Starting a law firm means that you have to pass the bar exam in your particular jurisdiction. For most, passing the bar exam means that you are required to sit through mind-numbing bar review lectures for about two months. After passing the bar exam, character and fitness interview, and being admitted into your jurisdiction’s bar, you can open your own law firm. Caveat: if considering starting a law firm right out of law school, please read my post on getting legal experience first.
As I posted previously, I am taking the bar exam for the second time in the last four years. I feel that I have a little different perspective on taking the bar exam because I’ve already done it and I am going through the study process a second time. Hopefully, I can benefit my readers by sharing whatever knowledge I have gleaned about passing the bar exam.
One of the discussion points that I wanted to bring up is passing the Multistate Performance Test (MPT). The Multistate Performance exam tests the taker’s legal knowledge and ability to complete legal reasoning. The MPT is the portion of the exam that is most similar to what young attorneys will do in the real world. For example, the MPT is akin to a partner in a law firm coming up to you and giving you a problem and a case file that he or she wants you to write a legal memorandum or other legal document on. The assignment is similar to what I suspect a lot of law students did in their first or second year of law school to satisfy their legal writing component.
The MPT typically gives you information that is similar to a case file you will receive from a partner in the real world or when starting a law firm. The bar examiners will give you a letter, a short memorandum, maybe a legal opinion, a library, some law, and a smattering of other information. Basically, you will get: the facts, the laws, and instructions on how to apply the law to the facts to answer a legal problem. The MPT will have different writing projects which vary the approach on how to apply the law to the facts. Sounds simple right?
Of course, the MPT is only 90 minutes long and it bears no resemblance to what a private practice lawyer is likely to do in the real world. If you are starting a law firm, you need to be concerned with what to do in the real world. However, when you do pass the exam and work as an law firm associate, you will be expected to work quickly and efficiently. In most cases, you will also not be able to bill a client for five hours of your time for writing a simple legal memorandum to a partner. Clients don’t like paying those kind of bills – you are an attorney and they expect you to already know the law and how to use it.
In my opinion, the MPT is probably the most useful portion of the bar exam in terms of what it is like to be an attorney in the real world. If you are reading this blog about how to start a law firm, then you should know that MPT gives you a good example of the kinds of initial critical thinking you will have to do on a specific legal issue. If you hang out your own shingle and somebody actually walks in the door, you need to be able to meet with that person and know how to deal with his or her legal issue. Of course, you need to know how to draft and file legal pleadings, cut checks, pay bills, and a myriad of other tasks. But, at the end of the day, you need to be an attorney and think in a critical fashion. I think the MPT does a good job of meeting this important real world task.
Starting a law firm is all about gathering useful information and discarding useless information. That applies to every area of the practice of law – whether it is critical legal thinking or learning how to effectively manage your time so that you can ethically bill your clients.