Stanley Cup!

That's right. The Stanley Cup was at Anaheim Stadium prior to the Angels baseball game this evening.


That's a photo pulled from the Reuters website. I'm in the yellow shirt on the left. Here's the photo I was taking at the time.

That made this evening definitely worth it.

CA Bar

Yep. The bad boy I am tackling this year is the California bar. Previous victims of this beast include Antionio Villagrosa (current mayor of Los Angeles)--failed four times, never passed. Former California Governor Jerry Brown--failed once and passed on his second time. Former Governor Pete Wilson passed on his fourth attempt. Former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan, prominent constitutional lawyer who has argued cases in front of the US Supreme Court and is licensed to practice law in two other states failed on her first attempt.

For those of you reading this who are not my law friends--welcome. And thanks for sticking with me for the past three years (I know it's been a bumpy ride and I apologize). But let me fill you in on some background. Each state regulates the practice of law in that state. I want to practice law in California, and so I have to take the California bar. The California bar is tough. It is three full days of testing (compared to two or two-and-a-half days of other lesser state bars). Out of all the takers (both current lawyers from other states and aspiring lawyers), the bar passage rate is under half meaning more than one out of two people will fail.

The California bar consists of three days. Days are broken up into morning and afternoon. Day 1 Morning is three essays in three hours. Day 1 Afternoon is a performance test. Day 2 morning is 100 Multiple Choice Questions. Day 2 Afternoon is 100 more. Day 3 is a repeat of Day 1.

The bar tests 13 subjects. Multiple Choice questions or (MBE) subjects are:

1. Torts
2. Constitutional Law
3. Contracts
4. Real property
5. Evidence (Federal Rules)
   
6. Criminal Procedure/Law

The California Essay subjects can come from either the MBE subjects above or these below:

1. Civil Procedure (Fed and CA--new for Summer 2007!)
2. California Evidence (in addition to the above--also new for Summer 2007!)
3. Wills
4. Trusts
5. Business Associations
   
6. Agency
7. California Community Property
8. and others I'm forgetting.

So, this is why my posts will be sporadic, moody, and stressful until this is over.

BarBri Evidence "Update" or Malpractice?

After sitting through eight hours of lecutre, doing over a hundred evidence questions, and assorted evidence essays, I received an email from BarBri today informing me of an Evidence Update.

I clicked on the email from them with the subject "Evidence Update" and expected to hear that CA had just changed the law earlier today. That was not the case. Rather, BarBri has simply decided to relay to us new information because the information it had provided us in the printed materials (which are CA specific) AND the lectures (which are CA specific) are wrong.

Now, I'm a fairly laidback, guy who is quite flexible. I consider myself quite "above average," perhaps even "superior" when it comes to being able to adapt to a new change. But when BarBri sends us nine changes to the printed materials it sends us, I am not happy.

Let's see what substantive changes BarBri has us making.

First off, the "update" says that both Federal Rules of Evidence and California Rules of Evidence will be tested on the bar on the essay portion of the exam. Isn't this something that should have been told to us at the beginning of the lecture? It's not as if the California Bar (which I'm sure has already printed our exams) just decided to change this rule. This is an error on BarBri's part and a huge one at that.

Second, apparently withdrawn guilty pleas and offers to plead guilty are exempt from Proposition 8. How long ago was Proposition 8 passed? Unless BarBri can point to a recent case that came down on this point, again, this is BarBri's fault for not checking this earlier. How difficult would it be to get a lecturer with experience in CA evidentiary law? How big is this state? How many people practice in CA courts and use these rules on an every day basis?

To spare you from my ranting, I'll summarize the rest: BarBri sets out to explain various hearsay exceptions and differences in expert testimony. My question to them...why wasn't this covered in the lecture? If I were BarBri's client, this would be malpractice. I'm not a client, so this is just a poor level of service offered by BarBri.

I digress....

TB Guy

For those who haven't heard, here's a quick recap. Stupid attorney contracts super deadly virus of TB. CDC says don't fly anywhere. Stupid attorney goes, gee I think I'll fly to Italy, get married, and then fly back. Here's his quote:

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person," he told the newspaper. "This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

Okay, currently it's debatable if you are well-educated (because you can't follow directions, you won't beb successful for much longer because you will be dead, and you aren't intelligent because you purposely endangered the lives of everyone on that plane, your wife, everyone at your wedding, and who knows how many people in Italy.

That's the worst logic ever. This guy is why attorneys have bad names. And then, the article talks about how he might be able to sue the government because he's in quarantine. Ummm...stupid news article, how about a little thing called compelling state interest? Additionally, stupid attorney should be worried about being sued by anyone who contracts TB because of his failure to heed doctor's advice. A jury would be mighty unsympathetic to his cause.