I read the 2003 NY state bar out of curiosity once. I was sorta surprised, it was short. Short paragraphs involving like events about how a property changed hands and who modified it over time and it asked the test taker to explain the legal status of the property now after the described events.
I thought it seemed simple and had a simple answer like, person A. Sorted. Read a legal opinion. Nope. You gotta cite boatloads of law explaining how each person’s actions invokes which law and going mad in depth. It was definitely a test of knowledge of the law + understanding how to apply it. Pretty gnarly test.
And that’s some NY specific law. I would fail that test so hard, even if I studied. How much reference material do they let you have? My memory is poooop.
When I took the NY state bar exam in the summer of 2012, I remember nervously sitting down to take the test on the first day, and I remember standing up exhausted to hand it in to the proctor on the second day.
I don’t remember anything in between… Nothing. I don’t remember a single question. I don’t remember coming home after the first day, what I did that night, what I ate for dinner, if I talked to my parents (I was living back home with them while studying for the bar exam), or going back the second day. Everything is just a complete blank.
No reference material, which, if you think about it, is total bullshit because in real life, you can pretty much always look up the law either online or in a book.
And they can ask about any law in any category? They could go after some tax law, and you memorized all the real estate and IP law, and now you’re boned?
Also for funsies and flashbacks, here is the Summer 2012 NY State bar. Anything jogged? I actually quite enjoy reading the tests and their answers. I tend to love legalistic stuff like this. Not sure how I’d feel having to have all of this info at my beck and call for an exam though.
Yup. That’s why people usually spend from May (after they graduate law school) to the end of July (when they take the exam) to study.
After a quick search, here’s the Kaplan Bar Review for NY, from Harvard. If you go down to page 6, you’ll see that the topics on the bar used to be:
Constitutional Law
Contracts
Criminal Law and Procedure
Evidence
Real Property
Torts
NY distinctions (from other states)
CPLR (Civil Practice Law and Rules)
Corporations
Agency and Partnership
Wills and Estates
Trusts (this is usually combined with the previous topic)
Family Law
Administrative Law (what I do now)
UCC Article 9 (specific part of Contract law covering the Uniform Commercial Code for Secured Transactions)
Professional Responsibility (ethics - don’t sleep with your clients or embezzle funds)
Worker’s Compensation/No-Fault insurance
Fun times…
I guess at some point recently, NY changed to the MEE (Multi-state Essay Exam) and the subjects changed.
The first question covers torts, contracts, conveyances, real estate and probate. And while I, as a first semester paralegal student, can only shrug as to the specifics of the law, I feel a deep need to know how to answer.
Someone has to explain to me the appeal of the Loss Edit meme. I know the Loss comic is without a doubt one of the most tone-deaf, idiotic missteps in web-comic history, but I have no idea why there are so many variations on it being throw out into the internet or why it would regain such popularity almost 10 years after original publication of the comic.
I do however admire the creative ways people have found in representing the Loss Edit.
It’s kind of similar to the way people like a good subtle pun. You open the door on some interesting content your friend’s posted online, but as you read through it it seems confusing and pointless, and you start to look for directions for why this thing is interesting. Then someone obliquely references Loss and the realization dawns instantly, and you’re left to comfort all the sad people who got caught by yet another Loss edit.
I think it is as simple as someone did something new and clever with a seminal internet failure everyone knows about and it was funny enough that people latched onto it as a subtle joke as @linkigi said.
I used to read CAD back when I was stupid and didn’t know any better. It revolves around an absolute asshole of a main character who nevertheless is supported by his best friend and girlfriend, as well as the sentient robot the main character built out of an X-Box despite showing no discernible skill that would make him able to do so at any other point in the comic, and is actually shown to be an absolute moron. (This character is apparently an author insert as Tim Buckley, by all accounts, is also a tremendous douchebag) The comic is mostly a bit of a Penny Arcade ripoff that later introduced some storylines, while at the same time running “lol so random” bullshit comics and just straight murderporn with the “Player” comics.
The Loss comic is from one of the bigger storylines. The girlfriend character becomes pregnant (because obviously that is what you do with your only female character) and the main character has to cope that he can no longer be an absolute man-child but take on responsibility for once. Of course you can’t upset the status quo of the comic like that so let’s abort (both literally and figuratively) the storyline in the most callous way possible. To emphasize just how dumb this is: The Loss comic ran in between a “hilarious scheme” of the main character to improve his earnings with the baby on the way by creating a “Will it blend?” style site called “Will it launch?” and his first experiment punching a hole in the wall of his house, and this page “pinup” page of the afforementioned player characters. Yes this page wasn’t published a goodie on the side but as right inside the main comic line not 10 days after the Loss comic.
The funny thing is that this isn’t even the worst storyline in the comic. In one storyline the best friend character gets a girlfriend of his own only for her to turn out to be trying to murder the boyfriend for “reasons”. Of course the whole thing makes absolutely no sense with how the character got introduced. Previously the main character overheard a phone conversation between the new girlfriend and someone else and tried to warn his best friend, only for him to be dismissed as the jealous assclown that he is. So instead of the moral being “your friends have lives of their own” it’s “women are evil and trying to destroy male friendships”.