Guest Submission: Rant Like a Madman

This is a guest submission from "BN":

How come no one tells you that, even after you get your bar results, you still have to wait until December to be sworn in?  You're not officially licensed until then.  And they don't even print your bar cards until after the swearing in ceremony.  Which, by the way, is mandatory and apparently oppressively long.  This is the most elaborate and underhanded hazing method known to man.

Hang in there man, hang in there.

Have Mercy on the MA Board of Bar Examiners

Today I caved in and called the MA Board of Bar Examiners at 12:30 p.m. The tipster was 2 days off in accuracy - the results were mailed today.

The woman I spoke with on the phone had a request:

"Please tell all of your friends not to call. The results were mailed out today, so they need to stop calling. We actually have other work to do."

Now come the predictions for when the results will actually be ONLINE. Cranky MA BBE employee said that it usually takes 2 days to put them online post-mailing. She said definitely not before next week.

But, as we all now know - we'll believe it when we see it . . . on the internets.

Playing Telephone is Fun

So clearly my tipster was wrong. 

But games are fun.  I remember in fourth grade music class where my teacher maestro didn't want to do anything productive so we played telephone.  What started with "She forgot her address" turned into "Susie has big breasts."  And of course it was true - she did forget her address. 

I digress.  For what it's worth, contrary to the accusations in the comments to other posts, the prediction was not a hoax.  It was information that turned out not to be correct, despite seeming sufficiently reliable at the time.

Results will come eventually, that much I promise.  For now, though, I'll refrain from rumor.  Some comments to the earlier posts offer other speculation, take it or leave it as you will.

I wish I could say I was sorry for causing panic, but while I am sorry I was wrong, I'd probably do it the same way again.  I enjoy watching you all squirm. 

For now, I'm going to do something a whole lot more important than waiting for bar results - and probably less trivial too.

Remember Why Law School Sucked

As law school fades into the past, it will increasingly seem like a golden era, full of leisure and intelligent conversation. As you slog through boxes full of random documents and emails that might prove the billion-dollar corporation your firm represents failed to do a good job of covering up the fact that a few of their 11,000 employees are not as politically correct as they should be, you may look back longingly on your time in law school. You might even begin to think of it in the same category as some of the truly great times in your life.

When this happens, you should look back and remember the things about law school that really sucked. And lots of it did.

• Money. Those of you who are going to work for BigLaw will make lots of this. Good for the three of you. Everyone else will be making somewhat less than they did if they worked before law school. This will suck. But keep in mind what you made during law school: negative $160K. That is worse than positive $40K; it really is. So when you are writing out those monthly loan checks, remember that you are still making a LOT more than you did in law school. And still paying for that mistake.
• Finals. And everything that goes with them: outlining, practice exams, study groups, the library. Finals were an exercise in mental self-flagellation. If you make yourself sit in front of your laptop long enough, what, hopefully your exam will end up at the top of the staircase when your professor "grades" the stack? Sweet.
• Unpaid internships. Remember struggling to get these for the summer after first year? And then having to borrow money from your parents so you could live in some dump with three random people your roommates found to sublease to while they interned back home so they could live with their parents? At least you weren't given anything that resembled real work.
• Books. For almost every class, you got to spend $160 on some shitty book full of boring cases so your professor could transfer a bit of wealth from the poor (you) to the rich (him).
  
• People. Law school was full of less than ideal people. Most of the professors were self-centered, egotistical theorists who had little knowledge of actually being a lawyer. And your fellow classmates were the same, but worse. They were not as smart as the professors, but didn't realize this fact. Many of them thought they could look smart by making inane comments or parroting the professor. Most lacked a sense of humor, and all of them liked to argue. Unfortunately, few students were actually good at arguing. More likely, they took things far too seriously, and tended to attack those who disagreed with them. They would commonly assert that others had ulterior motives for everything they did, even when there was a much more obvious reason for the other person's actions. And when students thought they had somehow been slighted, they would go out of their way to attack others, generally in public.*
• Dating. The dating pool consisted largely of the above mentioned people.

*This link, like this post, was definitely not written solely as an excuse to attack one of our commenters. That would be childish.

Find Your Sense of Humor

We try hard to be funny.  And by we I don't just mean the three of us still writing for this blog.  (Milhouse was never funny, except when he skipped BarBri to get his iPad.  Which was kinda funny.)  All of us try to be funny.  Sometimes we're successful. Sometimes we're not.

There are lots of eleven ways to be funny.  You can be explicitly funny and tell a joke.  But if you have to explain the joke, it's not funny anymore.  And in fact, it probably wasn't funny to begin with. 

You can also be punny.  You know, word play?  This involves things like playing "I Love This Bar" while studying for the exam.  That's why they call me the punisher.  See, e.g., Myq Kaplan of Keith and the Girl and Last Comic Standing.  Using the bluebook properly is also depressing funny.

And, sometimes you can use subtle misdirection to be funny.  Sadly, some people don't understand this.  I'm not referring to the bar results prediction.  That wasn't a joke, although the reaction has been funny.  (OMG - UCC refers to more than just UCC Article 2).  I love cyclical jokes for example.  So does Doodie.  So doesn't Mr. Anthony Anonymous* who posted in the comments on Mr. Doodie's last post. 

Find your sense of humor.  It'll be too late once you pass the bar.  And it's already too late if you failed.  Also find a bottle of scotch.  You'll need it either way.


But even so, you should learn the "funniest joke in the world":

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

*Name might be a random alliteration.