Heading on West

And ... taking the California Bar, for any of you interested :-)

(update: the NY BOLE has spruced up their website significantly since when I was taking the exam, and I believe some of the links I have down below to specific pages on their site don't work anymore. You'll be alright navigating to the main web page and then looking for what you need from there)

Admission

Anyways, this is what you're working toward once you've passed all the requirements:  

Every month there's a day set aside for the attorney admissions interview and swearing in ceremony.  There are a LOT of people involved, this is not a small administrative affair.  

It'll be at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, a building which apparently has quite some history behind it.  It is a very large building.  Keep your eyes peeled for the signs they'll put out - if you miss 'em, you'll get lost.  Not everyone will be helpful in steering you the right way.  

Once you get there and register, they'll put you into various holding rooms where you'll wait to be called up for your final admissions interview, where your interviewer will assess whether you ought to be a lawyer in New York.  My interviewer was very kind, I kinda wish I knew his name :-). In any case, if you clear the interview... you get to do this (one ceremony every half an hour or so - yes there are THAT many applicants):  

(As an aside, the little girl in the picture near the bottom is the daughter of one of the people being sworn in during the next session after this photo I took, and she was totally adorable, everybody was laughing.  Quite a lot of families were there, to witness their father/mother/siblings/partners being admitted to the NY Bar, it was a cheerful event)

And that's it.  

Where to stay?

Since it's a two-full-day exam, you're going to need to stay at least two nights in a hotel in the area, unless you've got a friend living there willing to put you up.  And perhaps even if you do, you'd want to stay in a hotel, because you probably don't want to have to worry about traffic, parking etc. when you've probably got better things to worry about, like if you're remembering stuff right.  You might even want to show up earlier, since you really don't want to spend the day before the exams dealing with travelling/connection issues, especially if there are problems.  

And, the idea of just walking out of your hotel room, taking the lift down, and then strolling in to the testing centre right at your hotel, and then going straight back to your hotel room right after, is a very seductive one.  

But: it's made pretty much impossible by how you can't actually know what your testing centre is until well after the time period when it's realistically possible to make a hotel booking.  There are so many people taking the bar exams that you ought to, the minute you decide you ARE taking the bar exams, book a hotel room.  If you leave it to anywhere near the application deadlines, for example, I do not believe you will find a room at any of the main hotels.  And you want to be at a main hotel because that's pretty much where the exams would be held.  Which, however, won't be an advantage if the hotel you're staying in is not the/near the testing centre you're assigned to, but you have to travel to a different hotel to take your exam (while other people at that hotel are travelling to yours for their exam).  

Which is what happened to me.  

I booked a room at the Crowne Plaza Albany hotel.  This has the advantage of being right smack in the Albany city centre, and in walking distance to the nearby Times Union Centre where the bulk of the test takers would be taking their exams.  Except that I, having signed up to use a laptop for the exam, did not know (this may change, but was true when I took the exams - be sure to check the test site information page) that if you're using a laptop, you're going to be assigned to somewhere else.  In my case specifically, the airport Marriott.  So I found myself trying to make my way north (while people staying at the Marriott were making their way south).  This is not as easy as it may appear.  For one thing, the cab drivers find it greatly difficult to resist cashing in on this great shoal of generally-quite-desperate-to-get-there-on-time fish.  I was told one cab charged his cab full of Japanese test-takers $50 to get them there.  By $50, I mean $50 each.  

When I got to my test venue, I discovered something that is the basis of my next Golden Rule: the hotel had arranged multiple buses ($15 per person per day to get there and back) to shuttle their test takers down to Times Union.  

So my proposed Golden Rule is this: book a room in a large hotel (where there'll be other test-takers) somewhere outside the city centre (I'd have chosen the Marriott; no, I don't have any shares), unless you're certain you'll end up taking your test at Times Union.  Because it makes sense for the hotels "on the outside" to organise shuttled buses to the town centre, but there's not enough people "on the inside" heading out for the hotels inside to organise buses out likewise.  You may have a lower chance of "lucking out" and getting yourself into the same hotel you'll be taking the test in, but your chances of not having to make your own way to your test site are reduced (and if you still have to do so, then you're not really any worse off than you would have been otherwise?).  

Taking the New York Bar as a foreign applicant

There's quite a few hits on Google when you search for info on taking the New York Bar.  But I'm finding that most of the advice is in relation to the "academic" side of things (which I think is best summed up with just a one-word piece of advice: "study").  Whereas, in my experience as a foreign test-taker, what I found to also be a real problem, is on the logistical side of things.  Getting there, getting around when you are there, that sort of thing.  So ... that's what I'm going to try to deal with here, in the hopes it'll help any of you guys trudging your way up to Albany after me (as the steady stream of foreign applicants to NY will surely continue down through the ages...)

So, first things first - Albany.  If you're not a New York native, your testing centre is going to be in Albany.  That's a bit farther up north from New York City, which I find is what most people who've heard of "New York" but don't quite know what it is think when they hear the words "New York".  

OK, I have found that some of you don't know this - you don't have to admit it, but I know who you are :-) - NY is a state, and not just a city.  

View Larger Map

So if you look at the Google map I've embedded here, you'll see that Albany (in the middle of the top) is quite a ways away from New York City itself (in the middle of the bottom) 

So, as a separate matter from getting to NY itself, you've got to figure out how you're going to get to Albany once you reach NY.  Quite a few airlines fly direct to Albany's airport (code ALB), but each time I've had to go there, I've taken the train up.  Yes, I said train.  Practically everyone I've run into, when I mention "train", has started talking about delays etc., but my experience of flying in/out of NY has not left me with the impression that taking the train is particularly inferior.  That said, a good friend of mine has told me a story of how he was stuck in a powered-down train for a good 2 hours, and I myself have had delays of up to 45 minutes both waiting for, and while on, the train (contrasted with delays of several hours as well as cancellations when it comes to flying), so I think the Golden Rule here is:  leave yourself plenty of time for travel, particularly where you've got connections to make.  

In the New York city area there's basically three airports (JFK, LGA, and EWR which is actually Newark Liberty International airport across in the next state of New Jersey, but which I find is actually easier to get into NY from than if I were landing at, say, JFK, which in my opinion has terrible train connectivity).  

If I were you, I'd fly into EWR and then take a direct Amtrak train up to Albany.  

Hoping it'll be useful

I was getting quite a few queries about my experience taking the New York Bar exams and getting admitted to NY, and after a couple of times I started thinking it might make sense to put up a (small) resource online, as opposed to (repeatedly) giving the same information to multiple people over time... so here goes.