The bar exam

THE BAR EXAM

It was the spring of 2026. For a semester, Arthur had been studying to prepare for the bar exam. Three months of classes followed by three months of intensive studying with three classmates. Six subjects. Six written exams over three days; one in the morning, one in the afternoon. It was the last weekend before the last exam. Contract law! He and wife Suzan went to a restaurant on Saturday night. He felt at his best. He had promised himself not to open a book that Sunday. He knew everything there was to know. Nothing he could do at the last minute would change anything in his performance one day later except feed his anxiety. He still remembered as if it were yesterday, how good he felt that night. He should have been nervous, worried, irritable. He still could’t believe his detachment and calm confidence during that short period when his fate was being decided.

So he resisted. He resisted until late Sunday afternoon. That Sunday, just before Suzan called him for supper, the demon slipped into his brain and he did what he had convinced myself he wouldn’t do: just one last test to reassure himself that everything would go well the next morning with the last exam on contract law.

There was a book that contained hundreds of questions and answers from exams held over the past fifty years. Every student had a copy of this book and used it to prepare better. Arthur had decided to open it randomly, blindly, and let God decide where his finger would land on one of the pages. He had done this dozens of times in the last few weeks. In fact, he could answer all the questions in that collection. He couldn’t fail this ultimate test, and yet, against all logic, he felt an irresistible urge to take it. Just to prove himself that everything would go smoothly the next day. More like a whim, a frivolity, or a quirk.

The compilation was over four hundred pages long. He opened the manual. His eyes were closed. He placed his finger somewhere—Arthur couldn’t remember if it was on the left or right, the front, middle or last pages of the volume. No matter. The question was number 363 and five lines long. He read it quickly, expecting an immediate answer and the development it needed. Then he read it again. Once. Twice. It was useless. It went sideways. The words he was reading could have been written in a foreign language. No familiarity with the topic. His mind was a blank slate.

Suddenly, he felt sick. A chill ran down his spine. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He thought: suppose this very question appears on the exam tomorrow. The first one your eyes land on, and you’re there, hoping from the very first words for the comfort that only prior familiarity with the answer can bring. But what you see instead freezes you with dread. A jumble of words whose meaning escapes you, a wording that might as well have been printed in Sanskrit for all the understanding it provided. Five questions. Twenty points assigned to each. And now this cruel twist of fate. It wasn’t even the start of the exam and Arthur was already facing a twenty percent handicap. Then he told himself: all is not lost. You can still do it. After all, they give you twenty-four minutes per question for a reason, didn’t they?

It’s time to get to work. His desk that looked at that instant like a hostile appliance.

He could still find the answer and if did within the time allotted, he would be reassure somehow. He opened the book that compiled all the laws applying to contracts. The most important one had 532 pages and 2,131 articles. The answer was in there, hidden somewhere in that mess of legislation, ordinances, statutes, decrees, regulations, and protocols, with decades' worth of amendments, revisions, corrections, tweaks, adjustments—not to mention repetitions and many inconsistencies. No matter. His three years in law school, the three months spent at bar school, and the months he had devoted preparing for this exam had to count for something. If the answer was in there—and it was—he would find it easily, as he had done hundreds of times, right?

Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. Nothing. He knew at that moment that, tomorrow, he should give up on the question and moved on. But he couldn’t accept failure. A part of him preferred to risk going down with the ship than surrender to an enemy smirking at him. He had never felt so falling apart and miserable in his life. All the comfort he had anticipated from a quick resolution of the capricious test he had imposed himself to resolve had been replaced by a chilling certainty of the next day impending disaster. When Suzan found him in that state, she exclaimed, “Are you sick? You look like a ghost.”

He dismissed her with a gesture showing the door of his office.

‘’I am not dead yet. Go back to bed. I still have some work to do.

‘’That’s not what I mean.’’ She answered a bit intimidated by the strong tone of his voice. Then noticing the law books opened on his desk, she added: ‘’How come, you weren’t supposed to put more time preparing for that stupid exam.’’

‘’I don’t need your useless comments. Leave alone, will you.’’

At that point, it wouldn’t have taken much for him to break down crying like a child. The experience had completely drained Arthur, leaving him alone with his despair. Full capitulation came when he finally resigned himself opening the solution key on the final section of the manuel. The answer to question 363 struck him by its banality. It was article 755, and the reason he had missed it was because the damn paragraph started at the bottom of page 289 and continued at the very top of the next page. Easy to miss if you weren’t careful. Suddenly, the bar exam didn’t seem like fun anymore. That night, he went to bed hating himself for what he had done. He was beaten, left for dead on the battlefield, without having fired a single shot.

His mood hadn’t changed much by morning, even though Suzan had done her best to lift his spirits—and she was good at that, his wife always the optimist. Arthur got in his car and drove to the hotel where the event was being held. He joined other candidates waiting to have their competence tested. He was handed a brown envelope. A folding table awaited him with his name on it. He sat down on a very uncomfortable chair. He opened the envelope and pulled out its content, placing the exam on the surface in front of him, refraining from looking at it. He positioned the pencil and the notebook for writing his answers on the table, taking manic care to adjust the angle so that the setup would look just right to the proctor pacing the aisles. As if that ritual meant anything. Then he dared a first glance. Never before had Arthur been as scared as he was that morning. His heart pounded as if I had run all the way there.

Now, guess what happened.

As soon as his lips formed the first words of the question appearing at the top of the page under his disbelieving eyes, his mind instantly recognized question 363—the very one that had caused him so much trouble at home the day before. It had to be a sign from above. Nothing short of a miracle: luck in its purest, rawest, most authentic and undeniable form. The very essence of good fortune. Its ultimate definition. It would be hard to find a better story to illustrate its effects here on Earth.

Even better than winning a million in the lottery—because this was a moment that would define the rest of his life, an episode that would help shape the man he was to become.