Taking Another Bar Exam While Working In Biglaw Forum

[Anonymous User]

Current biglaw associate in NYC. I am hoping to move to either GA or FL in the future (within 2-3 years). Neither state is UBE, so for either state I'd have to take a portion of the bar exam. Setting aside issues of studying while working, does anyone have advice for how I would go about approaching this? Ideally, I'd like to be licensed before leaving my firm so I could apply for and accept a position before leaving. Since almost all of the jobs I'd be interested in say "must be a member in good standing of ___ bar", I'd have to take the exam and go through C&F while working at my firm. So I'm wondering how I would go about doing this while at my firm.

Secondary question, is it possible to lateral to another market in biglaw where you are not licensed?

[Person1111]

Current biglaw associate in NYC. I am hoping to move to either GA or FL in the future (within 2-3 years). Neither state is UBE, so for either state I'd have to take a portion of the bar exam. Setting aside issues of studying while working, does anyone have advice for how I would go about approaching this? Ideally, I'd like to be licensed before leaving my firm so I could apply for and accept a position before leaving. Since almost all of the jobs I'd be interested in say "must be a member in good standing of ___ bar", I'd have to take the exam and go through C&F while working at my firm. So I'm wondering how I would go about doing this while at my firm.

Secondary question, is it possible to lateral to another market in biglaw where you are not licensed?

Many firms will let you lateral from another state and then take the bar a few months after you start working. Being admitted in GA/FL would certainly be a perk, but tons of people move from NYC to other states without being admitted in those states first.

[Anonymous User]

I work as an ADA, about 50 hours a week, and have been studying for a different bar. I only have to take the one-day essay portion. It seems doable if you have three months to study part time.

On weekdays, I spend about 90 minutes a day studying on the bus, 60 minutes during lunch every other day, and another 60-120 minutes at home. On weekends I try to get two to four hours in. I'm focusing more time on black letter law and doing outlines of essay answers, as opposed to writing out full essays. I write enough in my job that I know I can put together an actual, pretty essay answer if I have the whole hour.

I am doing outlines for each topic because it helps me internalize the info. Full outline, medium outline, and then an attack outline. My goal is to review the attack outline for every topic daily, even if it's a very surface level review. I'm not bothering with video lectures, because those were largely wasted time for my first bar exam.

I'm planning on taking one week off before the exam. Two weeks would be better, although probably excessive.

[SilvermanBarPrep]

This is relatively common for many of my students. If not Biglaw then working full-time while studying. It's quite difficult but doable because even though you'll be taking a different exam you will already have some of the MBE knowledge and skills down which will cut down on the studying. Those MBE subjects show up on the essays. In addition, in Florida you'll only need to take the Florida portion of the exam if you have a scaled score of 136 or above on the MBE within the last 24 months.

The key is to study very smart; it'll be a different approach than the first time assuming you studied full-time the first time around. Most of my students try to spend some time each day (morning or evening) studying, and the weekends are really the key to this strategy. Your weekends should be spent studying with a targeted, strategic approach.


Sean (Silverman Bar Exam Tutoring)