Summertime is nigh.
Rising temperatures and tornado outbreaks mean that springtime is almost over in Dallas.
My days are zipping by quickly with extremely early work mornings and a demanding bar prep schedule, but I’m still making time to walk the dogs and hit up the usual gayborhood spots with friends.
Cassie Nova hosting a drag show at S4 nightclub in Dallas.
Gunter and Ingrid on a dog walk in the Perry Heights section of the gayborhood.
Comparing our shoes at an Oak Lawn happy hour.
Gunter, the chiweenie on our balcony one morning.
Back to studying
I’m sitting for the July bar exam here in Dallas, which means that I’m undergoing the bar prep experience that many of my old classmates did years ago.
Back at Thomson Reuters, my positions were J.D.-preferred, so getting licensed was never a priority.
In fact, attorneys were significantly under-represented in my division’s management teams when I started. There was even speculation that although your J.D. got you in the door, actually being licensed hurt your chances of getting promoted.
Things changed after a few years as my attorney coworkers got promoted, but that initial advice against licensure allowed be justify putting off the test.
Now that I’m in journalism, being licensed is ironically more important than when I was at Thomson Reuters’ legal division. Getting licensed will help establish my authority when writing about tax topics or negotiating with vendors.
Access to attorney networking groups would also allow me to greatly deepen my source lists, so I went ahead and registered for the bar exam this spring.
The Texas bar application wasn’t hard, just time-consuming.
It also involved a trip to a finger-printing place in a somewhat sketchy part of town, but I survived.
A tent for The Dallas Morning News at Klyde Warren Park in downtown Dallas.
The view from the parking lot of The Dallas Morning News, including WFAA, the Omni Hotel, and Bank of America Plaza.
The big ticket item was the bar prep course.
After much hand-wringing about price, I decided to go with Kaplan Bar Review.
It’s a relatively minor cost compared to law school and some of the other things that I could waste money on. However it’s still the price of a nice laptop, camera, or multiple smartphones.
So far, bar prep is intense, but actually rather interesting.
It also makes me realize how drawn-out some of my 1L classes were. (e.g. taking a week to cover a concept encompassed two slides and a 10 minute bar prep lecture.)
I started the bar prep course early because I’m working full-time. The time constraints are kind of nice because it reduces lollygagging and forces me to divide the lessons into manageable chunks. I’m not overwhelmed yet, but I suspect that’ll change.
However, a significant amount of my discretionary time is now spoken-for, and skipping one day’s lesson means misery for the next 2-3 days.
All of this will be over in less than 3 months, which makes things easier.
Plus there are worse ways to spend my summer.
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