Studying for the Bar is conducive to neither doing interesting things to write about nor to having time to write about the interesting things that you aren't doing. Still, I've managed to find some "me" time here and there, including the first in in two weeks yesterday that I didn't do a single practice question. That was nice.

One of the days of the exam is the Multistate, a.k.a. the MBE. The MBE is a multiple choice exam given in 48 of 50 states (damn you Louisiana and Washington!). In many ways the MBE is your friend, because if you do really well on it then you have a lot more wiggle-room on the state-specific essay portion. But the nationwide nature of the test also creates some anomalies. For instance, no one has common law property law or criminal law anymore, and in fact it's arguably unconstitutional to have common law criminal law, because you don't have notice of what the law is. But because every state has their own, it's hard to test on those areas unless you test traditional common law principles. So the entrance exam for the legal profession requires you to learn a whole lot of out-of-date information about those areas of law. Conversely, common law evidence was a mess, but the Federal Rules of Evidence are crystal clear. So we're tested on those, even though most attorneys (hell, most litigators) worry a whole lot more about state evidence law than federal. Other than that, the whole process makes a lot of sense.

In other news, there's a potential apartment in the offing, but I don't want to jinx it by saying much more. Suffice it to say that it's exactly the location I've been hoping for, in our price range, and big. Beyond that, watch this space...