Page 337 - WhyAsInY

Get a JoB
was able to display a bankbook that showed a reasonable amount of money in my name, most of it borrowed from my father for the purpose; the money had been deposited and just as quickly withdrawn and returned when the apartment was in hand. True, we had received a fair amount of cash at the wedding, and—true, too—Phyllis would continue teaching in September, but I was about to graduate, and I did not have a job prospect, other than, perhaps, in the Law Department of the New York City Department of Marine and Aviation. And, even if that job was available, which I doubted, I had absolutely no interest in it—actually less than absolutely no interest in it. It did not matter that I had just seen tons of money invested in a five-hour event and that there was presum- ably much more where that came from to help out the young couple. I actually had a lot of pride and had developed a bit of nervousness about the man in the blue pajamas. On reflection, however, I don’t think that I even gave a moment’s thought to parental help. It transpires that there would be parental help, but not the kind that I would reject—and, aston- ishingly enough, the help would from the Yaverbaum parents, not the Rebells.
Setting the Bar
But first there was the minor matter of passing the New York State bar exam. Columbia, as I mentioned, saw itself as a “national” law school. That was great, but it did not exactly help with the preparation necessary to enable you to pass a test that, not surprisingly, focused on New York law only. And New York had its pronounced idiosyncrasies, not the least of which was, as I said, the fact that it had its own rules of procedure, which differed in its details from the more modern Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which was taught at Columbia. (That the test was parochial is borne out by the fact that students from law schools in New York that focused on local law did better on the bar exam than did students from NYU, Columbia, Harvard, or Yale.) Thus, it was necessary to pay close attention to the materials and lectures that were provided in the Pieper
• 319 •