Although the stories below don't seem terrible, when you consider what is at stake on the bar exam these incidents are scary to anyone who has experienced them. Despite the bar exam being the most important exam you will ever take, surprisingly you may have to deal with more test day distractions than you have dealt with on any other exam.

You would think that with so much on the line the bar examiners would provide a sound-proof bubble for each exam taker, but that is not the case. I took my bar exam at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center , which is the bar exam testing site in New York City that can accommodate thousands of bar exam takers at one time.

There were thousands of identical tables and chairs set up in an enormous room, and each exam taker was seated at a folding table with one other exam taker. These tables and chairs were so identical that coming back from the bathroom one time I got lost and it took me ten minutes to find my seat. During those ten minutes I did get a little panicked.

The chairs themselves not only looked the same, but they were also identically uncomfortable. Upon sitting down in my folding chair for the first time I immediately thought the chair was broken. For a second I thought about switching my chair with the other chair at my table before the other person at my table sat down, but I decided not to. A few minutes later the other person at my table sat down and the first thing he said was that his chair felt broken.

The proctors for the exam also became a distraction for some exam takers. They were mostly senior citizens who knew nothing about the exam. I was lucky to be in the middle of the room far away from where these proctors congregated because according to one of my classmates they used our bar exam time to socialize. During the exam she at times became very distracted because the proctors, having little to actually do besides baby sit us, began to talk and get into long conversations just a few feet from where she was sitting.

Also, you never know who is going to sit next to you and what kind of things they are going to do to distract you. One of my professors said that during her bar exam her table partner ate carrots which crunched loudly with each bite.

The websites below provide other bar exam horror stories.

http://www.chesslaw.com/insidetheflabar.htm

http://www.jurist.law.pitt.edu/bar2.htm

Other related articles on this website include Bar Exam-A Brief Description and Bar Exam-Failing .

Good luck on the bar exam!

If you have any questions or comments about this article, or want to write your own article about the pre-law or law school process, feel free to contact me.