Many of you bar prep students or soon-to-be bar prep students are currently in the midst of your law school finals. Now, we know how frustrating and time-consuming studying for these exams can be, but they are a necessary evil of law school. Not only will nabbing good grades get your foot in the door for coveted interviews, but they also give you credit for your law study. You can't get credit for the classes you take unless you take the final exam. Recently, a fellow law student based in Philadelphia ran into this issue and tried to use Craigslist to fix her problem.
When Craigslist first opened in 1995, it was just an email distribution list sent to friends featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1996 they became an actual web-based service that expanded into other classified categories. In 2000 it expanded into other cities and it currently spans over 50 countries. Today, you can find a myriad of things on the site, from apartments, to jobs, to free furniture. You can also place ads for required services, such as fixing your windows or tutoring your kid in math. You can even request to have someone pose as your 'stand-in' for your law school finals.
That's right. A law student attending law school somewhere in Philadelphia placed an ad online for an exam stand-in on Craigslist. She was not asking for any credentials or knowledge of the specific exam she needed to be taken. She merely required that this stranger be a female law student with blonde hair.
Her excuse for needing a stand-in was that she was working two jobs, while going to school, and she just would not be able to make it to the final exam. This is why she was offering $300-400 to any blonde female law student to complete the exam for her. She even added a bonus incentive of $100-150 for a good score.
Craigslist removed the ad immediately. Not only does having a stand-in take your exam constitute as cheating, but it can also prevent you from passing the moral character determination required for admission to practice law, essentially making your years of hard work in law school null and void. Hopefully, this woman had second thoughts and decided to take the exam herself.
Passing the moral character determination for the state bar after having a blemish on your record is a long and arduous process that you do not want to go through as a recent law graduate. Instead, just keep studying hard during law school, get good grades, and stay ethical!
For those of you starting your bar exam review, keep up the hard work! For the rest of you, stop pondering getting a stand-in for those finals!
Happy Studying!
