Benjamin Abrams

Chris:

Welcome to the Let’s Get Personal Podcast. On this show, we bring on guests to discuss topics that will challenge us to grow personally and professionally. Well, we’re happy to be joined today by Ben Abrams graduate of law school, just at the bar exam has worked in my office for quite some time and among other places. And we want to dive a little bit into your background, your journey, and thanks for joining us.

Ben:

Yeah, happy to be here.

Chris:

So Ben, it’s been 20 years since I’ve been in law school and took the bar and I’m sure there’s a lot of people that just went through or are interested in going through what you just went through in what I mean by that is going to law school, what is that? What does it feel like? How much work is it? What’s the cost? And I just want to hitch on some of those things, but before we dive into it, what made you want to go to law school in the first place?

Ben:

Yeah, so that’s a question I feel like I got asked a lot during orientation of law school is like, why are you here? Why do you want to be here? What drove you to be here? Every family member, every family member, every professor, every orientation leader at school or whatever it was like. And I heard a lot of really moving stories during that first couple of weeks of law school, but for me it was just one good teacher In undergrad, I started off in undergrad pursuing a chemistry degree in forensics for about two years, and then I just kind of lost interest in it. And so I was just getting through the rest of my degree and I had to take a criminal procedure class to graduate. And that professor just kind of pushed me, really showed me how interesting it was. Just the criminal side of it pushed me to an internship at the DA’s office in Nassau County on Long Island.

And then after that it was just kind of reinforcement after reinforcement after reinforcement of why this is something I’m interested in, why it’s a good path to take. I was at the DA’s office for 10 weeks and everyone I met there was just so welcoming in trying to educate me and all the other people that were interns there into why it’s important to do more like public service work, I guess in a as a DA or even as a public defender. Yeah. And then after that I applied to take the lsat. I sat for the LSAT in between when I graduated from undergrad and when I went to law school. So I had a gap year. And then after that I went to school to law school at Suffolk. And it’s just been, again, reinforcement after reinforcement about why it’s important to continue going through law school and to finish it to get to the end of it, to graduate, take the bar and hopefully have this conversation 20 years from now like you’re doing.

Chris:

Yeah. Well it’s funny talking to younger people, they often ask, how do you know really at your age or in college or coming out of college, going into college, how do you know what you want to do? And I often feel like it’s good you did trying by going into the profession, doing a little bit of work. Sometimes you find out what you don’t want to do, which is just as important as what you do want to

Ben:

Do.

Chris:

So that’s great. Coming from undergrad to law school, what do you think the biggest differences were in terms of challenges? Course load?

Ben:

Yeah, school for me, I guess it wasn’t easy, but definitely I didn’t find school challenging until law school. I never opened a textbook in undergrad in high school. It just didn’t need to. I got whatever I needed to from going to lectures and a Google here or there for undergrad. And I expected law school to be a lot more challenging once I started it. But the leap in terms of how much time you have to spend on one small assignment that you would think would take 30 minutes ends up taking three and a half hours and you don’t get anywhere near any progress you thought you were making. I had to pretty much teach myself how to read again. Obviously I can read the English language, but I haven’t sat and read a book for enjoyment or even a textbook since I’m in middle school or elementary school. So I had to sit down and read fiction novels again for a bit. I was reading a chapter here just so I can get into the headspace of reading in one sitting as opposed to losing focus or worrying about other things. That was, I think one of the hardest things for me the first semester was just trying to learn how to read again

Chris:

At the volume you need to

Ben:

At the volume you need to, yeah, you’re sitting down for hours on end just reading and reading and reading to absorb some of it. Yeah,

Chris:

I mean from what I can recall, again, it goes years back, but just the sheer volume of the course load and the homework that you had to do seemed to pale in comparison to what I did in undergrad. And it sounds like that hasn’t changed

Ben:

Much. No, I think I’ve done more school in the last three years in terms of homework and assignments and I have or have in 22 years I was in.

Chris:

Well, it’s funny, in kind of preparation for this, I was just trying to google some statistics, whatever Google’s worth these days, but you and I had talked about it when you were in your first year that you can kind of look to your left, look to your right and who’s not going to be there because that first year’s grueling. And one of the stats I came across is that certain schools, not all, but certain schools have upwards of 38% dropout rate. And tell me about what you remember specifically about your first year and the rigor of that and did you see a lot of kids dropping out?

Ben:

Yeah, and the funniest part was that it wasn’t kids that you had ever thought were the ones that were going to drop out for me anyway. I started law school during the pandemic the first year. I took one class in person and four classes online for the first two semesters. And there were a couple kids who were always, they always had their hand up. They were always asking professors good questions, stuff that I had never come across my mind. They were involved in stuff. And then the second year it started, and I didn’t see these kids ever again pretty much they could still be going to school, but just one building Suffolk. So you see pretty much everyone and you hear from other people that had stayed in touch with those people that had dropped out, that they had dropped out. I was very kind of taken aback by it because while it was challenging law school the first year at least dropping out, I feel like I’d already come this far. I wasn’t. But I get different mentalities I guess between us. But I couldn’t see once I had started a world in which I would’ve stopped.

Chris:

Well, it’s funny to me, I get a lot of family members and people asked too about law school and the one thing I say is that it’s hard to go in if you’re not fully committed to it. So if you’re going in because the parent’s pushing you there or you’re just trying to fill some time until you figure out what you want to do, you’re going to find out very quickly that you can’t half ass it, like sitting in class and the amount of work that you have to do. So I guess if certain people do go into it, just because they don’t really know what they want to do, you’ll find out very quickly. It’s not a place you’re going to stay.

Speaker 3:

No, definitely not.

Chris:

So just diving back into law school experience, talk about what it was like. I mean, my first year in law school, and again 20 years ago, the most intimidating part about that first year and what a lot of people hear about is the Socratic method of teaching. And that’s the calling you out in a class of a hundred kids and changing fact patterns and saying, well, what do you do now? How does this impact the case? And if you don’t know those cases that you’ve read inside and out, you’re going to get

Ben:

Back. You look like a fool. Yeah.

Chris:

And that was the thing that kept you making sure consistent. Consistent reading the material. And how did that translate into the pandemic?

Ben:

It didn’t tell you. It did not translate at all to the Zoom world. Some professors tried to implement it certain ways where they would, they’d have a pre-list of students that they knew they were going to call on for that day and you were in a group, so if you showed up to the Zoom meeting and you were one of those seven students that were going to get called on that day, you knew ahead of time. So for me, if I was ever on those lists, I knew two or three days in advance. So I would make sure that for my property class, I knew the cases front and back. I was going over them pretty much dreaming about them, how much I was reading these cases and the footnotes and the citations and all of it, just get asked one question about it that I could have answered had I not even looked at the cases. But it was hard. There was a lot of times where professors would try and cold call and Socratic method and just say somebody’s name and ask ’em what they thought about a certain case or like you said, different facts or whatnot and they just wouldn’t answer or they might not have showed up that day. And I think professors are being pretty lenient with it as well. In terms of grading for that first year that we were all on Zoom,

Chris:

I think that was new for everybody. So that

Ben:

Was

Chris:

Tough.

Ben:

And then once we went back full time to being in person a second and third year of school, the second and third year for me anyway, were a lot more relaxed. They were still challenging, but they were a lot more relaxed in the first year just because you find out how to do certain things while you’re going through it. It took me the first week of school, probably an hour to write a brief for a case going through. It took me maybe 15, 20 minutes towards the end of law school just because I just got so used to knowing what I’m looking for,

What I can skip, what’s kind of not really relevant when I’m reading a case brief. So things definitely got a little bit more efficient, I guess for me. So I think a lot of the professors, the class sizes were small. My second and third year, it wasn’t a class of 90 students taking the same criminal law class or the same property class, so they were more intimate at Suffolk, so they weren’t really cold calling you in front of an auditorium of 300. It was they want your input in a class size of 15. They want you to succeed and to excel and they’re not out to get you, which I don’t really think the professors really were to begin with when they’re cold calling and the whole Socratic method, like you were saying, I don’t think professors are out to get anyone, but I think it’s just a good way to keep everybody on their toes.

Chris:

Yeah, well, and it makes you process things on the fly, which is if you’re in court, that’s exactly what you’re going to have

Ben:

To do. Judge, that’s I’m terrified about. I’m not good on my

Chris:

Feet. Well, what’s funny is I remember vividly, I did a clinic in the DA’s office and I remember thinking, wow, these judges are tough. There’s a lot of public speaking and just thinking at that time, it wasn’t really going to be the route that I picked first. And lo and behold, I mean quote all the time now. So it is something that I think preferences change, your skillset changes, but I felt the same way when I was in law school. It’s intimidating. Number one, biggest fear of people’s lives is public speaking. Public speaking, yeah. You did dabble a little bit on the difference between your first year or one L, is it they call it one L,

Ben:

One L two L three L, yeah.

Chris:

So just for the people listening and that may be interesting going to law school. So dive a little bit into, and I know the bar exam, I think not completely, but the bar exam largely is probably based off of your first year classes. And how is that first year structured, the classes, the length of the classes versus the later years?

Ben:

Yeah, so the bar exam, I would say for Suffolk at least it’s the first 18 months of your curriculum. There’s seven major subjects. I’m probably not going to remember ’em all off the top of my head, but it’s criminal law and procedure, property contracts, evidence,

Chris:

Civil procedure,

Ben:

Civil procedure and torts. Torts. I think that’s seven. I think I did seven. And you take all those classes your first year or the first semester of your second year, and they’re all assigned to you. You don’t really get to pick when they are. You don’t get to pick your professors, it’s just given to you as your schedule. That’s it. Obviously if you have any other issues, you could take that up with the academic office. But what was really hard for me was after those 18 months had ended, which was all of pretty much the major bar material is you’re now expected to go and take classes that you’re interested in legal wise. So for me, I still really have no idea kind of where I’m going to find myself post getting the bar results and what kind of fields of law interests me. And like you had said earlier, you’d kind of find out what you don’t like,

Chris:

Which

Ben:

Is what I spent the next 18 months doing. I thought I was going to go into intellectual property with copyright and trademark.

I took a big overview class of that, really liked it. Then took a really boring and dry copyright class and thought, okay, well this isn’t for me. So I moved away from that. I had a professor I really liked who taught contracts, so I took a class with him about how religion and law intersect with each other. I can’t stand that. So I moved away from that. And then towards the end of law school, I started taking bar prep classes. It had been almost a year since I’d reviewed any of the major material for the bar, which I kind of felt frustrated by it that spending money on tuition to take a class, to take a class to take a class, if that makes sense by taking a review class.

Chris:

It sounds a material it like what people complain about in grammar school where they’re teaching to a test, which the MAS in Massachusetts and now you’re spending a large part of your end of curriculum teaching to the bar exam instead of teaching the topics that you may want to take when you get

Speaker 3:

Out.

Chris:

So it sounded like you got some early experience in criminal law before you went to law school. And where did you go with your interest with that? Did that plateau, is that something that you continued?

Ben:

No, for me it’s the most fascinating area of law is the criminal sector. It’s hard. I feel like,

Chris:

Well, there’s a reason why every TV show out there that is in law, it deals with the criminal sector.

Ben:

It’s interesting. Yeah,

Chris:

Because it’s human life and it affects every one of us and their behaviors of others that are just fascinating

Speaker 3:

And

Chris:

It’s how it’s regulated and punished and dealt with in society is much more interesting than reading a contract.

Ben:

Yeah, I mean I feel like any professor wanted to talk about whether they were teaching criminal law and procedure or not. It was about current events and who was arrested recently and who did this and whose rights were violated. So every professor would always talk about how TVs and shows are so much different than actual courtroom. You can walk into a courtroom, there’s not going to be a full gallery of people coming to just watch a trial take place. There’s nobody going to be barging down the door with evidence. It doesn’t

Chris:

Happen during trial.

Ben:

During trial.

Chris:

Yeah, yeah. No, that’s true. I’ve certainly been in I would agree with that for the most part. For sure. Although it is in real life, it is every bit as suspenseful and entertaining. You probably just don’t have as many of those last minute surprises.

But I mean the world was captivated by the Johnny Depp trial and it’s not even a criminal case, but it’s famous people and it’s interesting testimony and it’s a window into the life of people that are in movies. And I think those are the things that people are drawn to. But sometimes Massachusetts and New England and the Northeast is very different and the courtroom’s very different than other areas of the law too. So if you do follow courtrooms in other places, the law is treated and evidence comes in differently than it does here. And I think we tend to be a little bit more conservative. But that is an interesting point because I think the lay person before they go to law school that comes in, probably that’s their perception of what the legal system’s really like. If they get called for jury duty, this is what they’re expecting. And it is for the most part very different,

Ben:

Right? Yeah. Nobody’s expecting to go to jury duty and sit for a medical malpractice case for three weeks. They’re all thinking they’re getting the big charges.

Chris:

Well, there’s a reason why that everybody will sit home and watch law and order, but nobody wants to sit for jury duty. Right,

Ben:

Right.

Chris:

Which you have to. She said, well, right, but

Ben:

I’m upset. I’m probably never going to get to sit for jury duty. I was told on my very first week of law school that I most likely will never be picked for jury duty.

Chris:

It’s funny, I got called for jury duty when I was in undergrad in Boston, and it’s probably, it was the only time I have sat, and it was fascinating. The best part of it was the deliberation because I’ve heard judges speak about for the longest time in the profession, you could never talk to jurors. That’s since changed recently. But you never really got a window into what was done, what was done wrong. The attorneys go out there, they present their case and they have no idea what people are talking about, what made sense to them, what was credible,

What wasn’t. And it was really interesting to see how many different points of view there are and how people are at different ends of the spectrum, but all end up closer once everybody talks through the evidence from their perspective. And it is also interesting from the perspective, if you’re an attorney, finding out who you think that person is that’s going to be leading that discussion and talking to them. Because there are leaders that are going to stand up in that deliberation room that are going to be more forceful, getting their point across and convincing people than others. So I did find, and you can sit on juries, they may not be real juries, but you can sit on mock juries and it is an interesting experience that I think going into the profession if you are going to be in criminal law, that I think you find very valuable.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah. No, I got called for it when I was an undergrad and I deferred because I was a student, so in three years, so I haven’t been called since it’s been probably five years. But

Chris:

Who

Ben:

Knows.

Chris:

The other thing, not to get far off track that I will say they have something in mass called continuing legal education credits, which are not, they’re required in some states, not in others. They’re required if you’re going to be a public defender, but not for other things. But I had done a trial one and they pay people to sit on the jury, and this was before you could talk to jurors and it was great because you had a real judge that took time. You had people that were in the program that acted as witnesses. You were in a real courtroom and you actually got to sit with all these jurors and they told you everything they liked and disliked. So it was a real mirror to your performance and where your strengths and weaknesses lie. So that’s another thing I would recommend for you, but what would you say your biggest, getting back to the law school piece, what was your biggest misconception or what was your biggest takeaway from law school coming in that maybe you weren’t expecting in a good or bad

Ben:

Way? Yeah, I mean, kind of going back to all the work that is kind of required for it. Like I said, it’s more work than I’ve done school-wise in three years than I have I think my whole life. And I was putting in so much time and effort week in and week out to the point where I felt like I was exerting myself to 120% of what I thought my effort for that. And the worst part about it was getting grades and getting feedback that it wasn’t essentially good enough. I was not a 4.0 summa cum laude top of my class student, but I thought I was putting in 120% effort I didn’t think I could do anymore. And to not get the results back in a way that I thought would’ve been What

Chris:

Percentage? Your effort

Ben:

Of my effort? Yeah. I thought that was, I think one of the most frustrating parts of the first year of law school. And it really kind of stuck out to me more so that this is the real deal. You are competing, which I hate even thinking about that. Some of the people that I’m friends with and that I was talking to for three years, I looked at it as if we’re going to school together, we’re all trying to graduate past the bar become attorneys. And there are probably a lot of people that never said it or never said it to me that were competing with me to be higher in the class to get a higher score on the bar. Not if everybody could pass, that’d be great. But everything is on a bell curve essentially. So I could write a great paper at a different school and B, and it would be an A, but because I’m writing it against 90 other people and their writing is 89 of those people are better than mine, I failed. So that was, I think one of the most frustrating parts about it. The thing I took away from it the most was that no matter how hard I’m trying that there’s always going to be people that I guess have more of a knack for it than I do, which is fine. I’ve come to terms with that, that

It can’t be perfect

Chris:

Enough credit either. In the sense that one of the things that I’ve realized about law school is that people come from a wide variety of backgrounds. It’s not like other professions in the sense that I remember vividly my first year we had an 80 something year old MIT professor retired at the time. But then you have, because it is so much writing and reading that people come with a background that’s that they did that more intently in college are going to be a little bit better from the jump in that. But as you said, you became a lot more efficient very quickly. So I do think because you have people with medical backgrounds, you have people with math backgrounds, engineering backgrounds, it’s hard to fit everybody into the legal world so quickly. So I do think it does take certain people a little bit more time to acclimate to that rigor of reading and writing.

Ben:

Yeah, I mean, like you said, not taking anything away from myself. I think for what it was worth, I think I did as much as I could have done, and I’m okay with that. Like I said, I didn’t graduate top of my class, but I graduated. So to the 130 kids that dropped out for whatever reason, I was ahead of them in class ranks, I guess if you want to put it that way. So I didn’t look at law school as a competition, which I’d said a lot of people, I think did.

I had a misconception of law school going into it that it was kind of going to be a very isolated experience in terms of your learning and you can’t really share work with others and again, that you’re competing against people. But the first couple of weeks I met the same five people I think I talked to until I graduated. And I never really did anything by myself in terms of studying or sharing briefs or sharing notes and stuff just so that the five of us would graduate. That was the ultimate goal for my group of five friends was just to graduate. None of us were really competing with each other or never said we were. And I think that was one of the things that stood out to me the most from school was the collaborative process from it. And even being reinforced from working here too is how you talk to all the other attorneys in the office and you have an issue, you run it by them and they’ll kind of work out what they think the major issues are or where you can tweak something here and there.

Chris:

That’s a great point. One of the things that struck me early on when I started off doing a lot of criminal work, and I’ve been on the prosecution and defense side, and on the prosecution side, you’re in an office with cubes. If a bunch of people at all work in the DA’s office, when you’re on the defense side, if you’re a public defender, you now are just a bunch of individual practitioners that have their own office space. But the bar was so extremely helpful and especi as a new lawyer, if you’re at a firm, then you just go up to your manager and you talk, Hey, do we have this pleading? Do we have this motion? Do we have, can you help go over this? And when you’re on your own, it’s kind of a scarier leap. But the bar, and I can speak to mass in New Hampshire where I’m licensed, is immensely supportive and willing to reach out.

And don’t get me wrong, there’s outliers of course, but there’s a lot of good practitioners out there that are willing to help. And there’s a lot of good organizations out there that also provide support. I actually just had an appointment with a client yesterday and she works for nonprofit, and I actually did this when I first started also. But what they do is this particular nonprofit helps immigration and family law clients that are unable to afford the representation they need and deserve. And what they do is they help train new lawyers. So they train them, but you do the work for free, you’re doing a pro bono, but you’re getting an education that you can carry out with other clients, paying clients down the road. So the bar I think will be a little bit more collaborative as you get out. And if you’re in a firm, big firm may be very different.

Ben:

Well, I mean, just touching on what you had just said, I feel like the motto for law school should just be investing in yourself. The amount of things you have to do that are unpaid and things that you have to do that are cost a lot, but you’re investing in yourself and your own education to, I guess once you finish those unpaid things or you finish paying for things like the bar exam itself is expensive for no reason, but you’re investing in your career, you’re investing in your future.

Chris:

So just again, for those that are thinking about law school and over the last 20 years I’ve been practicing, it’s something I do love and still enjoy very much. And I know one of the things that struck me, especially in the first year, and I know you and I have talked outside of the podcast and I think you feel the same way, but in a lot of ways law school is a little bit different than undergrad because you’re dealing with real life stuff, stuff that when you’re going to buy your first house, what is that going to look like legally if you get stopped by a police officer? What are your rights if you’re injured? What do you have to prove to find somebody negligent more so than if you’re taking certain classes in undergrad that you may never use or don’t have real life application? How is that getting into something that’s a little bit more almost vocational than probably what you experienced before?

Ben:

How is getting into,

Chris:

What is it like learning material that is actually something that you can put immediately? So you walk out of your

Ben:

Constitutional

Chris:

Law class and now you could put some of the concepts in the real world application if a family member, a friend yourself comes across circumstances. I always thought a lot of that, although very challenging material. It also is what got me through the remainder of law school because it was unlike the material, it was unlike anything else. Like you said, the criminal law was very sexy and appealing and interesting. I think a lot of those first year topics,

Ben:

No, I think a lot of it, I didn’t realize how much it applied to real life. Like you just said, buying a house. I didn’t realize that my first year property class would teach me more about mortgages than I’d ever learned in my life. I thought it would be more about, oh, I stole this from you, so it’s my property now. Something along those

Speaker 3:

Lines.

Ben:

Taking a contracts class, the amount of contracts that you sign every day or things that you do just by buying

Chris:

A hundred percent. Yeah,

Ben:

Like a Red Bull at a gas station. That’s a complete contractual agreement. Whole thing right there. The worst class actually I took was this tax class I took my last year. I can’t stand taxes. I don’t understand

Chris:

Them. I’m sure a lot

Ben:

Of people, the amount of forms I fill out and I just sign my name, I put single zero, that’s me, and then that’s it. I learn more about what those implications are for filing my tax return as single zero or for starting a retirement fund early or something like that. These are things I think that should be taught in a high school level or even an undergrad as your gen ed instead of, I don’t know, what’s a basic gen ed class? Something that’s irrelevant to just everyday life if you don’t have an interest in it becoming part of your career. But yeah, all these small things that just have a legal background that I never thought had anything to do with the law itself or what my life’s going to look like in the next five to 10 years and how they apply to me, I think was really eyeopening in that aspect.

Chris:

Yeah, no, I could see that. Well, here’s a real question. I know I got it a lot almost. It could be the day I decided to go to law school, it might not even, it certainly was before the first day I attended. It was before when I graduated. It was certainly before I passed the bar exam. But how many people since you decided to go to law school or started asking you legal questions, they thought you were an attorney right away?

Ben:

Almost everybody. Almost everybody unbeliev. It’s ridiculous. I get a Venmo of a dollar from about four people at the start of every year because they’re

Chris:

Putting you on retainer.

Ben:

They think that puts me on retainer. And I tell ’em all the time, I’m not even an attorney, let alone your attorney, just because you give me a dollar. Well,

Chris:

That is going to forever plague you for the rest of the life. Every cocktail party,

Ben:

I’m well aware

Chris:

Everything, every event that you go to, which in some ways is an honor. And I know I have friends that are in the medical field, which I perpetually annoy with questions about the kids myself. Well, what is this lump?

But it’s great to have those people and it’s great to have trusted people. And you were talking a little bit about grades before and the one reason that you’ve worked here for a couple years now. And the one thing that I think is a massive element that I’ve seen that my clients have come to value, not only hopefully myself, but in the staff, and it’s not every attorney appreciates it as well as bedside manner. And just the way you talk to clients, the way you relate, the respect of getting back to them, the human element, which I think you do very well, I think is hard to quantify how important that is. When you get to a certain level, everyone’s going to know certain basics of the law, but you don’t know how to explain it in a lay person compassionately, genuinely. And I think that is an attribute you have, and I think that’s going to be very important as you proceed down your career. But I do want to shift over because another, for those that maybe have been in law school, like you just wrapping up a three year stint, so you finished in May

And you took the bar exam in July

Ben:

The end of Yeah.

Chris:

So tell everybody about that process. First of all, what does it cost after three years of law school? You now have to pay for bar exam?

Ben:

The bar exam itself is probably pennies compared to the actual education. So there’s the whole program that you have to do. You don’t have to can study.

Chris:

So

Ben:

This is after law school, this is after you graduate. I started a week before graduation, so I had finished all my assignments for graduating and whatever, and then there was a week or so before you walked the ceremony, you got your diploma and whatnot. And I was so nervous about this test. I still am the bar. The bar exam, correct that I started studying for the bar exam.

Chris:

By the time this thing has a million hits, we’ll know

Ben:

If I had passed or not. So I started studying a week before I had graduated, just light here or there a couple hours. And the school that I went to, Suffolk, unbeknownst to me, which I probably should have known part of my tuition, went towards a study program for the bar called Barbry, which is not an ad. That’s

Chris:

The biggest one

Ben:

Probably. Yeah. So I didn’t find out until my third year that my study program was essentially paid for in quotations. I was paying for it this whole time.

Chris:

It wasn’t for me.

Ben:

Yeah, no,

Chris:

That was extra,

Ben:

Yeah, was paid for through the school tuition that I was already paying, so I didn’t have to pay anything on top of that, which was nice to actually register for the bar exam is $815 in the state of Massachusetts.

Chris:

No small amount of money.

Ben:

No, I know it differs on states. I know in New York, I think it’s only about 230, which

Chris:

Wow difference.

Ben:

No, that’s my girlfriend who lives in New York was telling me that because it’s so much cheaper in New York, I should just take the bar exam in New York. Everything

Chris:

Else is so much more expensive.

Ben:

Yeah, exactly. If I wanted to take the test with a computer as well, if I wanted to type my written responses, it was another $50 really just to register my laptop. And if I did register my laptop, I had to pay an additional a hundred dollars to download a software to take the test so that the people knew I wasn’t cheating. You were using your own laptop, you didn’t get your own.

Chris:

So another $150.

Ben:

Yeah, so there was that. And then a $45 filing fee with the board of bar examiners, the BBEI.

Chris:

And is that what you did with the laptop? You took it with laptop?

Ben:

I took it with a laptop. So I think it came out to just whatever the math is on that, either just over a thousand dollars just to take it. And that’s pass or fail. So if I fail, I have to pay another thousand dollars to retake it. Pretty much.

Chris:

Well, we’re going to pass

Ben:

Or we’re going to pass. We’re going to pass. Yeah.

Chris:

So going back to, because I think a lot of people, it’s funny, they see the end product of somebody that’s just an attorney, and we’ve already talked about the grueling nature of three years in law school, which you take for granted that undergrads four years is another three years, and that first year is grueling. What is that final three months in terms of your preparation in terms of your day-to-day life? What does that look like

Ben:

For someone who’s never ran a marathon? I would say it’s probably starting it. That’s what it felt like. It took a little over three years to get to graduation in itself and then to go another three months to study before the bar. I think those 10 weeks in between graduation and the bar exam were the 10 hardest weeks I’ve ever had to endure. Not even education wise, not even with what I had to learn, but just with self-discipline, trying to retain all the information as well and trying to maintain somewhat of a healthy relationship with just myself and with other people and trying not to, everyone I had spoken to about the bar exam understood when I told them I can’t hang out or I can’t do this on the weekends, I can’t Like, oh, absolutely, you’re taking the bar exam, that’s fine. We’ll celebrate after. Which was great to have those kind of people around, but it’s isolating. It was isolating for a lot for a, of it

Chris:

Was nobody else’s other than your fellow students that are in their own homes are going through what you’re going through

Ben:

And everybody studies differently. So I had hung out with a couple of friends from law school while we were studying, and I could tell right away that we don’t study the same way in terms of watching the content or taking notes or practice essays or practice questions. It was a really grueling 10 weeks, I think. And now sitting here on the other side of it, I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but preparing for everything.

Chris:

So first of all, you bring up a great point, which is something I guess you take for granted, but looking back, I mean the self-discipline part is very significant because there’s no teacher, there’s no class. Every day you wake up, it’s up to you to decide, I’m going to study for 8, 10, 12 hours that day. It’s not like you have to go to a class and you’re responsible to go there and do homework assignments. Everything’s on you every single day to complete these tasks. And if you let weeks or a month go by or you start late, you just can’t retain the volume that you need. So that is a very big point, but turning back to what does a day look like? Are you studying three hours a day, five hours a day, 10 hours a day?

Ben:

So it kind of ramped up from the start. So like I said, the week before I graduated,

Chris:

You’re still in school?

Ben:

I’m still in school. So I was doing probably four hours a day that first week or two. And it was all kind of just reinforcing a lot of the material I had already learned from the previous three years or so. I wasn’t learning more or less information. And if I was, was getting a little concerned, there was a couple parts throughout it that was new information. And then as it went on, it went up to eight hours a day and I did eight hours for two weeks. And then I think I did 10 hours past the halfway point. I did 10 hours Monday through Friday.

And then as it kept getting closer and it kept weighing on me how, okay, 20 days left, 19 days left, 17 days left. I was doing 10 hours, sometimes 11 or 12. And then I was doing Saturdays and Sundays as well. I started at the beginning really wanting to have weekends to just kind of relax and recharge and not look at a screen pretty much all hours of the day, every day forever for the next 10 weeks. But the volume of information that they need you and want you to have for this test, it just became impossible to continue doing it the way I was. So it kind of really picked up towards the end. And then once I’d finished the program with about four or five days before the test, all I was doing was just practice test, practice test, practice test, practice test until I got to test day. But yes,

Chris:

Think about what you just said there. You’re talking about at the lower beginning side, 40 hours a week, which is a full-time job to 60, 70 hours a week at the end, which is a job and a half. And you’re doing this over the course of two and a half, three months just for a test. And it’s very hard to tell people because most jobs don’t require something like that. Certainly A CPA, the medical field, and I’m sure there’s some others in investment backing stockbroking, but it is unlike most things that anybody will experience to have a job and a half debt and that you’re not getting paid for

Ben:

Not getting paid for

Chris:

That. You also, it’s very, very difficult to work during that, which I feel for a lot of people that are trying to carry on a part-time or full-time job during and also getting 40 to 70 hours a weekend. I think the level of how difficult, just that process is hard to really comprehend if you don’t go through it yourself.

Ben:

Yeah, I mean, I think I said it a couple of times while I was studying to friends or to whoever that I feel blessed to be taking it the test during the summer as opposed to the only other time they offer it, which is in February, I would go to the library, I’d get there like nine 15. It doesn’t open until 10

Chris:

At the library in the summer.

Ben:

Nobody’s at the library at the summer. The place is completely empty, more or less. And I was leaving and there was still daylight out. I was leaving at 7, 7 30 and I still had an hour of daylight if I wanted it, if I wanted to be outside because I was inside all day just reading and looking at a laptop screen. So if I’m taking it in and I get there before it’s light out, which is eight 30 sometimes in the winter, and then I’m leaving and it’s dark out again at four 30. I can’t imagine I had enough mentally just trying to force myself to go and study and to do it. I don’t know if I can or would be able to do it over the winter with all the seasonal depression I think it’s called. But

Chris:

Yeah, sure. Especially here.

Ben:

Yeah,

Chris:

Yeah.

Ben:

No. So hopefully I don’t have to take it again in the winter and we don’t have to go through that.

Chris:

So I just want to wrap it up and kind of circle, bring it full circle and just say what would you give as advice to somebody thinking about going to law school?

Ben:

Probably the same advice that I have heard about people having children honestly is that there’s never a good time to do it. You just go. The longer you wait, the longer it’s going to get. It’s going to fall to the wayside. It’s going to be something that you just never do. I remember when I graduated from undergrad and I told my mom, I’m going to go to law school. I’m going to take, this year, I’m going to study for the lsat, the entry exam to get into law school. And I remember having a conversation with her and she’s like, if you take a gap year, it’s going to be really hard to go back to school. And I agreed with her. But after going through all the school and education you go through growing up, I was doing school my whole life. That’s all. I would work a part-time job while I was in school. I needed a break from school and I got that in that gap year that I took. But going back and like I had said at the start, having to relearn how to read, having to,

Chris:

So you think the gap year,

Ben:

I think it helped mentally in terms of retaining information. And education wise, I don’t think it helped at all. But I think the longer you go without school or without going right into it, the longer it just takes you to readapt to it. And I started my year. I thought about taking another year after I had got in because of Covid, because everything was going to be completely online. So I was thinking to myself, what’s another year? Maybe this whole thing will blow over with Covid and I can go back to in person because I’m not an online learner at all. I know myself really well in that aspect. I do not do well with staying focused on a Zoom call or just being in my own room and being on a FaceTime with somebody. I know I can’t stay focused for more than 30 seconds to a minute in that aspect. So I knew that I needed to do in-person school to actually retain and learn the information. But I said if I had waited another year for this whole covid thing to blow over, then there would’ve been some other reason why I wouldn’t go the next year. So I just had to kind of throw myself into it and just start. And had I dropped out, who knows where I would’ve been, but I just had to get moving on it because it wasn’t waiting for me.

Chris:

Well, thank you so much because I think a lot of people will find this a little window into what it’s like to decide to go to law school, get through law school, and then prepare for the bar. And I think some people are going to find it very helpful. So thank you so much.

Ben:

Yeah, thanks for

Chris:

Having me today.

Ben:

I enjoyed it. Thank you.