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[quote=Anonymous]All right, let me weigh in. OP, I'm a 2014 graduate from a law school ranked between 40-60. Don't assume either my law school or job are in DC, not saying either way.

I failed the bar exam last summer (two months after graduation), but passed this time in February after studying my ass off, unemployed in my parents house with my loans deferred due to unemployment. Now I know it looks like my situation doesn't relate to your niece's but I know a lot about the job market, the bar exam, and our generation of law students so maybe my perspective can help.

1) Are her loans in unemployment deferment or are they delinquent/in default? Her priority right now should be to start making SOME payment on them. She can't get a legal job and it will be very hard to get a government job of any kind because all state governments are kinda broke and the federal government is not only broke but generally very selective (otherwise ten years in a govt gig and her loans would be forgiven).

She needs to start working in any capacity first - McDonald's, tutoring, substitute teaching at a local school, something that will both fill that gap in her resume and enable her to make at least $200/month payments on her loans.

2) Start networking with small practices. Local little law firms that do insurance defense and represent landlords in housing court. Since she's female she needs to make sure she looks her most attractive (I'm not kidding), psych herself up to feel temporarily confident, and do coffee and lunch meetings with these people to win them over to her personality and her story (and her looks will help). They need to know and like her.

3) It's possible to pass the bar after failing a lot, and New York is hard. MA is less difficult but the Passachusetts comments in here are unnecessarily snarky and mean. You think this poor girl isn't aware of that and using that thought to make herself feel worse? I know what it's like to fail the bar - it feels like shit. You go on Facebook and see all your friends celebrating their results, getting sworn in, starting work as real lawyers, and you just want to go away and die.

It's not the hours she puts in the studying (though at this point I'd recommend putting in the crazy 500 hours that BarBri recommends) but how much she gets out of it. Tell her to analyze her essays closely, and then go back and really kill the MBE. The MBE is the easiest place to gain points, it's very much an objective test of black letter law recollection. Memorization, understanding the application of the law, and reading comprehension high enough to notice the MBE's tricks are the only skills you need, and the MBE has the same questions no matter what state you're in.

Essay grading varies by state unfortunately, as does the law, so she really needs to read what her graders said about her essays.

And the MPT component is just a gimme - easiest place to rack up points on the bar exam, whether you're in a mega-tough state like California or in an easy state like Mississippi.

She can do this. People from third-tier law schools outside the Top 100 pass the bar; she can too. It will happen. But first she needs to get ANY job to start paying off her debt even at the most low amount possible, and network.

Which brings me to...

4) Contrary to conventional wisdom, which you're getting on this thread (which is not bad as a rule), you [i]can[/i] get a decently paying legal job out of a lower-ranked law school with shit grades and bar exam failure under your belt. It happens a LOT more frequently than the conventional wisdom says. At least in my generation of law students it does. We have repeatedly noticed that "40% of the class gets into law firms" does [i]not[/i] mean "the [u]top[/u] 40% gets into law firms".

I'm a good example. I was below median at my 40-60 ranked law school, I failed the bar once, and I don't have family connections. Oh, and I have $200,000+ in debt. But now that I've passed the bar I have an interview with a great local firm lined up and they pay the market rate in my city, which means I'll be able to live comfortably and pay down my debt.

It only happened because I spent this past year, even before I found out in October 2014 that I failed the bar, networking. I met lawyers for coffee dates and told them my story. I made them like me enough to introduce me to other people, and then got to volunteer pro bono with someone through that and prove my abilities while studying for the bar. The interview I have now is through one of those lawyers I kept having coffee with and talking to this past year.

If I can do it, your niece definitely can![/quote]

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