Thoughts on a Milestone Year

1998 was rather a momentous year, at least for me.

Ten years ago in May, I donned the purple hood that was the emblem of my victory in the great, three-year battle to graduate from law school.

Ten years ago this month, I sat for the bar exam, an ordeal that may be likened to crossing the Nevada desert on a rider mower. I came out of the exam knowing I'd flunked, and waited grimly for the beginning of September, when the results would be available by phone. The state bar office absolutely would not take any calls about the exam even one milisecond before the time set to release the results, making the last ten minutes before that time the longest of my life.

Then came the stupendous news that I couldn't bring myself to believe until I saw it in writing: I passed. I immediately changed the recording on my telephone answering machine to announce exultantly that I was now a lawyer-elect -- only to have the first message after that be from my best friend, who had taken the bar in another state, calling to tell me she hadn't passed.

Three weeks later, I parked my Chevy pickup at a seedy motel in Moscow and rode the bus down to Boise to appear before the Idaho Supreme Court and the U.S. Court, District of Idaho. On September 24, 1998, I was officially sworn in as an attorney and counselor at law in all the state and federal courts in Idaho.
And that's when all my trials and tribulations really began.