Harvard Law School grad Shackelford is a born multitasker. While studying for the bar exam this year, he was working full time at Susman Godfrey as an associate in the Dallas office and helping parent twin toddlers. But Shackelford says it helped that he’d already taken and passed a bar exam before (he’s licensed in Virginia). Following his 2005 graduation he also spent two years as a law clerk, first for Judge Michael Boudin of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston and then for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court. At Susman Godfrey, Shackelford says he practices general commercial litigation, and his caseload includes a variety of issues from contracts to patents and antitrust. Shackelford says he didn’t take any bar review classes, he just bought some books and “studied pretty intensely the entire month of February.” He felt like he passed but was amazed when, during a regular workday at Susman Godfrey, he received a telephone call from Texas Supreme Court Justice Scott Brister telling him he’d gotten the top score. When he realized who was on the line, he says he got “very nervous,” but Brister reassured him, saying, ” ‘Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble.’ ” When Shackelford gave his speech at the swearing-in ceremony in Austin, the only family by his side was his mom. His wife wasn’t able to come, he says, “ because she was very, very pregnant.” And a few weeks after the ceremony, he got the best surprise ever: A newborn son.

July 2007 Exam: Susan Cannon

Like Shackelford, Cannon also got a call from Brister informing her that she was tied for the July bar exam’s high-score honor. A University of Texas School of Law grad, Cannon was at work as an associate with the trial section of Baker Botts in Dallas when she got the call, a position she had started after spending a year clerking for Judge Philip R. Martinez of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso. Ironically, she says someone at lunch that day had told her that a state Supreme Court justice typically called the high-scorers, but Cannon says she had no indication that she’d be the one to get that call. “I was very surprised,” says Cannon, whose study regimen consisted of taking a bar review class and following the recommended study schedule when the classes ended. It doesn’t bother her that she shares the honor with another lawyer. “One of the nicest things about sharing [the honor] is that we also shared speech time as well.”

July 2006 Exam: Rick Haan

Rick Haan


Haan may have earned the top score on the bar exam, but that doesn’t mean the Texas Tech University School of Law grad walked into his new gig with the real estate transactions group at Thompson & Knight with the topic down cold. “I still had a lot to learn. I still had to ramp up like everyone else,” says Haan, who’s an associate with the firm’s Dallas office. Two years beyond the bar exam, he is “perfectly happy” at the firm and says he is called upon from time to time to offer test-taking advice. “There have been some people from school and from the firm who have called to ask advice, some acquaintances in other states,” he says. So far he hasn’t loaned out his notes to anyone — “I think I still have them, but they’re collecting dust” — but he has been willing to dispense advice when asked. What he says is this: Make the fear of failure work for you. “The fear of failure drives everyone to study,” he says. “Probably more than you need to.”

July 2005 Exam: Amy P. Mohan

Amy P. Mohan