If you happen to be near the World Trade Center Wednesday or Thursday morning, you will likely see a mass of clean-cut but burned-out-looking folks in their mid-twenties clutching clear, one-gallon Ziploc bags and looking nervous. These are the foolish youngsters who have shelled out $815 (!) for the privilege of taking the Massachusetts Bar Examination, all of whom are motivated, Bostonist is sure, by a heartfelt desire to better the Commonwealth, lack of fiscal reward notwithstanding. (The Ziploc bags are the result of the security policy in effect for the test, which prohibits ordinary bags of any kind. The policy was put in place for the first time last year (when Bostonist took the bar), and we assumed it had to do with the presence of the Democratic National Convention - hence, the presence of bomb-sniffing dogs for those test-takers who insisted on bringing backpacks. Apparently, the Board of Bar Examiners liked the dogs so much, they decided to keep the high security.)

What does the bar exam mean to ordinary, non-lawyerly folks? Nothing. It is full of questions testing people's ability to memorize stuff that practicing lawyers would just look up in a book, costs a fortune, ruins half a summer for the test-takers, and causes bars on Thursday night to flood with exhausted up-and-comers bent on giddy self-destruction. So if you are one of those people who hates lawyers (and one of those people who finds solace in the suffering of others), know that young would-be lawyers are miserable today all over the country, they were miserable yesterday in New York and sundry other states, and their misery will continue tomorrow here in the Commonwealth and elsewhere. If you are one of those people who enjoys a drink on a Thursday night, let Bostonist warn you: the farther from the World Trade Center and area law schools you get, the happier you'll be.