Stephen Hammer, a graduate of Harvard Law and top scorer on the July 2019 Texas Bar Exam.

Stephen Hammer dealt with a few distractions while he studied for the July Texas Bar Examination for six weeks over the summer, namely, taking care of five kids along with his wife and orchestrating a move from Ohio to Washington, D.C.

But Hammer—who served two tours of duty as a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan before attending Harvard Law School, and is currently on the second of three federal clerkships— earned the highest score on the high-stakes test.

The native of Carrollton, a suburb of Dallas, hopes to enter private practice as an appellate lawyer in Texas after he completes his third federal clerkship, which begins next year, for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.

Despite his resume, Hammer, who is married with five children and a sixth on the way, said he was surprised to get a call last Friday from Texas Supreme Court Justice Brett Busby, who told Hammer he had earned the highest score on the July exam. The overall pass rate for the July exam was 68.47%.

"It was a really challenging test. You go through it and you feel like you didn't know a large number of the questions," said Hammer.

Hammer graduated from Princeton University in 2009 and then spent two years at the University of Oxford, where he studied theology on a Rhodes Scholarship, before going on active duty in the Army in 2011. He enrolled in law school at Harvard in 2015 when his active duty concluded.

While at Princeton, Hammer decided to become a lawyer. He was in the Army ROTC and initially thought about serving as a Judge Advocate General, but changed his mind and decided to become an infantry officer. He also graduated from Ranger School in 2012. He said he views his career as a lawyer as a way continue the public service he started in the military.

"I loved serving my country in uniform and really care about the rule of law," he said.

That military service taught him discipline, he said, along with an ability to relate to people and appreciate their perspective. On his first tour in 2012, he was a platoon leader on a personal security detachment, and on his second tour in 2013, was the executive officer of a company helping to train Afghan forces to secure the presidential election there the next year.

"One of the best things about the military is you get to work with people of all different backgrounds and education," he said. "That gave me a lot more empathy."

He studied for about six weeks last summer between his clerkship in Columbus, Ohio, for Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and another clerkship in D.C. for Judge Gregory Katsas of the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. He said he took a bar review course, but except for talking to a few friends who took the Texas bar exam last year, he mostly studied on his own.

"I just tried to have the attitude of being a professional about learning this material. Part of the task is to make something inherently dull more interesting. Judge Sutton encouraged me to take that perspective," Hammer said.

Hammer said he and his wife, Meredith, haven't taken time yet to celebrate his passing the bar, but they plan to do so when they travel to Austin—without kids—for his bar induction ceremony.

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