happy halloween!

you may remember how much i have enjoyed halloweens past. (other doozies include the year i was a pencil and the year i was a fish tank. i am afraid i do not have digital pictures of those years. alas. b/c they were good stuff. as you would expect from someone who has made a ladybug costume out of a child's sled, a permanent marker, and some rope, and who has weaseled her way into a costume designed for those under 70 pounds).


anyways. i was mucho worried about halloween this year b/c i did not have any candy, but i also did not feel like staying late at work. but i did not want the children to knock on my door and think i was a horrible person for not having candy for them. (as a side note, the last time i was in DC, i was made very upset on halloween by all the teenage hoodlums showing up, sans costume, at my door and complaining about my candy. little bastards.) anyways. i literally spent an hour with all the lights out in the front of my apartment and hiding in my bedroom, lest the children knock on my door and think me a terrible person when i broke their little hearts.

only then i remembered! i had candy!

leftover penis pops from lexi's bachelorette party!

just the kind of tasty delicious treat i'm sure any parent would be pleased for their child to receive on halloween!

congratulations!

our first CONGRATULATIONS to lexi and aaron, who got married this past weekend and are currently escaping the rigors of law firm life in paris on their honeymoon. huzzah for lexi and aaron! wishing you years and years and years and years of joy and happiness together!

and a further WHAT WHAT to lexi for her rousing rendition of "don't stop believing" at her own wedding. awesome.

our second congratulations to the thousand odd now-lawyers who managed to pass the bar and make the trek out to richmond on monday to be sworn in by the VA supreme court.
it was not much of a to-do, but for those of you who are interested, here is the virginia supreme court.

another really great search hit

someone today, searching from the virginia supreme court computer system, found my blog by entering the search phrase "simple stupid bar exam."

the wait is over....

and i passed.

yes, i am a big winner in the VA bar exam lottery.

but the day has only made me realize what a crapshoot it is. my mom, who i had told not to do the whole "of course you'll pass" thing sent me an email saying that now it's easy to say they knew i would pass b/c now they know i passed. i wrote back with a bit of an angry diatribe.

because not everyone passed. two of the six people who just started at my firm didn't. which is about the average, since 71.9% passed, meaning that nearly one in three don't. and i am not looking at it as failing. it's not passing.

the one guy at my firm who didn't has already established himself as a superstar. he got put on this thing that was just blowing up in like our second week and he's done an amazing job with filing things and writing motions and doing the kind of legal research that turns up one case from the 1960s that somebody at another firm didn't find and told their client (now our client) it was ok to do, when this case says it's not ok to do. i mean, this guy has been awesome. which is in keeping with what you would expect. he is exactly the last person you would think wouldn't pass.

of course, as sick as it is, i think it's best it was him. he's established himself as someone who does great work and can be relied on in tight situations. if it was me, they'd realize that not only had i f#@!'ed up that memo, but i also hadn't passed the bar, and it would not be looking good for me. plus, he dealt with it so well. the first thing he did was walk into the office managing partner's office. i mean, that takes balls, but it was straightforward and, i think, a great approach that says a lot about him.

the other person is a guy who's not checking the bar results. like the guy who still doesn't know what his law school grades were. a few weeks ago, before the checking had even begun in earnest, he made it clear that he wanted to be left out of the loop and he wasn't going to check. so we left him out of the loop and have refrained from fretting about it in his presence. of course, we all checked for his name today. and it wasn't there. so now i don't even know if he knows! not that it's any of my business.

but anyways. so i have now picked a new profession.

i want to be one of those people who just keeps taking bar exams! like kent sinclair! or that bar-bri guy!

yes, i am serious. i didn't mind studying for it, and i didn't mind taking it. hell, i kinda liked those things. i know, you have all thought i was sick all along. and i think i had even, by the end, reached a real sense of peace with failing, so that even waiting for the results wasn't killing me like i thought it would. anyways, i would keep doing it. i mean, imagine how much less it would suck if it didn't matter if you passed or failed. if it was just a ceaseless effort to take it, just for shits and giggles, and just to see if you passed. oh, it sounds delightful!

of course, my studying for another bar exam might not be a joke. it might be a very exciting and very imminent reality! since it looks like i might be seriously considering a move to NYC in the near future. the thing that's the sickest about that is that i'm pretty sure i would enjoy studying for the bar more than actually living in NYC. (well, with the exception of the boy. the things we do for love, right? i am just not a fan of NYC. maybe some day when i am feeling like being bitter i will go into a whole explanation of that.)

but for now, i am just going to say congrats to those of you who passed! and that i really am sorry to those of you who got screwed in the VA bar lottery. (tho also a bit jealous, especially if you get a month of paid leave to study for it.)

the answer

not at all today.

the worst part is that sometimes the page lags to load and then you're sure it's up. but you're wrong.

when it wasn't up by 2pm, we all concluded that it seemed like VA board of bar examiners style to wait until the last second before they left the office to put the results up. that way they wouldn't have to deal with any calls. i can't quite figure out whose immediate reaction upon learning that they had either passed or failed the bar would be to immediately call up the board of bar examiners, but it seemed like the sort of thing the VBBE would do.

alas, it was not. they have strung us along with this rumor of "it's always the second friday in october" and we will continue to be strung along. thru monday. which would fit with the other rumor. "it's always two weeks before the swearing in ceremony."

oh, and i forgot the worst part. turns out the assigning partner has been getting questions about when we'll be sworn in and able to go to court. i happened to be in his office this morning and he asked me. well i had to tell him, "the rumor is today." which meant (1) then he knew and was waiting to see the results too and there will be no lag time b/t learning you failed the bar and the whole firm knowing you failed the bar, and (2) i had to listen to the entire story about (both) times he passed the bar and how it's all going to be ok. not that i mind him telling me the story. but this "it's all going to be ok, of course you passed" is everyone's reaction to your nerves. but i don't like it. b/c not everyone does pass. some people fail. and you really have NO idea if you are one of those people. if i am one of those people, i'd really rather that everyone hadn't told me that of course i would be ok and pass.

but i digress. i have places to go and boyfriends to pick up from the train station!

the height of the anxiety

so some states have gotten their bar exam results. some states even had nice little emails from their boards of bar examiners telling them when theirs would be up. well not us. not a peep from the VA board of bar examiners. but once people started hearing in other states, we started thinking about it and checking and doing the mental math on when it could be. i was checking every few days or so.

and then someone at work did some research and figured out that in the past they have been released on oct. 10, oct. 11 and oct. 15. or some such nonsense. so then i started checking. neurotically. i'd check every time it crossed my mind. and the more you check, and the more the first year associate class emails about it, the more it crosses your mind. i could tell you that bar results had not been posted overnight, that they had not been posted between 9am and 11am, and then at some point it reached the point where i could tell you they had not been posted between 3:14 and 3:16. you know, laura style! i mean, i am the girl who would look for class reviews on lawweb every day and then set my alarm for 5:58 the next day, so i could wake up and be the first person to see the grade was up, and then email the entire section and let them know. it's part of my charm.

anyways. i noticed that diana looked even more nervous than usual at lunch today. turns out she has some friend who works for a judge in virginia. he got the word today that they would be out tomorrow. friday.

but this still leaves me to wonder. when? midnight? the start of the work day? some random time? 6:30, so that most of us are on our way out of work and when we (read:I) lose it, at least i can do it in the privacy of my apartment?

the WORST part is that i am out of the office in a meeting for 3 hours dead smack in the middle of tomorrow. i'll be trying to take down every word spoken at some regulatory meeting where i can't even figure out what's going on and i'll be refreshing my blackberry every four seconds, only to burst out into tears in the middle of some FERC conference. sweet. (actually, i have thought about this and i really don't think i'll cry if i didn't pass. i may however drink on my way back to the office.)

anyways, good luck to everyone!

welcome UVA 1Ls with mimi riley for LR&W

it never fails. someone always comes looking for roger strawbach.

oh roger, how i miss ye.

moral dilemma

are you allowed to throw away the crap that the lexis and westlaw reps give you?

in law school, i just reached the point where i told them no thanks on most of the stuff and then loaded up on the highlighters. oh how i loved those highlighters.

but i haven't developed a relationship with these guys like i had with marva and lynn and i couldn't bring myself to tell the man, who prefaced handing me a travel coffee mug with the phrase, "this is the really good stuff," that i have a hundred travel coffee mugs and i don't use any of them and i was really interested in the booklet of search tips (yes, i am a nerd) and not another damned coffee mug.

but those are not as bad as the little tablets. oh how i wish i had taken a picture of them. they're like the ones you take to interviews, only in far smaller sizes. and of course they say westlaw and lexis in huge letters. and of course i work in a law office, where there is no shortage of lined notepads and pens. and really no reason to carry them around in a leather tablet.

i'm thinking, however, that i should keep them in case i quit. the one is the size that really would be perfect if i was a detective.

i would be a great detective.