. . . so the day has arrived that I travel in my suddenly carseat-less car (the seats below where the boys’ carseats usually are? so gross) towards a large hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, so that I can show how gosh darn good I am at memorizin’ things.
The module I’m most worried about is the first one – the Alabama test. No one could succeed at this test unless they had practiced in Alabama for eons. I think Alabama law students who did any kind of externship or clinic work in Alabama state courts will def. have an advantage over me, but not much. A sample question:
Q: Vince wants to use Rule 30(b) to help his client. What will Rule 30(b) do for Vince?
A: Rule 30(b) of the Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure states “direct quote of the language, which by this point I could probably fudge convincingly.” However, in a 1997 case, the Alabama Supreme Court put a gloss on Rule 30(b), so that in cases like Vince’s it now means “something totally opposite that I could never in a million years guess.”
So I can’t read every case in Alabama, I just can’t. And given the other stuff I had to study, I didn’t even have time to drive to some Alabama law school library and check out some long-winded treatise on Alabama Civil Procedure. So the best I can do is what I did – combed every word of the Rules and drilled them down to a memorizable, twenty page list. Then read every bit of code section that the rules refer to, and also put them in bullet points. And then cross my fingers. Tonight I’ll google around and see if there is an annotated list of rules, but even then – COME ON. There are 87 of them. If each Rule has twenty cases listed below it – there’s just no way, even skimming, that I will retain much of value.
I did most of the practice questions in the book. Each one presented some awful, impossible to answer thing – never anything remotely run of the mill. SO I’m just going to have to hope that nobody knows any of this, and the graders are left to sift through a bunch of bad answers. Serves ’em right.
Anyway, wish me luck. Tomorrow’s Alabama – the day after’s the essays and MPT – and the last day will be my easiest day, the MBE.
May the force be with you.
I am thinking of you and will keep sending you “Keep it up, darling! We both know you’ve so got this” thoughts through Wednesday evening. At which point the thoughts sent will convert to “Please be indulging in a very tasty and extravagently priced glass of wine or other beverage of reward. Hooray for you!”
I love and am so dang proud of you!
Get lots of rest tonight and relax! It’s the best thing you can do. All the knowledge is rattling around in your tired brain, so trust that it’s there and you’ll find it! Kick that bar exam’s ass!
Good luck! Not that you’ll need luck; a hundred bucks says you score in the top ten percent. I’m not sure I know anyone else who prepares as thoroughly as you do for this sort of thing. Or for anything. Excel spreadsheets for Easter Dinner come to mind :)….