AFI Dallas Review: A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar

If you're like me, you might not think the California Bar Exam would be the most engaging topic for a documentary. When I heard there was a doc about future lawyers studying for the bar, I wasn't terribly excited about making sure I caught it. But then I kept hearing buzz about A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar in lines for other films -- people were talking, and they were liking what they saw, so I added the film to my list. And, as is so often the case at a fest with so many films, the buzz turned out to be spot-on.

The film follows six ambitious law school grads who are studying for the California Bar Exam, which has a pass rate of only 39%. Prepping for the bar is one of the most grueling intellectual endurance races a person can take on: months and months of study and prep classes memorizing vast quantities of information, so you can take a stressful exam on which your entire future -- not to mention your ability to pay off your $100K or more student loan debt -- rides. Pressure? Yeah, just a bit, and filmmaker Eric Chaikin keeps the pace flowing as we go back and forth among the subjects, hearing their stories and growing to really care whether they pass.
We meet Magda Madrigal, who has worked and struggled to overcome a poverty-stricken background to make it this far. In addition to the stress of preparing for the bar, she's planning her wedding. Everyone in her family is certain she'll pass the first time; she seems a little less certain. We also meet Donald Baumeister, who is perhaps best known for his status as having taken and failed the bar 43 times. Is there just such a mental block there that he just can't quite make that leap over the bar exam hurdle? Or does he not just have what it takes? This time around, he enlists the help of a Bar Exam Guru who helps students who've failed the bar in the past make it through, and he has the unwavering support and belief of his wife and daughters, who want desperately to see him succeed at last.

Megan Meadows was one of my favorites; with her pixie-short black hair and seemingly bottomless well of optimism, you can't help but like her, even if the film informs you that law is the one film where pessimists do better than optimists. She seems like the kind of person who might actually become an attorney who does good things to help the world, and as she did yoga and meditated in between bouts of studying, I found myself rooting for her. And then there was Cassandra Hooks, who got pregnant just before she started law school and has struggled to make it through with a high GPA with the support of her artist husband, who has taken on the role of stay-at-home dad to support his partner in her quest to be a lawyer.

Cassandra's story was one of the most important ones in this doc, because it addressed the issue of professional women who also happen to be mothers, the tremendous sense of guilt we often feel for choosing to have careers -- and the guilt trips society throws our way as well. Cassandra's intelligence practically burns through the screen, and you can't even imagine her sitting home all day building blocks and going to playgroups. She readily admits that her son's father is by far the more nurturing and patient parent, and that she would be miserable staying home, but at the same time there's an underlying sense of guilt and regret -- not over the path she's chosen, necessarily, but perhaps more over the expectation that she should be the one at home with their son. This is made most painfully clear when, two weeks before the bar, their son ends up in the hospital with strep throat, and she and her partner make the decision together that the boy's father will stay with him at the hospital so that she can continue to study for the exam.

I wouldn't have thought I'd come to care so much about the fates of six people I've never even met, but by the end of the film I was on the edge of my seat, waiting to see who would pass and who would fail. A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar is a well-made doc exploring issues of lawyers and lawsuits through the stories of these people, and you don't have to be a lawyer to appreciate their stories.