Don't quite get your post. Why did you object to the nolle prose? Did he enter a plea or not?

Canadian here who just shipped the NY bar - many thanks to all you fine gentleman in this thread for the advice (and entertainment) over the years.

Congrats man!

He plead guilty in district (city) court. You have the right to trial de novo at circuit (county) court here because no jury right or record made at district level. So plead guilty on the basis of the fact he was going to immediately appeal. The plan at circuit court, and it was really the prosecutor's idea overall but our client was in agreement was to stipulate to all facts in the police report: he was stopped w/ PC due to traffic violation and was in possession of a firearm in a vehicle smelling like weed (where none was recovered after search). Since his only illegal act was the traffic violation, they wanted to pursue this to have some law on a level where there is a record to show law enforcement they shouldn't a) take guns b) arrest people c) tow and inventory vehicles or d) charge them other than for traffic citations in this situation.

This is all being done impliedly on the premise that when the cops want to **** with people they somehow universally "notice the distinct odor of burnt marijuana emanating from the vehicle". Also because they should give guns back to people immediately post-release in the similar situation where a misdemeanor amount of marijuana is recovered, due to having weed and the gun not being a violation of the carrying statute.

I assume they changed their mind b/c our client went from not thinking he violated the statute and wanting his gun back to wanting to be hailed as a martyr/hero in the pro-2nd amend. community and his gun back. Also guess they figured out they were already in a position where they could tell cops to knock it off being prosecutors and all. So when they decided to NP it, my argument was no you shouldn't for technical reasons, hence the objection.

interesting anecdotal notes from bar exam passage facebook posts this weekend:

Facebook friend who failed NY bar five times, passes the 1st time it is offered UBE.

There was a single New York "pro bono scholar" from my law school that failed the bar last summer; he took the New York version, all other PBS traveled to different states to sit for UBE. He passed February as well.

Part time night student that went to T4 dumpster failed NY version 3 times, passed February.

I can't wait to see the stats that come out.

Oh snap my boy has a chance. He's moving up there already and everything. Believe he is 0 for 3 or 4 on IL and took and failed another state as well.

I know I kept saying February, I must have been drunk I obviously meant July.

So we like this UBE or what? I have no idea what it is but if you're a multiple time failer and pass UBE on first time not sure what to think...

Just accepted a 2L summer internship at one of the NYC DA’s offices. Super excited for it, as I’ve spent a lot of time doing trial work this year, through both an intensive course and my school’s competition team.

Skipping EIW/Firm OCI was a huge decision for me, as the vast majority of my friends went that route and I’m very aware of the absurdly large amounts of money I’m foregoing to follow this career path. But I knew coming in to law school that I wanted to pursue careers involving actual trial work, ample court time, and a public interest aspect, so it feels good to take the next step towards that. Ideally, I would have spent my 1L summer at a DA’s office, and then spent my 2L summer making some pocket money at a firm, but it didn’t work out and I wound up at a large PD’s office in their family defense practice (had a blast there though). Plus, who knows if I would have stayed on course after getting paid $3,500/week for a summer.

There’s more to life than money/wealth/disposable income, right? Right???

Count me as someone who enjoys working in the public sector for a sub-market salary. Of course, like you said, it makes it easier to accept the salary (which, while not huge, is perfectly livable) when I never made the big bucks to begin with.

Of course there is. I did the opposite and am going the biglaw route, but I feel as conflicted about it as you do fwiw. I doubt I'll be in the same place in 4 years.

No.

It's a strange feeling, which I wouldn't quite describe as conflicting. I know that this is the correct path for me, as it was my plan all along and I am 99% sure that I'd be unhappy/unfulfilled at a large/corporate firm.

It's better described as intermittent waves of nausea, as I know the amount of money I'm passing up is incredibly large. Perhaps it's the poker and finance undergrad backgrounds.


MPRE in ~30 minutes. Nothing like leaving the apartment before daylight on a Saturday morning. I highly recommend the free BarBri MPRE course. A bunch of elementary videos, and 240+ multiple choice with detailed reasoning given for the answers. At least having my Professional Responsibility final exam in 5 weeks makes it feel like studying for this silly pass/fail exam is worth it.

Yeah, that was my approach. gl, you don't need it.

50/50 I failed the MPRE.

On the upside, 50/50 I passed.

Lady at my job failed Texas bar for the 2nd time. Really super awkward...I didn't realize she "wasn't going to look" at results at work because she didn't want to freak out if she failed. I had already looked and knew she didn't pass, but we kept talking about it all afternoon and I had to act like I didn't know.

Ugh...feel terrible for her.

So what are the usual consequences of failing the bar exam?

Is the norm different at a big firm than a DA's office? I would imagine that there are some kind of pay incentives for passing the bar, and maybe a practice order that the DA's office can use since the person would only be handling misdemeanors anyways.

Somebody that fails the bar cannot "handle" cases, even if they are misdemeanors.

Depends on where you are. Pretty easy to get a practice order for government employees to handle low level civil and criminal work under supervision of attorney. And the term supervision is very very loose.

In FL, if you are a law student you can take on an internship where you can handle cases while being supervised by an attorney. The incentive for passing the bar here, and I am assuming everywhere in the country, is that you get to be a lawyer. If the DA's office likes you for some reason, and you fail the bar, you might be able to stay on and do legal research and such, but you are not going to handle cases in the traditional sense.

Am I crazy: If person A talks to gov't agent B about a situation (in this case establishing a child support case), can't A w/o testifying as to what was said by B testify as to their understanding of the conversation. I feel like I use this at least once every time I go to court to get around hearsay issues. In this situation I specifically told my client to use the language, "It was my understanding...," but every time she said this the court essentially sua sponte objected, said it was hearsay and to move on. I raised the argument but could not get any headway. Isn't this interpretation akin to saying you can't have personal knowledge of your own communications.

Sounds like hearsay to me. Your witness can obviously offer personal knowledge of having had the conversation if the existence of the conversation was what was material, but it sounds (admittedly making some assumptions to fill in the blanks) like the material facts you're trying to get in are the third party's out-of-court statements, being offered for their truth, even if indirectly through that witness.

Gotta go back to the rules on that one. If the hearsay is offered for the truth of the matter asserted then it's not admissible unless an exception or exclusion applies. Statement of party opponent could be applicable to your situation, or statements of independent legal significance, or to show effect on the listener. But those can be narrowly construed by the court.

I will save you guys the trouble of looking it up. This is hearsay. It's not just the statement that is hearsay, but all inferences derived from that statement are also hearsay. You can't just get hearsay in because you use some magic words.

If you are trying to get the statement in for some other reason, such as the effect on the listener, then it isn't hearsay at all. It doesn't sound to me like that is what you are trying to establish.

So like LKJ mentioned the existence of the conversation was also an issue, basically it went like this:

Q: When did you speak w/ child support enforcement? A: <date> - No issues
Q: As a result of that conversation was a child support case created? A: No - No issues
It was the 'why' that was the issue. Testimony was not entered (w/ no objection made)
on questions of "Why not?" "What prevented the case from being created?" "What was your understanding of why no case was created?" and maybe some others that I forgot. I have skated off hearsay objections doing this in the past, so basically thought it was fine. If it's just been a string of luck, I want to know so I can plan better. Honestly, don't think it's a hearsay issue at all because I am neither trying to enter an out of court statement (didn't ask and don't care what they actually said) or put it forth for the truth of the matter asserted (her understanding/opinion of why no OCSE account is =/= the actual reason why no OCSE acct). No doubt it's a fine distinction, but opposing side (who was not child support fwiw, so no party opponent bonus) is free to enter information that contradicts it because it was put forth as opinion evidence and not fact. Or I've just got lucky thus far.

ETA: Guess its the latter based on DonkJr's post. I like his thinking generally so I will go w/ it. Definitely going to think through other ways to avoid this (w/ subpoena-ing OCSE to be the correct play here).