How I Bounced Back After Failing the Bar Exam | Duff Radio Podcast

Join me, Ty McDuffey, on Duff Radio as I share my personal journey of perseverance, learning, and growth after failing the bar exam. This episode of the Duff Radio Podcast takes you through my experiences, from my early days as a student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, to my unexpected pivot into journalism and content creation. Despite the setback of not passing the bar exam, I uncovered some silver linings and valuable lessons learned along the way. This is how failing the bar exam became a catalyst for me to explore new opportunities, leading to a successful career in legal writing and digital content creation. Sometimes, failing the bar exam can open doors to paths better suited to one's passions and skills. Whether you've failed the bar exam, are curious about what happens if you fail the bar exam, or just want a story, this episode of the Duff Radio Podcast is for you.

Transcript

 What's up, everybody? My name is Ty McDuffey. I'm the owner of this platform called Duff Radio. In the effort to do more for the audience, I'm gonna start telling some stories and getting the podcast out more often. So, I ran a poll on Twitter, had the audience decide what story I should tell first. The story of me failing the bar when I tried to take it, or how I got into journalism.

And the option that won was how I failed the bar. So I got my mobile studio set up here, got my laptop with an outline here, because I want to tell the story the right way. And because I'm not going to be around forever. So I want other people to be able to hear this, learn from my experience, take from it what you will.

Our story begins in the summer of 2021. I have just graduated from the university of Missouri, Kansas city school of law. I'm living in Kansas city. I've been there for the past three years. going to law school, studying, getting my degree. How I ended up in Kansas City originally was by way of Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri.

I spent four years there getting a professional writing degree as that's always been my love and my passion is writing and I've since tried to find a way to make a living doing it. I spent four years on the football team there. I walked on as a linebacker. If you're unfamiliar with walking on in the concept of college football, it means that I joined the team but I was not on scholarship.

So, I was essentially like a practice squad player for the team. Did that for four years and didn't want to take my fifth year redshirt because our team had been losing a lot of games. And I was ready to move on and do something else outside of college. So I had taken all these classes in the springs and in the summers during my time at Missouri state.

And I added up enough credit hours to where I could graduate early. So in December of 2019, graduated with my degree from Missouri state. And I didn't know what direction to go. My father's an attorney, so he pushed me towards law school. And I thought at the very least I could get this degree and in the meantime, figure out how I'm going to use it and how I'm going to make money.

So I enrolled at the university of Missouri, Kansas city, moved up to Kansas city. I was living in the summit in an apartment by myself and spent three years studying, doing some internships in Kansas city, meeting new people, new friends, playing a lot of basketball, lifting a lot. and generally being pretty determined in this field of law.

I spent my first semester there getting really good grades. I made the Dean's list. I was in the top 25 percent of my class, and this stuff was unattainable to me at first. I was barely let into UMKC. I was one of the last to receive a scholarship and my LSAT scores, which is the law school admittance test, were not great.

I was, uh, Really average in that category. Took the LSAT once and got a 1 55, which is literally your average, and then took it again and got a 1 51. So I did worse the second time around. Somehow I was sitting next to one of my college football friends, Brad Pryor, as we took it the second time, so that might have had something to do with it.

He's a really funny guy. We had a ton of great times together. Joking around. So, if you're taking the LSAT, maybe don't sit next to one of your best friends where you're going to be laughing and joking. That's aside from the point. So when it's time to graduate from UMKC, after I spent three years there, learning not only law, but getting into the field of photography and videography, and technology in general, with the help of one of my best friends in the world, his name is Trevor Allen, a guy I met on the first day of law school.

Trevor. And what Trevor was doing on the side, while also studying law, was shooting music videos for rappers around the city. Kansas City's not got a huge music scene, so it's very easy to meet most people pretty quick. He started inviting me out on these outings to shoot music videos for these guys. And I took a real liking to it.

I loved being behind the camera. I loved helping him with lighting and different creative ideas. Things of that nature. So I was having a lot of fun doing that the summer before I graduated. I didn't know once I graduated whether to take the bar or not. I was still up in the air about it. Most of my family and friends suggested that I should just go ahead and do it.

That it would be a good idea. Looking back, that was really great advice because my law degree has opened up a ton of doors. Tons of doors that would not be available to me without it. So I'm very thankful for that advice. I'm very thankful to my family for providing me with the educational opportunities that I had.

I am in a very blessed and thankful position for that. So I make the decision to take the bar, get registered, all that stuff. I remember sending in my bar admission photo and it's just unbuttoned Hawaiian t shirt straight facing the camera. And I'm sure it looked hilarious. But I did accept it and start going through the process of studying through this thing called Barbary.

Barbary is this big company that sells graduating law students this test preparation program. You go through however many weeks of studying. For me, it was the entire summer and watch these videos and go over these questions of basically what I had just spent the last year. Two and a half years learning.

So I'm sitting in my dark apartment in Lee's Summit for hours and hours, all day, just in front of my screen, grinding. And going back and forth in my head about, is this gonna work for me or not? And I was starting to have some serious doubts about whether I was actually going to pass this test. I started getting behind day by day because it keeps track of the hours that you've been studying.

So And if you get behind, it recommends, okay, you need eight hours a day. And then if you don't hit eight hours a day, you only need nine hours a day. And my number just kept racking up as I was not getting these hours in. And I wasn't getting these hours in because I was really pursuing audio engineering at this time.

I was learning that skill simultaneously. I was going to an audio engineering school. That was run by one of the studio owners in Kansas City, Julius, who owns Emerald Dream Studios. He's a highly educated, highly decorated audio engineer and rapper in Kansas City. And so I was learning Pro Tools from him in the evenings and doing this studying.

And the audio engineering side of things was going really well. I got FL Studio on my computer. I Was still doing a lot of photography and videography of these guys that I was in the studio with and collaborating with them that way. Duff Radio was also getting up and going at that time. This is early days of this stuff, three years ago at this point.

So, I knew a lot less. And my time was not being directed in super efficient ways. But I was learning and setting up these building blocks for success. That was a real time of struggle for me, financially, physically, my mental state, all of it just struggling in my early years of figuring out my career and my path.

So the summer comes and goes, and eventually, I'm the night before the big exam. I was in the studio all night the night before, working, learning. And I was in the studio until about 10pm, and I still didn't have a room in Columbia, which is where the test was being held. My plan was to just drive through the night, show up, book a hotel, sleep, wake up, and take the exam the next day.

So I get in my car, and I drive the two hours or so from Kansas City over to Columbia, going east. I roll into Columbia at about 1am ish. And I'm driving through the city, trying to find a hotel. I'm looking here, here, here, here, coming across multiple options. So I pull off at the first one, completely booked.

I go get back in my car, stop at the next hotel along the way. Completely booked. They had not a single room available. This pattern repeats for probably six or seven different hotels. All of them that I come across are completely booked for the night. Nobody has a room. And I later learned this was because there was an influx of people from all across the state who are coming to take this bar exam.

Every person graduating from their respective school, whether it's St. Louis or Kansas City or wherever else. So, there is not a hotel room available in Columbia, Missouri this night, the night before my exam, and it's getting super late, I'm super tired, I have to be up early and at this gym in the morning, seated and ready to go to take the biggest exam of my life, and there's no room available.

So I was in quite a situation and eventually found an empty room at one of the hotels. I get in, get unpacked. And I just could not sleep. I probably didn't fall asleep until 3 or 4 a. m. and I had to be up at 6. So, I wake up the morning of the exam, extremely tired, not feeling good, rolling off only a couple hours of sleep.

And I go to the exam, which was on the University of Missouri campus, in one of their gyms. And I go in, get checked in, come across one of my friends from school, at UMKC, Alex Van Zandt. Who is now a prosecuting attorney in Northern Kansas City, in a smaller town. And we're talking about whether we're gonna pass this thing, how we're gonna do it, and just feeling it out between each other.

I end up going to my seat, which is in the very, very back of the gym. So I'm sitting in this big kind of YMCA like gym, where there's three courts. It's all stacked up together in just this big gymnasium, and I'm looking around, and I can see all the people in front of me, hundreds of them. Some are nervously tapping their legs, some are tapping their pens up and down, and it was a very interesting moment socially to see all of these people around me who are getting prepared for this exam, and I just had this bird's eye view of it.

It was such a unique perspective. A lady walks up to the front of the room, one of the bar association representatives I assume. and starts going over the instructions for this exam. And I'm sitting in the very back, tired and not really paying that close of attention, which we'll find out more about later.

I have my papers and I'm just writing notes to myself as she's explaining these instructions. And eventually, she passes them out, and I start the exam. Now, here's how the bar exam works. It's a two day exam. And one day is the written portion, and the other day is multiple choice. That's how it works. So I'm there on day one, and I'm taking the first part of the test.

And part one of the test, day one, is also split into two sessions, a morning and an afternoon. So, I'm taking the morning exam, and there are two packets that are handed out. My thought process is packet one is the morning exam, and then packet two is for the evening exam, right? In my mind this made perfect sense, but I missed some instruction along the way.

So I'm doing test one, and I'm working on the first packet, and to me it was going great. I felt like I gave an extremely large amount of detail. I had time to spare, so I was going back and checking my answers, doing everything that I could to make it perfect. The test ends, I finish that part of the exam, and there's a break for lunch.

So I get back in my car, I drive down the street to this mall area, like a Hy Vee, and I just grabbed a sandwich and some chips, went out to my car, and just sat there and ate it. And I was thinking to myself that it went pretty well. I left that part of the exam feeling great because I had time left over to check my answers and I felt like I could be very thorough in my responses.

So I'm hyping myself up and I'm thinking, okay, I was worried for no reason. I'm actually doing fine. This is kind of easy. I go back to the gym for the second part and I sit down in my seat in the back and I see that not only did they take packet one. But they took Packet 2, and they collected it as the session ended.

So it turned out that I had finished all of Packet 1 and left Packet 2 completely blank. But I was supposed to do both during the first morning session. So I got confused, and the reason I felt like I had done so well is I had spent the entire three hours only doing half of the test. So of course I felt like I was doing great.

Of course I felt like I could use so much detail because I was just spending double the time on the first half of the exam and I missed the entire second half of it. So I knew right then and there that I had failed the bar exam but there's still the evening session of this test to do. So in my mind, all these scenarios are running wild.

Like, Can I just finish out and maybe still pass if I left half of the test blank? Should I just get up and leave? What do I do? I'm trying to make these decisions on the fly. So, I stay in the exam and I do the second half. And it was much harder with all this going on in my mind. It was the multiple choice part.

There were a bunch of questions that I didn't know the answer to. So, I just finished the exam as fast as I could. I was the first one done. I walk up, turn in my stuff, and leave. Everyone else is still in the gymnasium. There's probably at least an hour left of the test still, but I was the first one in and out.

Just putting on the line, finishing, and leaving. And as I'm walking out, one of the bar representatives said, You're done? I said, Yeah. Turned it in already? Yep. And then she said, Are you coming back tomorrow? And I don't remember what I said, but I was already thinking about that answer in my mind. I was like, So I go back to my hotel room.

I had my laptop in this studio. Pretty much the exact same setup that I have right now. My mic. And I just started working on some music. Doing some engineering. And that turned into a track that I have out on SoundCloud. And part of a little project that I've done.

And I go out to dinner. Drove to the nearest steakhouse or something like that. It wasn't anything fancy. And I just ate dinner by myself. Got a workout in, in the hotel gym, and then I went out for the night. And mind you, this is three years ago, Ty. So this is 24 year old Brent in the works. I go to a strip club and just spend time with these girls there.

I got a drink. I was talking to these girls and just letting my mind go of what happened that day. And that was how I spent the evening. I leave the strip club, go home and go to bed. And I wake up very early the next morning, and it's time to go to the second day of the exam. And I'm laying there, and I have to decide if I'm going to do this or not.

If I'm going to show up, and I decided not to. It was at that very time that I started looking on Indeed, the job board. I knew that I had to take some form of action, because otherwise I would be totally screwed. So I started looking for a job, right off the bat. That night, I applied for this job for a company called LegalMatch.

And LegalMatch then became my first job out of college. I started writing and doing updates to this company's legal website, their legal library, and their lawyer directory. And I still work for them to this day. Three years later, and it's been a great relationship. I have a great relationship with my editor there, and that's still a source of income that helps feed me and my family at this time.

So the failure of the bar wasn't a real failure is what I think the main point of this talk is. Every situation that I've gone through in my life has led me And has prepared me for the next moment. So it's impossible for me to go and look back on my life and say that I wish something different would have happened because I wouldn't be here if those things hadn't happened.

I wouldn't be in this great spot that I am now and I'm so thankful for my life now. So I'm incredibly thankful for my past and I'm incredibly thankful for the struggles that I went through. And, Endured the hard times and had to persevere and work hard and apply my brain and figure something out for my own good, for my own survival.

So that's pretty much the story. I didn't pass the bar and It didn't destroy me, I just figured out a new path and a new career to go once it happened. And that forced me to be creative, that forced me to create a niche for myself. And that niche so far has been legal writing, legal content creation for these different companies and different law firms and marketing agencies.

And I think that has been more lucrative and a better niche. fit for my skill set than passing the bar and going to work at a law firm and being the suit and tie guy, going to court and talking to the judge and meeting with clients. To me, that would be exhausting. I have preferred to work remotely and I have preferred to be my own boss and work on my own time.

That's given me a lot more freedom and control over my life than What the traditional route via a law firm used to be, which was join the law firm as an associate. become a partner, work your way up to the top until eventually you're just a head lawyer at the firm. Not only does that take a ton of time, but it takes a ton of hours, and so I would much rather be my own boss.

I've started my own company, and this has allowed me a greater narrative over what I do, who I work with, And the big picture decisions that I'm making for my life and my future, my vocation and how I'm going to use my time, how I'm going to develop an audience, how I'm going to develop a platform.

If you have failed before, if you have felt like you have lost at some point at something, not had success, know that this is part of the process. Know that each time you quote unquote fail, it's not about the result. It's not about the outcome. It's about the person that you become through the endurance of these hardships.

It forges you in the flames. It makes you sharper. So that you're more prepared and better adjusted for life and the market and your skill set grows. I learned something from every single opportunity that I've had, whether the opportunity has lasted a long time or lasted a very short time. I've learned so much about people, so much about marketing, so much about human interaction and what others are really looking for in an interaction between another person.

How these things work in business. How to run a business myself. How to conduct business remotely through the internet. What that takes. How many times to follow up with clients per week. How often. I often find in this career of mine that The customers just want to hear from you. That's all it's about.

And I imagine it's the same way in many other industries. Where we all need to evaluate how often we are speaking with our customers. Because that's the relationship right there. That's what allows money to transfer hands.