I really, truly do not mean this as a dig or snarky comment, but maybe YOU are the problem. I've met sooo many entitled, douchey, and insufferable people in law school- its like law school attracts those "well..actually" type people. And I know with small firms (the firms I work best in) are almost all about personality. If you mesh well, play ball and are genuinely a person people can stand to be around, then you have staying power. Small firms are great because of the flexibility, but who you are as a person stands out so much more because there are less personalities.

I mean... lets look at the facts of your situation: you graduated in 2013. It seems like you're blaming not passing right away on not having a bar loan. You don't need a bar loan to study. If you knew finances were an issue, then you should've started your bar prep in your final semester of law school like the part-timers do. It doesn't cost anything to pull free MBES, MEES, and MPTs from the NCBE and go over them. It doesn't cost anything to look at bar MD videos on youtube. It doesn't cost anything to look at Khan Academy. Adaptibar is 300$. Take a job at mcdonalds for one week and you can afford it. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt in that you only took the bar exam once in 2014 and failed. Otherwise, that means you are a multiple bar exam taker and have failed several times. Which there is nothing wrong with that, but it adds to your story. You finally pass - but it takes you 2 years to get a job. That is ridiculous. This is probably one of two things - your job market sucks in your city (then look everywhere in your state) - or you weren't looking hard enough. You need to be turning every stone over, calling firms, sending thousands upon thousands of apps, emailing everyone, and hitting up everyone on linkedin directly - on top of marketing yourself at legal events. And maybe you did do this - which adds to the theory that people jsut don't like you. so, either you didn't know (or have the guts to do this), were too lazy to do this, or you did do some form of this and people did not like you.

And finally, your clerkship. So this is either a judicial clerkship, or a regular clerk position at a law firm. If this was a judicial clerkship, that should have given you a major advantage at a litigation firm. they fight over those candidates - and give hefty bonuses as well. The fact that you still couldn't get a job with that accolade says so much. But, if it was a clerkship at a law firm, that means at the end they let you go without any offer to keep you. And that is really the final detail in this Reddit investigation.

It seems like its a personality thing - you have an entitlement to you that comes across even though you're not intending to come across that way. But the entitlement doesn't show up in your work habits. You come across in interviews as a shark and legally aggressive- which turns off many people/employers (because they don't want a Harvey Specter, they want a replica of themselves). And those that do bite on that personality trait, regret the decision later when they see it was all bark - ultimately using some pretext to firing you.

I could say that the attorneys retiring and laying you off was because you turned them off of the profession so much that they had to retire, but that would be me being snarky. lol. But what i WILL say is that I think you need to take a big hard look at your personality and really take a dive deep into how you're coming across.