. My hair takes FOREVER to dry.

At first I was thinking that it was a really nice hair dryer but not something I'd ever spend so much money on... I always buy the 20 dollar dryers at Target. But then I thought about it a little more, and I own an 80 dollar curling iron and a 100 dollar straightener that I definitely don't use on a daily basis, so why wouldn't I spend the money on something that I use pretty much daily?

Thanks, Misikko!

Line Skipper

2012-01-10T11:17:00.001-06:00

I got my first law firm job in August of 2007, the week I started law school. This firm is where I learned how to file cases, how the courthouse works, how status calls work, what discovery is, what pleadings and motions are, what a courtesy copy is and how you deliver one when a courtroom is empty and locked, etc. Basically this job is where I learned everything that they really should teach you in law school about working at a law firm but don't. Also I had the greatest boss ever who treated me like I was smart and competent even though I was a 22 year old 1L. I had no idea that all law firms didn't work that way and that all law students/lawyers to be aren't treated like competent professionals, and that firm will always have a place in my heart for being the place where I knew FOR SURE that I wanted to be a lawyer. It's taken me years to find another firm like it where I'm treated like I'm smart and capable and a valuable contributor and OMG I can't even tell you how great it is, especially since I have so many friends who haven't been able to find that place yet.

Anyway I bring this up because starting at this job in 2007, I would go to court all the time to file stuff and drop courtesy copies off to judges, etc., and every time I got in line to go through security I would look wistfully at the attorney's who got to breeze through and think "three more years! That's me!"

Well today, four and a half years later, that day has finally come.

I finally got my sheriff's ID after getting my bar card and now I can whisk past security and up to my destination.

It feels so much better than I imagined it would.

Diarrhea of the Mouth

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-06:00

I tend to have diarrhea of the mouth.

I rarely think before I speak.

A friend and I were talking the other day about how when I visit this client in jail, it's basically the only time I think before I speak. Since this client is in jail, I know that after I leave, the client has all the time in the world to think about every single thing I said. I want to give the client hope and know that we're working really hard, but I can't make any promises because there are no guarantees. Also this is a client who is in a rough spot and is facing life in prison, so I have to be really sure that I'm giving hope without making promises I can't deliver on. It would be reallllyyyyy bad if I was like "oh yeah we'll get ya outta here in no time!" and then the client got a life sentence (which is a possibility). Also because I'm trying to explain some fairly complicated legal stuff to a client who has no experience with the system and doesn't really know how it works, it's hard to come up with the right words to explain a lot of things that are happening, our strategy towards handling the case, why certain things that seem important to a client aren't necessary important to the Court, etc. So anyway, I do a lot of thinking before I speak when I'm visiting.

And now that I'm typing this out, maybe my New Year's Resolution should be to do more thinking before I speak?

ANYWAY... back to the story I was planning to tell when I started writing this blog post....

Since Elle has been gone I have had SERIOUS diarrhea of the mouth. In order to take your dog out in my building, you have to go down the freight elevator and through the parking garage. Last week when I was doing laundry I had to take the freight elevator down to the laundry room and of course like 4 dogs that Elle loved got on and I'm like "ohhh Hi how are you? Elle's dead." So.Incredibly.Awkward.

Last night I got home from Denver and I was unloading my suitcase from the trunk of my car in the garage when a dog walked by that Elle liked. She sniffed me and I said "Oh hi Rosie! How are you?" and gave her some pets. And then the owner said hi and I just looked at him and said "Elle is gone. I had to put her down right before Christmas."
Poor guy was totally blindsided. (p.s. when I first typed this I said "blondsided".... I like that better I think). Of course he said all of the right things, but still... so awkward. I don't even think about it before I say it... I just open my mouth and it comes out.

My mom said she was the same way when she first got diagnosed with cancer. She was in the shoe department at Nordstrom and the salesman came up and said "How are you doing?" and she blurted out "I have cancer." Poor shoe guy.
I guess that's way more awkward than telling a dog person that my dog is dead?
Maybe awkward runs in the family.

Denver!

2012-01-06T11:21:00.001-06:00

I'm in Denver for the weekend!
I'm here visiting a friend. I just bought a groupon now for a haircut and blow dry for $24 because I don't want to wash my hair.
I love vacation.

Sent from my iPhone

Goals

2012-01-03T07:01:00.001-06:00

I'm not calling them resolutions... just goals. So after a little thought, my 2012 goals are:

- to be able to back squat my body weight. I have a long way to go to be able to do this (especially since I kind of fell off of the CrossFit bandwagon this fall) but I think I can do it.

- do 10 uninterrupted pushups from the toes. No more knee pushups. They hurt my knees anyway.

- get my financial life in order. I started using mint.com again in October-ish and while there are parts of the site that suck, I think it's helping me reel it in. Specifically - need to be spending less on eating/going out. So one of my many plans is to bring my lunches to work more often.

On a related note I've made a longer term goal of mine to get rid of all my "small" debts by my 30th birthday. So I want to pay off credit cards and my two small student loans and my car by then. 3 years and 5 months... which will leave me with just my big student loans, but those aren't going anywhere anytime soon so I don't really care about them.

Now that I've written all this out this doesn't seem so impossible. Here we go 2012!

2k12

2012-01-01T15:49:00.001-06:00

Ringing it in with a bang.

Avery Jenkins says Happy New Year to all yall.

2011

2011-12-31T10:05:00.002-06:00

There were a lot of wonderful things that happened in 2011. I said my trifecta would be if the Mavs won the Championship, Casey Anthony got acquitted, and I passed the bar exam. Mission Accomplished.

But on the whole? Not sad to see 2011 go.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2012.

Hard Day

2011-12-30T19:19:00.001-06:00

Christmas recap

2011-12-28T23:10:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite gifts - new camera!
I got a Canon G12 from my Aunts and I love it.

The pictures are pretty awesome. I wanted a "nice" camera that isn't enormous and it definitely fit the bill. Of course the first thing I thought was how much it sucks that now I have this nice camera and no dog to take pictures of... :(

I haven't taken a photography class since my sophomore year of high school, so I have some brushing up to do before I can take anything decent that's not in automatic! My photog friend who took my Christmas card pics said

But I got some good shots of Elle's sister, Satin...

She looks so regal! I love how even though they're the same breed and from the same parents, Elle and Satin always looked so different.

Sweet Mug

Satin getting love from my brother

Then I went to visit my old neighbors and to check out their Christmas loot...

This is my absolute favorite picture of Daniel, who turns 6 in a few weeks.

He got this weird bike thing from Santa, which is actually pretty cool.

And no, he isn't mad, just WILD. Absolutely cracks me up.

Anyone have any good websites/camera tips for me?

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T10:15:00.000-06:00

First of all I want to say thank you to everyone for your kind words this week. It's been incredibly difficult, but I suppose I'm doing alright given the circumstances.

I was going to promise that this blog wouldn't become some sort of creepy crazy dog lady tribute to my dead dog, but I don't like to make promises that I can't keep.

So for Christmas Eve I want to post a couple pictures of Elle on past Christmas Eve's. As I sit here sifting through photos I'm realizing I don't have a picture from last Christmas. :( I can't find pictures of all the loot but rest assured that Elle always had a stocking full of goodies and lots of presents under the tree. She gave spoiled a new meaning.

Baby's first Christmas 2007... She's 5.5 months old in this pic. Such a goofy galoot. Already a big girl.

Christmas 2008. If I ever say that I want to cut my hair short again, please remind me of this picture and talk me out of it.

2009 Christmas cards... so glad we took these.

And of course Christmas 2011 pictures... I was already obsessed with them but I am even more now. Definitely going to get some prints made.

Elle is famous again

2011-12-22T17:09:00.000-06:00

RIP Sweet Ellebaby

2011-12-21T08:16:00.000-06:00

I had to make the tough decision to let Elle Woods go. I'll miss her tons, but I'm glad she's not sick anymore. She was more loved and spoiled in 4.5 years than most dogs are in 15.

I hope doggie heaven has comfy couches and giant dog beaches.

Give your 4-legged companions an extra hug for me today.

No longer a clerk

2011-12-20T06:00:00.000-06:00

We have some clerks at work. Some are in law school, some are in college. Seeing as how I'm only 18 months removed from law school and was just a clerk myself 6 weeks ago, this is really weird for me.

They come to my office door, and they ask for assignments. I vividly remember doing this as a 1L when I clerked at my first firm, and really hoping to get a substantive assignment. However, I'm not really sure what of my work I'm allowed to delegate. A lot of the stuff I'm doing right now is stuff that I need to be doing myself... for example summarizing deposition transcripts for an upcoming trial. I need to know those depositions backwards and forwards in case issues come up during trial. And I feel like an asshole asking them to copy stuff... because I'm barely older than these kids. And some of them go to law schools I never would have gotten in to. Today I really needed something bates stamped (basically page numbered) and was working on a bunch of other things so I asked one of them to do it. I made sure to tell him thank you several times, but I still kinda feel like a jerk for giving such a crappy assignment. Which is weird because I know even though I enjoyed the substantive assignments when clerking, I never really minded making copies and such. I'm usually just happy to stay busy.

I was discussing this with a law school friend, and I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who finds it awkward to utilize clerks/support staff.

N: Most of my staff is older than me so it's real weird telling them what to do

me: i'm not old enough to be in charge

N: My life is held together by a thin string of good luck. I should not have any power over others.

NYC Recap!

2011-12-19T09:48:00.000-06:00

This weekend I went to NYC and had a great time. Stayed with a friend from twitter that I had never met before, and she turned out not to be a serial killer, hooray!

Friday I had sushi at Koi in Bryant Park with a friend who is a big fancy big law firm NYC lawyer... I love hearing about other people's jobs and of course getting to gush about my excitement over my new job. Koi was delicious, although the service sort of sucked.

Friday night we had drinks at The Boom Boom Room at the top of the Standard Hotel. Seriously - this place is incredible HIGHLY recommend it. It's really expensive (as is everything in NYC), but the view is totally worth it. Panoramic views of the city and Jersey. Chicago feels so small after having seen how enormous NYC is.
After Boom Boom Room we had dinner at L'Artusi. Food was good, service was wonderful. Loved it.

Saturday we did brunch at a little hole in the wall diner that was wonderful and cheap (which I'm pretty sure is a rarity in NYC), and spent the day shopping. I bought my mom's Christmas present at Bloomingdale's.... this turned out to be a perfect idea because Kay had a Bloomingdale's card and they were giving 15% off any purchase with your Bloomie's card so I saved a little chunk of change by just writing her a check, and also excellent because there is no Bloomingdale's in Dallas, so if my mom decides she doesn't like it she can't return it and I'll get to keep it! Lol.
Sunday we did another hole in the wall brunch that was delicious.

So to recap: I love NY. I would move there in a heartbeat, as soon as I won the lottery. Also - to fit in in NYC you have to be 6 feet tall, wear a size 2, and have jet black straight hair that's way too long. Possibly because New York is so expensive that no one can afford haircuts?

Christmas Card Pictures!

2011-12-14T11:15:00.004-06:00

So this is hilariously awesome.

Last week I was contacted by a girl at the Wall Street Journal after writing about my Christmas Card photo shoot...

Today the picture ran in a story online and in print!

My quote is kind of hilarious.

"I kind of felt left out—like, 'Oh, poor single girl,' " she says. Then she had an idea: "I'll send out a damn picture with my dog."

And of course my mom's reaction was "I wish they had left the 'damn' out." Ha!

Here is the picture that's in the article/on the front of my card:

And here are the two I included on the back of the card. (Sorry for spoiling it for those of you who will be receiving them in the mail - they're going out next week!)

We all knew I'm a crazy dog lady, but I think it's pretty much official now, right?

Christmas Tips

2011-12-08T08:29:00.001-06:00

I need help with suggestions for what to do to tip the staff of the parking garage at my building for Christmas.

The actual building staff is really easy – the management office just sends out a letter telling you to drop off a check if you want to contribute and they’ll distribute it evenly amongst the door staff, maintenance staff, engineers, etc. So I just wrote a check for $100, which I know isn’t a lot divided by the large amount of staff, but there are 900 units in my building, so I think (hope!) it ends up being a nice holiday bonus for them.

My problem is the parking garage doesn’t do anything like that. I definitely need to do SOMETHING for them… it’s valet so they valet my car every day. They also are in charge of packages that get sent to the building that are too big for your mailbox, and I order stuff online a lot. Oh and you have to walk through the garage to take the dogs in/out, so basically they all know Elle and I really well! Problem is there are 12 guys that work there… I’d obviously like to give cash but can’t really afford any significant amount since there are 12 of them. Would it be totally shitty to give them only 10 bucks each? Maybe bake some cookies too? Any other ideas?

Teen Mom

2011-12-07T11:45:00.001-06:00

I love Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2. I'd actually forgotten that it was on last night until I got on twitter and "Janelle" and "Jenelle" showed up in trending topics.

I didn't even have to see the episode to appreciate what people were tweeting about. Jenelle/Janelle is nuts.

But these tweets... they're just amazing. I couldn't NOT retweet them. Right?!

And of course not everyone found it funny, because duh, clogging someone's timeline is annoying. Even when it isn't hilarious. Even when it's about something you actually care about.

Lolz.

Christmas Card Photo Shoot Recap

2011-12-06T06:34:00.001-06:00

"I'm trying to think of what's turned out cute for the engagement photo sessions I've done"
-my photographer, while taking pics of me with my dog.

Totally normal.

So You Failed the Bar Exam...

2011-11-30T23:16:00.001-06:00

So you failed the bar exam.

You are so not alone. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of emails I’ve gotten over the last year+ from people who also failed the bar exam. In Illinois and Texas and New York and Florida and Colorado and a whole bunch of other states.

This blog provided a lot of comfort and advice over those awful months of studying, and I’ve exchanged a bunch of emails with people

How I finally passed the Illinois Bar Exam.

A lot of you may have just come across this post while googling around and trying to figure out how to study for the bar exam, so you may not know my story. Feel free to go back and read for details, but a brief summary:

- May 2010 – graduate law school.

- Summer 2010 I took Barbri and attended the lectures in Chicago.

- July 2010 took bar exam

- October 1, 2010 – Results released. Failed. Cry for a couple hours. Move on. Sign up to take Barbri again.

- January and February 2011 I re-studied for the Illinois bar exam using Barbri. I decided to skip the lectures (best decision ever), study my outlines from before (bad move/waste of time), and do more practice questions (good move! Do this!)

- February 2011 – Took bar exam for second time.

- April 1, 2011 – found out I failed again. Spend a few days in mourning. Spend a few weeks trying to decide if I should take the Texas or Illinois bar exam in July. Decide on Texas. Spend a few weeks researching and realize I've missed the deadline to take the Texas bar. Back to re-taking Illinois.

- May 2011 – order Micromash/Multistate Edge for MBE prep. Highly recommend.

- June 2011 – start working with a tutor for essay prep. Quickly realize I want to use my tutor for MBE questions too.

- July 2011 – Illinois bar exam, round three.

- October 1, 2011. – Sweet, sweet relief. Seriously – there is no other word to describe how I felt. Not happy. RELIEVED.

- November 2011 – get sworn in and start at best job ever. LIFE IS GOOD.

I hated barbri, for a multitude of reasons. Namely:

- It’s a one size fits all approach that doesn’t fit all. There is no tailoring it to how you study or how you learn. They give you a “paced” program to follow. The name “paced” is pretty funny because there is no pacing at all… it’s 100% lightning speed for 10 weeks. It’s overwhelming and unnecessary. And it leaves no room for adjustments. For example if you feel like you did what they said to do for the day to learn property but you don’t feel like you have a good grip on property, too bad. You’ve got to move on to the next thing because there is too much to learn to lag behind. And once you start lagging behind you NEVER. CATCH. UP.

- I found it REALLY hard to watch the lectures at home. I had to physically go to the lecture hall or else I’d pause it a gazillion times and a three hour lecture would take six hours. (I realize this is more of a personal problem than a barbri problem, just feel like listing it here)

- In Chicago the lectures are in a super stupid out of the way location super far from my house. Pain in the ass to get to. Waste of two hours every day commuting two and from lectures.

- When you go to barbri, it’s a bunch of really stressed out people in a room talking about how stressed out they are. Nothing annoys me more than that. Half the time I found myself sitting in lectures thinking about how I wanted to stab the girl in front of me with 18 highlighter colors and 45,000 tabbed pages in her outline book instead of paying attention to what the lecturer was saying. If you can concentrate and get through the lectures on your own I’d highly recommend doing that. The environment at the live lectures is not a fun one. Stressed people feed off of other stressed people and it sucks.

- When you retake barbri they give ZERO guidance. Not kidding… ZERO. So I found myself in January 2010 trying to figure out what the hell to do. GO to the lectures again? Watch the lectures online? Watch all the lectures? Watch the ones on subjects I felt strongest in? Watch the ones I felt I needed the most help in? Do practice questions? Study the black letter law? Etc etc etc.

So what did I do differently the third time around?

I got a tutor. I HIGHLY recommend getting a tutor. I used John with Law Preps and have recommended him to a bunch of people. He knows his shit, put together a totally reasonable study schedule, and helped me out with actual exam material, exam anxiety, exam frustration/anger, etc.

As for study schedule – I think this was huge for me. Barbri tries to have you do like 15,000 things per day. A typical day looks something like: Read an outline for one subject, then have a lecture on that subject, then review some other subject, then do some essays on a subject you studied two weeks ago and don’t remember, then feel really bad about yourself and stress out because you studied for 20 hours that day and can’t remember a single thing.

The schedule my tutor put together was about 1000 times more reasonable. I would spend three DAYS on a subject instead of three hours. More time for things to sink in, more time to master a subject.

Also it was extremely beneficial for me to have someone to orally go through essay answers with. Instead of being like “oh yeah I know the answer to that one” I had to actually tell him EXACTLY what I would have answered. As I discussed below – this helped me to get every buzzword the bar exam graders were looking for.

The third time around I spent significantly less time going through the lectures/outlines and spent the majority of time doing practice questions. I think if I had done this the first time around the outcome would have been different. I spent way too much time trying to learn and understand the subjects and not enough time trying to learn how to answer the questions. Which is totally stupid – you’d think that if the test was doing what it was supposed to do, which is test your understanding of the material, you’d want to understand the material. That was probably a big part of the reason I had such a problem with the test – I get so frustrated and mad at how stupid it is. Once I figured out how to spot the tricks and patterns in MBE questions, my scores went up a bunch. Unfortunately I didn’t figure that out until summer 2011 instead of summer 2010. Whoops.

My number one piece of advice would just be to do something DIFFERENT the next time around. I really think that if I had sucked it up and paid for a tutor instead of trying to re-do barbri on my own, I wouldn't have failed the second time. Obviously what I did the first time didn't work, so I'm not sure why I thought that just doing more of it the second time would be the differencemaker. It wasn't. I'm not saying that everyone should get a tutor (although it worked for me and worked for several other people I know), but I think you need to change your approach. Barbri is NOT the only option. It sucks to spend the money on a second test prep after you've already shelled out 3 grand for barbri, but it sucks way more to have a $150,000 law degree that you can't use.

I got the following in an email from a reader and think she’s 100% spot on. She and her boyfriend both took the bar exam in July 2010, she passed, he failed. The he failed again. Then he finally passed on the third time. (Bless both of their hearts.)

“He also used flashcards each time around, and the biggest difference I noticed in his preparation for the third time was that when I quizzed him on the flashcards he was reciting the exact wording of the definitions rather than to explain the concept with examples. He's one of those people who has trouble with memorization and with the previous two tests and exams in law school he answered essays by using examples. But with the bar all they're looking for is regurgitation of definitions. Basically figuring out his weakness (essays) and focusing on how to improve it helped him improve across the board. If anyone can go look at their answers and what they got wrong then I think he would highly recommend it.”

I think that this was huge for me as well. In talking with my tutor I realized that I really DID know the answers to questions, I just wasn’t getting the words out right. I was explaining the concepts correctly, but I wasn’t using the buzzwords that bar exam graders use when they go through and grade essays.

Other thoughts from readers/friends that I thought were dead on:

“I didn’t tell anyone I was taking the bar again and after the test, I didn’t tell anyone I had taken it and was waiting on results. No one in my family knew (except my mom a couple days before the test). Not even my close girl friends from law school knew. [Law school friend] had no idea until after I told her I passed. I needed to take the pressure from well-meaning friends and family off. I needed to eliminate the dumb “JFK took it 3478297489 times before he passed, you’ll be ok” comments away. My response to that line had gone from “hahaha (not really funny)” to “yeah, cool, but I’m not a Kennedy and this matters and it’s a little different” to “if you fucking say that to me one more time, I’ll cut you.” So....I kept it a secret. And it helped.”

Obviously I talked about it a lot on the blog and on twitter and to close friends, but I can totally see why you’d not mention it at all. And OMG WITH THE JFK COMMENT. Word of advice – NEVER MENTION FUCKING JFK IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE TAKING THE BAR EXAM. ESPECIALLY NEVER MENTION JFK IF YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO FAILED THE BAR EXAM. PLEASE. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. FORGET YOU KNOW THAT FUN FACT.

I also had several people tell me that they took some time off in between taking the test and chose not to take it back to back. It wasn’t something I really considered but I can totally understand why you’d want to take some time and regroup before tackling the monstrosity again. You have GOT to be in the right place mentally to study for this test.

Similar to what I said earlier about not taking Barbri again and making your own schedule

“I didn’t take bar/bri or PMBR again – I had all the books, in duplicate. I worked out a schedule that worked for me – not bar/bri’s ridiculous 37 hour day. Not PMBR’s idea of listening to Steve Palmer (who really looks like a troll) for hours on end. I knew where my weak area was – the MBE. I worked multiple choice questions. Then I reviewed my own outlines that I made the first time, so I didn’t have to deal with the bar/bri outlines. I outlined essays, in bluebooks.”

Radom test tips:

- I made reservations for lunch with a non-bar exam-taking friend somewhere nice-ish every day. I was not about to listen to 800 bar exam takers at the Corner Bakery talking about what they answered for their essays. I HIGHLY recommend this. I would make the reservation for 12, have a friend who worked nearby get there at 11:45, order me a diet coke and whatever I wanted from the menu, and wait for me. If I needed to jet before the bill came, they stayed and waited. I also instructed them that they were not to bring up the bar exam under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

- I know some people who took other states said that they brought their lunches and ate in their car. I think this is a good idea too. Just go somewhere to get away from the other idiots taking the test.

- I didn’t stay at a hotel. I don’t know anyone that did. This probably only applies to Chicago people, since I guess some of you don’t have a choice.

- One of the best things that I did was study at a law library that was not the law school I went to. There are 6 law schools in Chicago so tons of options for places to study. School I didn’t go to = no one I know there = no one to walk over to me and freak out about questions or studying to me. Peaceful studying. I can’t concentrate at Starbucks. It works for some people, but definitely not me. Too much going on.

This is all I can think of for now… I’m sure there’s more I can update later. Hope this helps someone. And if not – sorry you had to read all of it! Please email me with questions, as always. I’m happy to help anyone dealing with this miserable process.

Email from a friend

2011-11-30T06:34:00.001-06:00

Also: the news abt john wayne gacy's latest victim ID sent me on a google rampage to learn more abt him. I love reading abt serial killers. Turns out JWG was married 2x. Like... If that psycho can convince 2 diff women to marry him, and I end up alone, I'll be so pissed.

Fancy Shmancy Lawyer Office

2011-11-29T05:40:00.000-06:00

I have a big fancy shmancy office now that I'm a big fancy shmancy lawyur. And I have a couple of big fancy shmancy diplomas to hang on the wall, but I need something else. Some art of some sort.
My uber creative/crafty (accidentally typed crazy instead of crafty here at first. same thing though, right?!) mom has done stained glass forever... along with blown glass, kiln fired glass, glass mosaics, etc. She's going to whip me up something out of glass, but I feel like I need something else.

I saw this print on pinterest (I kind of hate that website for a lot of reasons, but it's occasionally useful) from an etsy shop.

Available here!

I like it but I'm not sure it's exactly what I'm looking for. Thoughts?

Anyone have anything cool hanging in your office? Seen anything cool? Suggestions?

Christmas Wish List

2011-11-28T05:08:00.000-06:00

I take baths a lot. I like to read in the tub. A whole bunch of my blogging and tweeting takes place in the tub. (Maybe TMI, Whoops.)

I think I need this for Christmas to make my bathtimes even more productive.

Wood tub caddy, Available here on Etsy.