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Here’s why I’m a bar exam abolitionist: before teaching I practiced for 11 years. The first time I needed any of the information I learned just for the bar exam was the first time I taught BA—when I had to learn it again to teach it to students just for the bar. For example: 1/7
When I teach UCC, I spend a whole lot of time teaching things that bar examiners love because it makes for sexy fact patterns, but that was preempted by federal law every time I saw it in practice 2/7
When I teach PR, I don’t have time to teach student the most important thing I needed to know: how to handle settlements and client money. Instead I spend excessive time on conflicts...a process we always contracted for and around 3/7
When I teach BA do I have time to focus on what the biggest issues are for practioners right now, or even what has mattered in the last 30 years? No, I spend a ridiculous amount of time on classifying agency cause bar examiners. Never mattered. IC vs EE was the issue. 4/7
Even basic first year contracts. Every case I ever worked on dealt with a contract somewhere in the case. No what we never challenged? Consideration. Where is there consideration missing on contracts in fantastical scenarios? The bar exam. 5/7
Since my first day as a law professor, I’ve wondered whether other academic disciplines discuss and research obsolete concepts, not out of intellectual curiosity, but because a random assembly of old white dudes have decided those fact patterns are the best way to test them. 6/7
In other words, as legal academics we are influenced and possibly harmed by an arbitrary system created to ensure that a certain percentage of the people we work hard to educate have their careers delayed for the sole purpose of fake prestige. 7/7
