The bar is not made for people like me, or I am not cut out for the bar? One of those statement’s is correct, but I am really not sure which.

For those of you who do not know me, hello, I’m Moss, and I’m a 23-year-old bar student in Manchester.

Being a barrister is something I have dreamed of for years. The lifestyle, the job, the experience, everything, and I have dedicated the best part of 5 years of my life solely to making that dream a reality. And this blog post is just that, the reality.

This is the reality of wanting to become a barrister - well, my experience anyway, but I hope this helps some people out.

This isn’t intended to be something to scare you away or deter you from the bar course or becoming a barrister, it’s just a reality check, I guess, for people in a similar situation to me. I have average intelligence, I’d say, I’m not the smartest tool in the box, but what I do have is dedication and hard work. I am quite a slave to myself because of how hard I work. Because academic intelligence doesn’t come easily to me, it means I have to work hard.

Not only this, but the education system isn’t really built for me - I am autistic. Now that’s not to say the education system as a whole fails those with autism, but it can’t suit everyone. Luckily, I love learning, so I take the time to make the system work for me and find ways to circumvent the difficulties I face being autistic.

The bar course, sadly, was not one of those areas I could circumvent. Now, this is nothing against the university I studied at; all the tutors there were fantastic in putting support agreements in place for exams and helping me in class wherever they could. Particularly, there were two areas of the course I struggled with the most: opinion writing and legal research and drafting. Why did I struggle? Well, because the ‘phenomena’ of reading between the lines does not exist for autistic people. It is a novelty I have never had the pleasure of experiencing and never will. If it isn’t there in black and white, I most likely won’t catch on, but if I do, it’s a one-off and an exceptional day!

Aside from that, I’m brilliant at talking (as annoying as that is for everyone else), so advocacy was no trouble. A bit of tweaking here and there, but I really was a great advocate, and it’s such good fun!

What wasn’t fun, and still isn’t, was the 10 hours a day I would spend revising for the criminal and civil litigation exams. Now the exams themselves are Multiple Choice Question type exams, which on paper sound great. What is not great is how horrendously difficult they are.

The questions are written in a sly way, changing each answer sometimes by one word, and requiring you to pick the Single Best Answer (SBA). Joke’s on you, though, because sometimes all the answers are correct and you just have to pick the best one.

Great.

That’s where the knowledge of specific cases from Blackstone’s or The White Book comes into play, as most often the questions will be based around those. But there are so many cases for so many topics! Honestly, it really is difficult. The best way to get through them, though, is to practice with past papers and get used to the questions that are going to be asked, rule out the certainly wrong ones first (if you can) and then give the best answer out of the ones left. Again, in theory, it sounds okay, but sometimes that revision or those questions really feel like you are Sisyphus, except instead of a boulder, it is Blackstone’s Criminal Practice Guide.

Anyway, this isn’t an attempt at me bragging about how long I spent revising, it’s the harsh reality of the bar course. It sucks at times, and it will knock you back, several times. That boulder will keep knocking you down, but still, the only way to go forward is up the hill, push the rock, and get past the failure.

I have always been told that my hard-working etiquette is my best asset, but I’ve got pretty cool hair, so I’d personally say that is.

But seriously, I’ve always worked so hard, and it’s gotten me to where I need to be, but the bar was so different. I worked hard every day, every single day. I got a first-class law degree and thought it would equip me well enough…. I was horribly wrong. The sheer volume of material you need to cover and learn, and apply is unfathomable. My partner frequently comments on how stressful it must be, and he isn’t wrong, except this stress is a new kind of stress (my shower drain hair clumps tell a vivid story).

It is doable, just don’t expect to get it right the first time. If you go in thinking you will (as I did), it will just make failure even harder to deal with.

Whilst all of this is going on, and what many people don’t know is that in the background, there are 2 things I am silently battling. My mental health and my heart condition.

Don’t worry, I am not going to die anytime soon. My condition is what’s referred to as a cardiovascular autonomic disorder, so although it affects my heart, it also affects my brain, or rather, my nervous system. I have POTS - postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and before I was diagnosed, I was bed-bound for months. This condition affects my everyday life, and when I started the bar course, I wasn’t correctly medicated! My blood pressure was way too low, and my heart rate was dangerously high, meaning more often than not, I was almost passing out most days. Thankfully, my miracle worker of a cardiologist fixed me up with some Ivabradine and Midodrine, and within a couple of months, I felt human again, not wobbling every time I walked or feeling like I was about to pass out every time I stood up.

And then there’s my battles with mental health. Since the age of 14, I have been in therapy for OCD and depression, which I was officially diagnosed with at 22, and at the end of 2023, I finally took the leap and started medication to treat it, and let me tell you that was the best decision I ever made. As I went through years of therapy, I always told myself I wouldn’t take medication and that I’d be fine without it, but when I hit the darkest point of my life and saw no way out, myself my family and knew it was time.

The first few weeks on Sertraline were rough. I started them over Christmas of 2023 and wasn’t off the toilet the entire day, but it was so worth it! 3 months after taking it and my brain had become so much quieter, so much easier to live with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not cured, I still suffer from depressive thoughts and attacks of OCD, but my 9 plus years of therapy allow me to deal with them, rationalise them and put plans in place to get better.

Without that little pill, I don’t think I would have been able to deal with the stress of the bar course, but thankfully, I did.

I love therapy, I love the human brain and all things that go on inside it. It is truly fascinating, and I’d love to do some form of qualification in psychology or brain behaviour, or criminology. Maybe I’ll become a brain person, who knows!

Needless to say, I’ve got a bucket load of issues going on (as a lot of us do), most of which I just don’t talk about, because I don’t need to. I hate a fuss being drawn to me. This became of note to me after spending 9 months on crutches for a pelvic injury, which was humiliating. Everyone held doors and offered to carry bags for me, I was mortified (I am grateful to be clear). The only good thing was the free cup of tea being delivered by hand at my beck and call, I’d have that again. When I came off those crutches, I would hold doors for everyone I saw just to pay people back, it was brilliant.

So you might be asking, Moss, what is the point in you telling us all of this? Are you okay? Does your therapist know you are posting this? The answer is, I’m sure my therapist would be very proud, and the point is this.

The pass rate of the bar exam on average is something like 53% across all providers, meaning 47% of people fail the first time around. I am part of that 47%, and that sucks.

The bar exams were the first exams I’ve ever failed, ever. Smashed the autism test! With my music and academic achievements taken into consideration, I’ve probably taken upwards of 50 exams, and the bar was the first I failed, but I didn’t fail all of it.

If I, the autistic walking health problem, can almost pass the bar first time, what is stopping you from giving it a go? Are you scared of failing or feeling like a failure? Great, because this is the course for you. It will tear you down and make you rebuild yourself time and time again, and every time you will question yourself, your abilities and whether this is for you. I still question all of those things.

But that is exactly what this profession is all about, perseverance, and it starts from day one.

Your story won’t end like Sisyphus’ did, you will get to the top of that hill, it might just take a few tries.

You got this 😎