My Journey to the New York Bar - Focus During the Holidays

When I logged into Facebook three days ago, an “On This Day” picture posted three years ago, popped up. It was a selfie picture I took on a Sunday afternoon with my study materials on the dinning room table, just before I started studying for a few hours. It was during the start of the Christmas holidays and I was taking advantage of the holiday season to fit in some quality study time.

I was thinking that during this holiday season, many people here in the UK (and in other parts of the world) have time off work until the 7th of January. Many are using this time to unwind from what has been a very busy and even stressful year; catching up with sleep; spending time with friends and family and just enjoying the time they have off work.

I’m all about taking time out to unwind, rest and spend time with family. However, I’m not all about using the holiday season as an excuse not to do anything at all; leaving everything until the New Year! There are some things that we really need to get done now, before the New Year, to make way for new things to take place or so that we can move on to the next thing.

Many times people around me ‘advised’ me not to work so hard, to enjoy my time off etc. I believe some said this with good intentions so that I wouldn’t burn myself out completely (which by the way, I did have Christmas Day, Boxing day and New Year’s day off, to rest) however, I had exams to prepare for, which after the Christmas holidays, would only be a month or so away. I couldn’t afford to take the whole holiday season off like everybody else around me.

With all due respect, they were not on the same path as me, so therefore, they couldn’t understand my grind and the hard work I still needed to put in, regardless of the season or time of the year it was.

It is the same with you who are sitting or resitting the bar exams or any other exams in the coming months or starting a business and working on achieving something within the next few months. We are not living the same life as those around us. Our commitments and responsibilities are different and therefore, the time we have off and how we make use of our time will also be different to others.

By all means, take time out to rest and enjoy time with those around you, but don’t forget that you have a goal to work towards within the first few weeks and months of 2019 and only by putting in the hard work now, will you achieve the results you want. No one can do this for you, only you can, so be wise with your time and make the most of it.

Work hard now and play later!

My Journey to the New York Bar - Upped My Game

Now that I knew which areas of the substantive law I needed to strengthen my knowledge on, I got myself organised by creating a study plan. I really went to town with my study plan, setting out certain days of the week to study specific topics and divided each session between revising notes and doing both multiple choice questions and essay questions for each topic.

 The areas of law where I felt more confident in, I studied on the days I worked, whereas, the areas of law where I knew I needed to spend more time on, I used Thursdays and Fridays to focus on them as I was no longer working on those days.

I decided to take on board a suggestion given to me first time round which I initially dismissed. The suggestion was to wake up between an hour and a half to two hours early to studying before work. As a person who really likes her sleep, the thought of waking up at 5.30am to study before getting ready to go to work, was really difficult! I didn’t like the idea at all! I would rather sleep late and be up until 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning studying then wake up at 5.30am!!

However, when I thought about the benefits of doing this, I decided to do it. I had to be disciplined and go to sleep a little earlier than usual so that I had sufficient sleep. I mainly did this on the days that I worked in the office (which was Monday-Wednesday) because after work I knew I would only get a maximum of two to three hours of studying done, before my brain would want to retire for the night. I used the early mornings to revise notes and read through the text books and used the evenings to go through exam practice questions and review my answers (and make additional notes of the answers I got wrong so that I could revisit the topics).

This literally was my life for 10-12 weeks leading up to the exam! Study, work, church repeat.

I had already invested a lot of time and money into this and as I believed it was the path for me to take and succeed in, I had to see it through until the end and make the necessary sacrifices to achieve what I had initially set out to achieve.

My Journey To the New York Bar - A week before the exams

July 20, 2016. The day I flew out to New York.

I flew out 6 days before day one of the exams so that I could have enough time to get over jet lag and put in some last minute revision.  The weeks leading up to the flight were pretty intense but the time had finally come.

I stayed in a predominantly Jewish area in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It's only  in Brooklyn where I've personally encountered and communicated with orthodox Jews. You don't see them around where I live in the UK, but there's a Jewish community in London. I was quite intrigued to be honest and I personally found the Jewish people to be pleasantly polite. They are a close knit community and keep themselves to themselves.

During my one week stay in Crown Heights, I didn't feel unsafe at all. It's a quiet area with a consistent police presence. There was always police cars patrolling the area and at night time I saw why; the potential for others from neighboring communities to sell and deal drugs.

 I came across a family (behind me in the picture at the top) outside the apartment block I was staying in, selling water to cars sat in traffic. Even the children, one as young as 6 years old,  outside  hustling with their parents.

 There was a library less than 10 minutes walk. Brooklyn Public Library literally became my second home. I spent a lot of my time revising there. The library was always busy and full of different cultures and backgrounds.

I mostly spent my time in the African American library study room because it was also a quiet room. During one of my revision sessions, I noticed a number of kids doing different kinds of work in groups (see picture below). I spoke to one of the ladies who was tutoring the kids; a lovely retired teacher originally from the Caribbean who had studied in the UK before falling in love and moving to the US. She told me that she set up the study group a few years ago and runs these sessions in the evening during the week and at the weekends to help kids from disadvantaged backgrounds remain interested in education and improve their grades,  so that they can graduate from school. A high proportion of young males,  particularly in the black community drop out of high school.

 I found it pretty awesome that on such a hot day like it was (it was around 30 degrees celsius)  when those kids could have been spending the whole day playing outside, they took some hours of their day to attend the study session.

When I wasn't studying, I was going to the church services in Brooklyn, walking along Central Park or doing a bit and I mean - just a bit, of sight seeing.

 I was very fortunate, in fact blessed, to have a fellow Bar Bri International student, Samantha,  also staying in the Crown Heights area at the time of the exams.  In fact I became close to Samantha as we were preparing for the bar exams. She had just moved to London from South Africa after getting married and started studying for the Bar the same time as I did.

Thanks to Facebook and WhatsApp we kept in touch and helped each other out whenever we had a question or was confused about something. Sometimes we were confused together LOL. It was also nice to see a friendly and familiar face before and after both days of the exams. After the exams, we kept in touch and our paths would also cross again in New York later :)

My Journey to the New York Bar - Redeeming The Time

Redeeming the time for me at that moment was to go to New York and do a legal internship.

Several years before, which was during my second year at university, I chose to study a  module called The Justice Process. It was focused on studying both the criminal justice system and the civil justice process in North America. We had an option to do an eight to ten week  internship in a law firm in the U.S or to write an essay about a particular topic. I chose to do an internship in New York and secured one at a Brooklyn law firm that practiced criminal and personal injury law.

From what I recall, everybody else on the course chose the southern  states like Indiana, Mississippi and Texas but I chose New York. It just appealed to me more and I remember my professor telling me that I had to find my own placement because they did not have connections with places in New York. I contacted a lot of different law offices and firms in New York to secure a placement myself.


I was preparing myself for this once in a lifetime opportunity, however about 5 weeks before I was due to go, I cancelled the whole thing. It was a personal decision I made due to a particular situation I was facing at the time. No one around me understood, especially my dad who insisted I went, "even if he had to drag me on the plane", but I was adamant I was no longer going. It was not an easy decision to make and I had to contact the law office to inform them, as well as other people who were going to assist me during my stay there.

Fast forward to that Saturday morning in September 2014 while cleaning the house,  when it came to my mind that the time had come for me to redeem the opportunity I 'gave away'. Two months later,  I went to visit relatives in Maryland for Thanksgiving and spent a few days in New York to get a "feel of the place."

Before the trip I was just thinking about  doing an internship to finally do what I always wanted to do and cross it off the 'bucket list', but God had now opened my vision to  actually qualify as a U.S lawyer and practice law internationally. I went to the United States with a purpose, and everything I did from that moment on, I did to work towards the dream that had now awakened within me.

I went back to New York at the end of May 2015 for three months and did an internship and also pro bono work, providing legal advice and assistance to low income families and residents of New York City.  During that year, the New York Bar Association had implemented a new requirement that applicants had  to fulfil 50 hours of pro bono work as part of their application for admission as an attorney.  I found out that I could use the pro bono work I was doing, as part of the 50 hours requirement for my application. Without even knowing, I was doing certain things to assist me on my journey to the New York Bar.

My Journey to the New York Bar - That pivotal moment

I'm going to take you back to 2014 which was the pivotal moment where my vision opened and my career started to steer in another direction.

During that year I was very dissatisfied with my career. I had already recovered from certain personal issues I had experienced, finally got a decent paying full time job and had a regular steady income to pay my rent, bills and daily expenses and even travel. But I felt restricted. I was dissatisfied because I knew there was more to me and for me than this. I'm not knocking the job or company I was working for at the time, but I reasoned with myself that I didn't go to university, study law and even train as a paralegal just to do admin work.

Although I was paralegaling on the side, it still wasn't enough for me. But I didn't know what to do or where to go. I knew that I didn't want to go back to law school and resume the Legal Practice Course (LPC), which is the course you take before becoming a trainee solicitor in England and Wales, because the course fees were so expensive, around £10,000. I previously had to leave the LPC  half way through due to experiencing homelessness and I was not in a good way emotionally. I was 'ready' to go back and finish what I started, but at the same it was not what I wanted anymore. I was also finding it hard to get a full time job as a paralegal because whenever I had interviews I would be questioned about having a stammer and they (not me) saw it as an impediment for me to work directly with clients; even though I had previously worked in a call centre and as an advisor, and had no issues with that.

So I started paralegaling independently. I found my own clients which were charities, organisations, businesses and individuals. Still it wasn't enough for me. I remember during that year I did a lot of "soul searching". I spent a lot of time alone, figuring out who I was, what I liked, what I was good at and what I wanted.

I would spend time alone at the park, go for walks (this is where my love for nature was awakened), spend time researching online. I was really seeking what to do to. I had a mentor at the time and she is the one who helped me to develop my relationship with God and be defined in my faith because both would be crucial in establishing true happiness, being stable emotionally, spiritually, mentally, financially and in all aspects of my life really.

It was June 2014 and I had reached a point where I was ready for a change. I didn't know what exactly but I wanted a change. I remember speaking to God saying that I wanted Him to do something new in me and in my life. I wanted new things. I wasn't specific because I didn't know what to ask for but it's like I just gave everything to Him, in words and in deeds. I was always seeking what to do and one morning while I was cleaning a house (I used to do house cleaning at the weekends to make extra money), I heard the words "redeem the time because the days are evil", while listening to an audio message, which caught my attention. I even remember the room and what part I was cleaning, until this day lol.

After listening to the message I started thinking about what this meant for me and how I could do this.... It was then that an opportunity I had been given but gave up during my second year at university, came to mind....It was now time for me to redeem the time and go back and do that very thing...

My Journey to the New York Bar - Introduction

Today, I am starting a short series sharing with you my journey to the New York Bar.

At the beginning of my bar exam preparation last year, I actually wrote a journal documenting almost everything I went through from making necessary adjustments in my life and to my schedule, battling with feelings and thoughts, experiencing set backs etc. It was quite therapeutic writing down things as they were happening or had just happened.

When people hear I sat and passed the New York Bar exam to qualify as a US lawyer they ask me why? What made me choose this path? What I tell them does not even answer the question fully because during the journey and even as I draw to the end of it, I am discovering that the whole thing is more than just qualifying and being licensed to practice law in certain jurisdictions. It's not even about me, there's a bigger picture to all this.

You know, there are things we are inspired to do but it's only when everything is materialised, that we really discover or understand the reason why we were led to do it. At times, during the process of achieving certain things, who we become as a person during the process, is more important than what we set out achieve.