Fourteen Days Remaining

Two weeks from today I will be sitting in Pierre in a meeting room in the Ramkota Hotel taking the first half of the bar exam. The first day is all essay. The morning session is two 90-minute MPT (multistate performance test) questions. These questions test your ability to synthesize law and apply it to the facts. They give you all the law you need, so I don't have to actually know anything for the first three hours. The afternoon session will be 6 30-minute MEE (multistate essay examination) questions. These questions test my knowledge of a range of legal subjects from corporations to wills to civil procedure. The second day will consist of the MBE (multistate bar examination), which is 200 multiple choice questions in 6 hours. Luckily we get a break for lunch. The MBE covers different subjects than the MEE.

I think the hardest part will be the MEE. Why? Because it's the hardest for which to study. For the MBE we have hundreds upon hundreds of practice questions and explanations of the correct answer. For the MEE, we have some practice questions that have model answers, but you never know if you did well enough with your answer. I guess that's the nature of subjective testing.

After the exam I'll probably party with my law school classmates for the last time, stay in Pierre overnight, then drive back to Vermillion to begin the moving process. I start my clerkship that next Monday. So it's two weeks until the bar exam and just under three weeks until I enter the real world. I wish I didn't have to spend every free minute I have until then studying, especially since my move from Vermillion also means the beginning of my long-distance engagement with Kristin. Thank God for web cams and MSN Messenger.