Fun_People Archive
5 Mar
California Bar Exam & The Right Stuff

Date: Fri,  5 Mar 93 16:22:30 PST
To: Fun_People
Subject: California Bar Exam & The Right Stuff

[Back when I worked at a Wall Street law firm I used to hear lots of
these stories - from the lawyers, of course.  It's nice to know that
nothing has really changed... -psl]


 From: "Charles A. Bigelow" <bigelow@CS.Stanford.EDU>

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in a recent California State
Bar examination, one of the candidates suffered a seizure. Of the 600 
aspiring lawyer candidates in the room, only two went to the aid of
the stricken man. The two good samaritans rendered assistance until
paramedics arrived, and then asked for additional time to complete the
test. The exam proctor refused, since life-saving activities are not
recognized by the Bar as a sufficient reason to grant extra time. 
Later, a spokesman for the the Bar Association defended the proctor's
actions, explaining that the Bar must maintain high standards.*

Many people who heard this story were shocked that such a high
percentage of the would-be attorneys (0.03%) actually went to the aid
of a fellow human being in distress, and doubted whether the two good
samaritans had the right stuff to be real lawyers. Further doubts were
raised when one of them was asked why no one else in the room came to
the aid of the stricken candidate. He charitably suggested that
possibly the other candidates saw that the stricken man was in capable
hands and hence realized that no further assistance was needed. Since
one of the good samaritans was a woman and the other a man, no
gender-based explanation has been put forward for their aberrant
behavior. 

* At an annual meeting some years ago, the President of the Bar told
his fellow lawyers that they had a moral duty to help stamp out the
scurrilous lawyer jokes that were making a mockery of the noble
profession of law. To aid in this crusade, a group of lawyers who own
a self-help law publishing company in Berkeley immediately published a 
compilation of the jokes, presumably to help show their colleagues and
the public just how bad the jokes really were.

© 1993 Peter Langston