Here’s a shocking idea: Your bar exam is your first client. And that client is you.
As with all things in life, we cannot be better to someone else than we can be to ourselves. So here it is, all the hours, weeks, months and years all coming to this one point where you must give your best argument, and you must do it for yourself.
We did that with such ease when we thought nothing was on the line but our standing in the law school population of “gunners.” (Look it up if you don’t know the slang — but even if you don’t, you probably were one).
And we were so reckless with all those opinions, like they evaporated into the air as soon as we spoke them, like they held no power over our eventuality or did not attach to our worth. But they were no less or more than what you are about to do in that test center.
The reason that our result on the bar exam is so personal is that we attach it so solidly to our core worth, as the culmination of it all.
Becoming a lawyer
In truth, your journey to practicing law is one endless continuum. You actually never really “get there” in the way you think. Instead you unfold into yourself as a lawyer over time. So this is one more step in an evolution.
You should think of the force of your words and choices on bar day as yourself in fluid expression, and those arguments are no more than any we have made in all the years we have ever known ourselves to be a contending entity.
Let’s face, it, that’s what got you into law school. You are a contender, and you know it. There is no “better” argument, no one more qualified than you.
You are not allowed to fail yourself, to run out of time, to labor too long in one part of the test or to entertain then potentially limitless number of doubts that people of lesser mettle succumb to.
You must perform. And it will be no different in your first court appearance or in your first written assignment as someone’s lawyer.
Representing yourself
I want to recommend that you take the test as if all the same urgency rides on showing up on those test days, as if you were representing someone else, because you are representing you so that you can show up for someone else.
There is no distinction between you on the last day of your test and you when you receive your congratulations letter from the bar.
Here’s the secret: It’s a bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; you had the power all along, but you needed someone else to tell you so.
But I think you greatly increase your odds of passing if you adopt the posture it takes to be a lawyer, you must believe it first, without the confirmation.
The shift is not in capacity — you’re the same person on both days — but rather, it’s just a confirmation of what you already knew.
