New York Lawyer
November 20, 2001

Q:
I�m a recent law school graduate, and unfortunately I failed the bar exam on the first sitting. I will retake the exam in 6 months.

In the meantime, I�d like to find meaningful legal or quasi-legal work, but potential legal employers have given me the cold shoulder for not passing the bar. I�m afraid non-legal employers will simply see me as a failed lawyer. Any ideas?

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A:
Before we talk about how employers will or won�t see you, it�s first important that you do not see yourself as a failed lawyer. If any part of your self-image projects �Maybe there�s something wrong with me,� the employer will read that lack of self confidence as a crippling deficit. And that�s a major marketing problem.

Failing the bar exam on the first sitting is hardly unusual, particularly in states that really bust your chops on scoring. The initial priority is to get a clear focus on exactly why you missed the cut and focus your study and developmental efforts there. Think it was a lack of subject-matter knowledge on the UCC or family law? Did you suffer a bout of anxiety-induced brain lock? Have you always had trouble doing laundry-list issues analysis on essay questions? In other words, analyze your performance in terms of pragmatic cause-and-effect; don�t fall prey to generalized, personalized mind-voices about whether you�re stupid or incompetent or a bad person whom God is punishing.

It�s too bad you didn�t land a job before taking the bar exam. In my experience, both law firms and corporate legal departments, while not thrilled when someone doesn�t pass the bar, don�t get terribly freaked out about it. Quite properly, they do insist that the lawyer take extra initiative in self-study and preparation. Some even make time accommodations so this task gets first priority. A second failure, however, usually means real trouble: the employer may not bother to diagnose whether it represents a failure of knowledge, of smarts, of attitude or confidence.

As for interim employment, first I�d hit the legal temporary agencies, both those handling attorneys and those that specialize in paralegals or administrative temps. While they get plenty of assignments requiring admitted lawyers, they often get projects for which admission is not required: document indexing and review, helping coordinate discovery requests and/or other types of litigation support; organizing and indexing legal files, preparing tables, schedules or trial exhibits, or other forms of repetitive, high-volume work that does not demand mature legal judgment. Although this work itself may not be all that exciting, it will provide a basic living wage ($35-50/hour � but no benefits � is not unusual) and will have you operating in a legal setting. This is important both for you to feel that you are pursuing something relevant to your profession and also to show potential full-time employers that you haven�t checked out.

You might also try the consulting and accounting firms that now are competing with law firms for certain types of work, notably litigation support and forensic accounting. Ernst & Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche all have developing litigation support practices. Other consulting firms also are worth a try. Although the services marketed may not be legal, this kind of experience is relevant to potential law firm employers (after you pass the bar), because the structure and nature of the businesses are similar: they are selling time for money, usually on a project basis. Experience in that kind of setting therefore is relevant to learning how engagements are handled, how to work on a deadline, making all tasks billable, etc.

You might also explore positions with local, state and federal agencies. There are a variety of non-civil service appointments that involve administrative law and regulatory compliance. Entry level jobs can be pretty mind-numbing, but they may familiarize you with a particular area of law that you find interesting (EPA, FTC, SEC, Medicare, etc.). An initial employment foray into government is not a deterrent to future non-government career prospects unless you stay too long (i.e., more than three years.

If you choose to take a stop-loss job (pizza delivery, retail, etc.) while studying for the bar, keep your legal battery charged with some law-related volunteer work.. God knows there are a lot of not-for-profit advocacy, social service and education organizations that can really use some educated help. If possible, try to get assigned tasks or responsibilities that have some resume value or career relevance � whether it be research, drafting, advocacy or providing advice and counsel. Stay away from development or purely administrative tasks if possible � they cloud your identity. For stop-loss employers, you don�t have to tell them you didn�t pass the bar exam. The whole point of this kind of job is that they are just jobs � they�re not intended to represent long-term career paths.

Sincerely,
Douglas B. Richardson
President, The Richardson Group