"Your Juris Doctor Has Been Mailed"

Earlier this week, the law school sent out an email to the May graduates, congratulating us again on our accomplishment and informing us that our Juris Doctor diplomas had been mailed. The email included a link where we could view our diploma.

For me, seeing that email, viewing my diploma, was actually more gratifying than the graduation ceremony. At the ceremony back on May 7th, we had not received our exam grades. In fact, just the day before the ceremony, I took a final exam for the class of "Complex Civil Litigation." That last exam turned out to be perhaps the most difficult one of my entire law school experience. Afterwards, I joked to my friends that I ended my academic studies at FSU College of Law "not with a bang, but a whimper." So, there remained for me an uneasy feeling about the exams as I went through the graduation ceremony.

Now, though, I know my grades and my GPA. And while it will be September before final class rankings are issued (due to some students from my class finishing their graduation requirements in summer school), I know my degree is there, permanently.

A few days ago, the Admissions and Records Office printed my transcript, and it was nice to see "Juris Doctor Cum Laude" typed at the end...

There is really no time to enjoy it, though. One month from now is the Florida Bar Exam. For almost every job in the legal field, I need two things: My J.D. and admission to the bar.

I am halfway done with the Kaplan PMBR bar prep course. They are doing a great job teaching me what I need to know, but what I did not anticipate was the volume of information in the course and how fast we have to learn it. It really is very much like getting ready for law school final exams- just stretched out over a longer period. In an earlier blog entry, I said that I could not maintain that kind of intensity for such an extended time frame, but it looks like I am going to have to.

This past week, my class took a six hour practice MBE (which is 1/2 of the whole exam). I got 58% of the questions right.

58%.

While it is slightly comforting to know that we were only expected to get about half the questions right, and that the top people in my class were scoring at 65% or 70%, if I score 58% one month from now then I will fail the bar exam.

I have work to do, and new material from the bar prep course is being put to us every day.

So, this past week I saw my diploma and it felt good. But bar preparation, combined with the stress of the job search makes right now the most anxiety-filled time of the whole law school experience, at least for me.

I will keep moving ahead, though, treating this like an adventure and remembering, as my mom told me, "It is a privileged adventure." Not everyone gets to head down these paths. Really, I am lucky to be here.

Until Next Time,

Nathan Marshburn