"This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you've got it when you can't think of anything that's your fault."  Robert Hutchins (Educational Philosopher, Dean of Yale Law School and Chancellor of the University of Chicago)

When I was the California State Bar Examinations Director, I had a long time to think about bar review courses.  My impression, which I retain, was that many of them pander to applicants' paranoia about the exam.  "If you flunked, it wasn't your fault.  You were the victim of a grand conspiracy to keep you from practicing law, perpetrated principally by lazy and indifferent graders."

Here's a perspective that I think is more useful. The California Bar Exam is (a) an unpleasant necessity; (b) an imperfect but rigorously constructed and managed tool to protect all the legal "clients" of California from practitioners who don't know what they're doing; (c) the product of over 150 smart and earnest people (including question authors, graders, editors, volunteer Committee of Bar Examiners members, and State Bar staffers) who, as they say, are "just like you and me;" and (d) a legitimate intellectual exercise and "gut check" for anyone who wants to be a lawyer.  

With this in mind, I respectfully offer these suggestions.   Do everything you can to figure out what you didn't do correctly or completely that last time you took the exam.  If it was your substantive knowledge, hit the books.  If it was your performance test or essay writing, write and write and write - both on your own and with someone to help you.  If it was stress, or angst, or even panic on exam day, deal gently and patiently with that as well.  Respect the exam, and lose the paranoia.  There's no reason for it, and it won't get you anywhere anyway.

"I practice overcoming fear and adversity by overcoming fear and adversity.... I climb."  Erik Weihenmayer - The Only Blind Man to Climb Mt. Everest

I have not failed enough in my life.  It may be too early to come to this conclusion.  I'm only 62, and with my wonderful and terrible luck my life may only be two-thirds over. 

But I am intensely self-conscious and introspective.  And I recall incidents of my failure aversion throughout my life - much more, in fact, than incidents of actual failure.  Some feel mundane now and felt mundane then: not dancing (because I am clumsy); not writing (because no one would read me); not asking (for this and that).

However, other such incidents (or non-incidents) felt and feel huge, and sometimes they fill me with regret.  Not having more children.  Just going along when the situation demanded that I speak up.  Not leaving what was bad for me or pursuing what was good for me; both for fear of the unknown, for fear of failing.  In other words, not heeding the stirrings of my deepest self - the stirrings of my soul.  I never willingly put myself at risk.  Most people don't, I think.

Failure came to my life on its own a few years ago though. Disabling failure. At times, seemingly, the failure of everything.  I was lost.  And, because I was lost, I felt profoundly alone.

Fortunately, I'm better now, and very grateful.  I continuously consider why that is - what has happened and what has not.  Some of the most resonant answers are the most ambiguous. With my wonderful and terrible luck they may remain that way.  I am not who I was.  I am more forgiving, of both myself and others.  I am frightened more, but I am also braver more, often at the same time. And, most importantly, I now practice overcoming fear and adversity by overcoming fear and adversity.  I am not as "successful" as I was before (or as I thought I was) and I still have my regrets.  But I am more myself.  I am connected to the world.  I am alive!

Why am I telling you this?   Because one soul-stirring that I've recently heeded is to teach people how to succeed on the California Bar Examination. And to conduct this teaching "soul to soul" with all my heart.  That means that I often spend intensely personal time with people who have failed. It has become my calling to devote myself to their service.  That means I have a responsibility to be real.  And, as here, to be self-revealing if I consider it to be in their interests.

So I also must say how ironic it can all seem at times.  That they (and you?) can seem so stunned, paralyzed and lost after lifetimes filled with success. After graduating college and law school, often at great sacrifice. After starting families, serving in the military.  Often coming here from other countries to painstakingly create new lives. Why, I wonder, can't they see themselves as I see them  - as appealing and admirable people in the middle of noble and intensely personal endeavors to grow and change. 

It isn't that easy.  I understand that. 

Here's what happens though. Some remain stuck - hopefully they will soon find their ways back. 

But over time many others change right in front of me.  They try new approaches.  They calm down. They forgive themselves.  They dig deeper and they forge ahead.  Most conquer the bar exam and move on with their lives.  Whether they pass or not, all seem better for the effort - more themselves, more alive.

So here's why I'm telling you this.  If they can do all this. If I can.  Then so can you! That is one value of failing the bar exam, or failing period - a stellar one - as wonderful and terrible as that is.

  

Unsuccessful applicants may seek reconsideration of their grades based on arithmetic or transpositional errors in the compiling of their scores or a departure from established procedures.  They may not challenge the evaluation of their answers, although many attempt to do so.”  October 26, 2009 Memorandum to California State Bar Board of Governors

When I was the Examinations Director for the State Bar I received hundreds of letters from unsuccessful applicants requesting reconsideration of their grades.

Most struck me as the applicants’ understandable efforts to “cover their bases;” to assure that their answers were properly graded and the results added up correctly.  The Examinations Department duly checked the results.  Not a single “arithmetic or transpositional” error was discovered while I was Director.

Many were challenges to the grader judgments.  Often they enclosed one of more essay or performance test answers, “regraded” by a favorite professor or tutor, in support of their requests.  Since these were “challenge[s] to the evaluation of their answers” I did not have authority to consider them.  I agreed with this limitation. I believed in the integrity of the bar examination grading system.  I believed in the expertise and professional integrity of the graders, many of whom I’d graded with and known for years.

However, I always felt that one very narrow ground for reconsideration was underutilized and not fully understood by applicants.  “Departure from established procedures” is applicable most often to a disturbance at the applicant’s test site.  Examples are power failures and excessive noise from inside or outside of the test site.  When applicants report these incidents and seek reconsideration, the Committee of Bar Examiners’ pays attention.  It often requests that its psychometrician conduct a statistical study to determine whether the request has merit.  These sorts of studies rarely come down on the applicant’s side. However, one thing that the Committee does not do, is investigate whether, notwithstanding the outcome of the study, the applicant suffered a unique, individual disadvantage.  I always thought that a properly documented request on this ground could succeed.

Test site incidents are rare, but they do happen.  If you believe that your grades suffered as a result, speak up.