Bar Examination
The Day I Took the Bar Examination: Attorneys share their attempting instances
October 8, 2025, 1:51 pm CDT
The ABA Journal is accumulating bar examination tales recounting the day our readers took the bar examination—and one thing else extraordinary occurred. (Picture from Shutterstock)
The bar examination is a high-stakes occasion for any lawyer. However calls for stemming from the world past the authorized career can additional wreak havoc on this extraordinarily nerve-racking occasion. Up to now yr, the stakes have been raised throughout bar examination administrations by a tsunami and a candidate’s coronary heart assault.
The ABA Journal is accumulating bar examination tales recounting the day our readers took the bar examination—and one thing else extraordinary occurred. We’ll be updating this usually.
What’s your story? E-mail [email protected].
Jeannie Andresen at commencement with buddy Tiffany Shockley. (Photograph courtesy of Jeannie Andresen)
Child bar
It was the Could 2015 bar examination at Shriners in San Antonio. I heard complaints that the air con might need been going out, however I used to be nearly 10 months pregnant—so I used to be at all times sizzling. I made it to lunchtime on Day 3. Three extra essays to go, the tip was in sight. On the way in which again from lunch in my buddy’s brand-new Honda Civic, my water broke.
I requested my physician if I might simply keep and end the examination, that I might sit on a towel or one thing, and I might chunk by any labor pains. Sadly, the doc mentioned no as a result of security causes.
I argued with the examination proctors as a result of they initially wouldn’t let me return inside to take away my laptop computer early. Luckily, the sloshing and soaked standing of my garments and footwear satisfied them I used to be not mendacity.
Forty hours of labor later, my daughter was born. I requested the Board of Regulation Examiners if they’d grade my examination in its present state. However as a result of I by no means acquired to formally “submit” the examination, I used to be suggested it was incomplete and never gradable.
I handed the following bar examination in February 2016 with flying colours and was sworn in with my toddler daughter in hand!
—Jeannie Andresen, earnings associate, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, Texas bar, Could 2015
Krystal Moczygemba O’Connor as a 3L in regulation college. (Photograph by Jana McCord)
Lights out
In July 2021, Texas was one of many few states beginning in-person testing again up after/throughout COVID. That was positively a draw after the horror tales about distant testing.
Sitting within the massive convention room with everybody spaced out felt overwhelming and official and thrilling, but additionally protected. The primary day, about an hour into the Multistate Efficiency Check, all the lights within the convention room went out. There have been no home windows, no lamps, no nothing. Simply 200 or so check takers sitting in a darkish room with their pc screens illuminating their faces.
I briefly thought that the poor folks taking the examination by hand within the entrance left nook didn’t have a pc display for them to see their exams or the solutions they had been writing, however I couldn’t be frightened about them and stored going.
Then the lights started flickering—on and off, on and off, on and off—which was far more distracting and nerve-wracking. After about quarter-hour the lighting lastly returned. The proctors by no means talked about something to us, not when the lights went out, once they flickered, or after the examination was over.
Nothing was going to get in the way in which of us finishing that examination. We simply stored our heads down, actually and figuratively, and ploughing by.
—Krystal Moczygemba O’Connor, assistant professor, St. Mary’s College College of Regulation, Texas bar, July 2021
Minty freshness
I’ve seen a number of candidates through the years. One applicant needed to have a few Altoid mints in the course of the examination and knew they had been in opposition to the foundations.
So, she tucked two or three mints into her bra, not realizing she can be nervous and begin to sweat … and that the mints would soften and burn her pores and skin.
I’ve by no means checked out mints the identical method since then.
—Susan Smith Bakhshian, director of bar applications, Loyola Regulation College
Rodney Smolla robes his daughter Erin as she graduates from Duke Regulation College. (Photograph courtesy Rod Smolla)
Daddy-daughter day
Once I moved to Delaware to turn into dean at Widener Delaware Regulation College, the one method I might be admitted to the Delaware Bar was to take the examination. I already was admitted to apply 1979 in Illinois, and I’ve been a really energetic educational and litigator my total profession, however Delaware is notoriously one of many hardest within the nation.
Because it seems, my daughter Erin Malone-Smolla had graduated from Duke College College of Regulation and can be taking it on the identical time.
I discovered all of it fairly difficult, partially as a result of I had forgotten a big a part of what I’d realized in regulation college 4 a long time earlier than, and partially due to the massive embarrassment I might have suffered as dean of the Delaware Regulation College if I turned out to be unable to cross the Delaware Bar.
My daughter did lots to persuade me to place in lengthy hours at night time after I accomplished my “day job.” I’m completely happy to report we each handed.
—Rodney A. Smolla, professor, Vermont Regulation and Graduate College, Delaware bar, July 2016
Victor Li and his mother and father. (Photograph courtesy of Victor Li)
Alarming
It was the summer season of 2004 and I used to be in lovely Albany, New York to take that state’s bar examination. The entire out-of-town youngsters needed to go there, so we principally took over the town for 2 days. In truth, there’s a giant horse race that often takes place later that week, so Albany accommodations actually matter on that one week in July.
Anyway, we had been all sitting within the basketball area downtown (it was referred to as “The Pepsi Area” again then, however is now generally known as “MVP Area”). It’s really a reasonably historic venue. Frank Sinatra opened the world with a live performance in 1990 and Ric Aptitude gained the WWE Royal Rumble in 1992. I took my bar examination there and by the tip of Day 2, I felt like somebody had repeatedly rammed my head into a hoop turnbuckle to the beat of “Fly Me to the Moon.”
Throughout the examination, we had a hearth alarm go off. It was fairly loud—it’s a massive area in any case—and the noise positively acquired below my pores and skin. So all of us glared on the proctors (as if that they had something to do with what occurred). Lastly, after a couple of moments of silent staring, we picked up our pencils and went again to our scantron sheets. That’s life!
And sure, I handed.
—Victor Li, assistant managing editor, ABA Journal, New York bar examination, July 2004
Kate Kelleher. (Photograph by James Kelleher)
Now, do it in cursive
The bar examination software program on my laptop computer froze 5 minutes earlier than the examination began they usually couldn’t repair it in time. This was both the primary yr or one of many first years they allow you to take the bar in your laptop computer versus writing by hand. I had taken all of my regulation college exams by pc and prepped for bar examination essays on the pc. On the final minute, they principally mentioned there’s nothing they may do, and I needed to handwrite all my essays! Everybody within the convention middle was watching me. I handed, however my hand harm so badly that night time—ha!
—Katie Kelleher, senior affiliate basic counsel, American Bar Affiliation, Illinois bar examination, February 2007
This too shall cross
I believed I used to be fairly chill after I lastly arrived on the check website to take the bar examination. I used to be properly ready. I had studied arduous. I used to be prepared. That’s why I used to be shocked after I opened the examination booklet and noticed that my examination questions weren’t written in English.
What language was this? Unusual characters swam in entrance of my eyes. Was this Russian? Did everybody get the flawed examination or simply me? Ought to I say one thing or watch for another person to level out the error? What I believed was about 10 minutes handed whereas I continued to stare on the shifting, international letters on the web page.
I lastly seemed behind me on the clock on the wall. It had been about 10 seconds for the reason that examination began. I blinked, seemed again on the examination and located all the pieces so as and in English. I had merely had a really quick, very intense panic assault. It handed, and so did I (the bar examination, that’s).
—Lisa Parker Gates, affiliate vp and senior affiliate counsel, Rasmussen College, 1999 Illinois bar
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