HLS in Focus

One of the reasons to make friends during your first year in law school with 2Ls and 3Ls is the benefit of an early heads up.   Well, here’s an early heads up to all of you who are thinking about coming to law school (any law school) next year: there’s an ethics test at the end.  It’s called the MPRE, and it’s coming up on Saturday.  Who’s excited?  I’ll tell you who—all the 3Ls, only not so much for the exam as much as the terrific excuse for a social get-together afterward.  Oh, poor us, we have to take the MPRE.  We’ll deserve a break after it’s all over.  In fact, I predict we’ll deserve several breaks. 

The test is a two-hour multiple choice.  It’s not hard, but conventional wisdom says you do have to be prepared.  The parts I like the best are the ones about who you can and can’t give legal advice to.  You will discover this next year, but starting approximately one week into law school, anyone you know who’s not a lawyer or a law student themselves—relatives, college roommates, high school friends, whatever—will present you with legal quandaries from their lives and ask for your opinion.  The bad news is you will have no idea what the answers to any of their questions are.  The good news is it’s illegal to practice law without a license!  So, you can just tell them that giving your opinion might constitute a false expectation of competent legal representation and/or a false expectation of an invocation of the attorney-client privilege, so for their protection, you’d prefer not to comment.  They will instantly understand you and will not think this is strange at all. 

So we’ve all been studying the rules for giving legal advice and all the other components of professional responsibility for the last few days.  As it turns out, planning the celebration for after the test is more fun than studying for test itself (who would have guessed?).  As a result, we already have an elaborately orchestrated scheme that commences directly after the test is over, starting with a matinee showing of the new Chris Rock movie, a stop by the official law school post-MPRE celebration for free drinks at a bar, and then on to some show in Boston one of my friends found that’s apparently a disco-themed Shakespeare play combined with a dance club.  I’m not clear about whether the play is in the middle of a dance club, or whether the theater turns into a dance club after the play is over, but either way, I’m sure it’s obvious how a disco-themed Shakespearian dance club is the proper celebration for the completion of an ethics test. 

Failing the MPRE is kind of embarrassing, both because it’s not considered particularly difficult and because it’s an ethics test, and it’s never good to flunk an ethics test.  So my main challenge this week is to keep my eyes on the prize instead of investigating an after-hours coffee place I heard about near the disco Shakespeare theater.  Having said that, you never know when a fourth break idea will come in handy.  MPRE advice applies to the celebrations, too—it’s best to be prepared.   

- Erin