Friday, September 26, 2008

STATE bar exam

As most of you probably know, in order to practice law in the U.S. I have to take a "bar exam." As many of you know, bar exams are state specific. What that means is that I have to pick a state, take their bar exam/apply to be admitted to their bar, and then I am legal to practice in that state. Now, one happy thought before I launch into the rest of this. If I practice immigration law and only immigration law (that means I can't help most of you with anything except referring you to other people) then the state is less important. Immigration law is federal law so as long as I'm admitted in one state, I can do federal anywhere. But I can't do any kind of state law (which included most normal life things).
To make things more fun, applying before taking the bar exam is a several month process. So, I should be looking into it and started now. Which gives me major anxiety. Why?, you ask. Well, because of that state part. Do people really expect me to pick a state and make a major commitment to that one state? Well, yes, if I want to practice law, they do. [Unless I want to spend a fortune and years of my life going around to different states - no.] But I don't know where I want to be in a year, much less 5 or 10. Pretty much everyone who has known me for at least 5 minutes (or less) knows that I don't have a home state. So, I'm trying to figure out how to decide where to take the bar.
The following are options I've consider in how to choose a state. I'd love to hear your input about 1. which option to use and/or 2. where you think I should take the bar exam.

1. Follow my father's 20-something year old self example, just pull out the atlas and pick a state (possible methods include throwing darts, or dropping beans, looking at cool names, spinning an arrow, etc.)
2. Base decision on geography: I have a good sense about things I do and don't like geographically and I could just decide by it's climate, population density, etc.
3. Base decision on family: who do I want to live by, how close do I want to be, etc. (If parents hadn't moved to Wyoming, this would be a more viable option!) Problems - (two major ones) current locations of family aren't particularly appealing and (more importantly) my family isn't going to stay anywhere long enough (except maybe Ro&S) that making a decision based on that is like building my house upon the sand.
4. Find a job, then go where it is. Problem - it's much easier to find a job if I'm not looking in the haystack, but in a definite place. Especially true for what I'm trying to do.
5. Think about what other things I'd like to do in life (teach part time at a college, maybe get a Masters in something, travel, music, learn Punjabi, have a garden, other stuff I can't think of right now) and find locations suitable to pursuing those other interests. Problem - I feel like it's still pretty broad.
6. Cry in despair, realize I'm too busy to even think about this anyway, and forget it. Who needs to take the July bar anyway? Problem - I'm trying and it's not helping me find a state.

Any ideas?

3 comments:

Rudi said...

Hi, Ruth! I didn't know you had a blog, how fun. We'd be happy to have you back in Michigan :)

Unknown said...

Maybe immigration law would be best in this case?

susie harty said...

Ok, I would love for you to be close to my family. But that is pretty selfish and you probably wouldn't like the weather in Vegas. So, I think you should go where you could learn and do all the things that you want to. Take that state's exam and stick with immigration law. Then travel and live with all of your friends in the different states that they live while practicing immigration law. And of course get confirmation through the spirit that this is what you should do. Tadaaa! You should come to me for advice all the time.hahaha