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Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Trivia Question of the Day!
Which U.S. appellate court has never had a Black judge?
Hint: In its 38-year history, this court has only had a few Black law clerks.
See the answer on the next page.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
In fairness, she has better form. (photo courtesy of Getty)
It was an eventful week in legal news, but the biggest story was definitely the St. Louis personal injury attorneys who pulled guns on protesters and why lawyers have special obligations to maintain professionalism at all times. All that and more of the major stories of the week.
Be sure to check out our other shows too… including but not limited to the ATL COVID Cast for discussions of the virus and the law and The Jabot about issues affecting women, minority, and LGBTQ attorneys. Check them all out here.
As far as Bill Barr, the Federal Reserve, Wells Fargo and the Nasdaq are concerned, the rules when it comes to the burgeoning marijuana industry are clear: There shouldn’t be one, and any provision of services to anyone involved in growing ganja is in clear violation of the law and regulations stemming therefrom.
The only problem with this argument is that the law isn’t so clear, since two years ago Congress made the production of hemp legal while keeping the ban on marijuana in place. In spite of that fine distinction, the fact remains that both are products of the same plant. Still, given all of that grey area, it seemed churlish to continue considering the mere cultivation of cannabis sativa itself a suspicious activity necessitating an endless series of suspicious activity reports, and so the regulators who’d have to review those tedious reports decided back in December they were no longer existentially necessary. Lest, however, the likes of Wells Fargo decided to take that advice to mean anything goes, allow the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to offer some guidance on the matter about as clear as the legal distinction between marijuana and hemp.
Banks and other institutions need to tailor anti-money-laundering programs to reflect the specific risks associated with customers that produce hemp, a variety of the cannabis plant that is often used for its fiber, as they would with any other customer, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, said in guidance published this week…. Financial institutions are expected to confirm that clients who are hemp growers are compliant with the state, tribal government or USDA licensing requirements by either obtaining a written declaration from the clients or a copy of the license, FinCEN said….
While banks no longer need to file SARs on customers solely because they are legally involved in growing hemp, financial institutions are still expected to monitor the transactions of these clients for signs of suspicious activity and file a SAR if they become aware of any unlawful activity, FinCEN said.
Banks Are Still Expected to Monitor Hemp Growers’ Transactions, FinCEN Says [WSJ]
In a 5-4 decision in Espinoza v. Montana, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Montana could not exclude religious schools from a government subsidy program for private education. The Court’s reasoning in Espinoza is that denying government aid to religious schools because of their “religious character” violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. The effect of the Espinoza decision, however, is that the other half of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty, the Establishment Clause, has been stripped of its stated objective and protection.
In plain language, the Establishment Clause prohibits the government from enacting any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” As to what “respecting an establishment” means, in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 13 (1947), the Supreme Court “recognized that the provisions of the First Amendment […] had the same objective and were intended to provide the same protection against governmental intrusion on religious liberty as the Virginia statute” for religious freedom.
In his infamous work explaining and defending religious liberty in Virginia, James Madison stated that to grant churches access to government funds was a contradiction to religion itself as “every page of it disavows a dependence on the powers of this world.” Civil support for religion also represented a “contradiction in terms” because it weakened “those who profess this Religion a pious confidence in its innate excellence and the patronage of its Author.” Later on as president, Madison was explicitly clear that “the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies” stood contrary “to the article of the Constitution which declares that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.’ ”
The idea that the First Amendment’s religious liberty provisions, which the Court has said are derived directly from the Virginia Statute, would be violated by denying churches access to government funds contradicts a stated tenet of the liberty itself. But that contradiction is precisely what the Roberts Court upheld in Espinoza.
In Espinoza, Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed Establishment Clause concerns by pointing to over three decades of precedent where the Court has upheld the distribution of government funds to religious organizations when “the link between government and religion is attenuated by private choices.” To use an analogy from the Court’s precedent, “a State may issue a paycheck to one of its employees, who may then donate all or part of that paycheck to a religious institution, all without constitutional barrier.” The fundamental structure of the Montana program, however, makes this analogy appear inapt to the one at issue in Espinoza. To understand why, we have to get into some background of the Montana tax program.
As detailed by the Montana Supreme Court, the program offers the “taxpayer a dollar-for-dollar tax credit” utilizing money from the common tax pool, to be used for tuition scholarships to private schools. In other words, the program at issue in Espinoza involves government compelling all residents through taxation to financially support a certain type of service: private education. Which after the Espinoza decision, must now include religious education for anyone who wants it. But the type of service government can compel you to fund through taxation matters (or at least is should), precisely because we have an Establishment Clause.
Think about it, when the government pays someone to be an accountant, or a groundskeeper, or a legislator, my taxes are being compelled to pay for these secular services, it is true. But it is also self-evident that paying for these secular services is where the government compulsion ends. In the program at issue in Espinoza, however, the service government is compelling must now include religious education. By mandating that the government must now provide religious education, any attenuation between government and religion evaporates. Moreover, the fact that government is allowing private actors to direct the funding does not make the government compulsion for funding the service any less significant when it occurs. At least according to a Madisonian, Virginia Statute standard and also recent Roberts Court precedent.
The framework Madison was opposing when he fought to pass the Virginia Statute would have permitted tax assessments for churches, but afforded citizens complete individual autonomy to select which church could receive the funds. All undesignated funds were directed to the state general fund for the development of “seminaries of learning,” which were not required by the text to be religious in nature in order to receive funding. However, despite the fact that this framework was nonpreferential to any specific religion or even arguably to religion itself, and despite that it gave individual citizens complete autonomy to direct the funds, Madison still opposed and ultimately helped defeat it. The reason for Madison’s opposition and insistence on the Virginia Statute standard was simple: Government providing financial aid to religion, even neutrally applied aid, nevertheless undermines religion’s exclusive authority over spiritual matters. Put simply, the Montana program the Court upheld in Espinoza quite literally mirrors the taxation framework the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom was enacted precisely to prevent.
Even if you want to dismiss this historical reasoning, however, the fact is that just two years ago a majority of the Court in Janus v. AFSCME rejected a remarkably similar “attenuated private choice” justification used in Espinoza. Even more frustrating, the reasoning by the Court in Janus was based on a Madisonian, Virginia Statute framework! In Janus, the Court held that “[f]orcing free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable raises serious First Amendment concerns. That includes compelling a person to subsidize the speech of other private speakers.” Do you see the problem here? The notion that the First Amendment guarantees against the state forcing you to subsidize the speech of private speakers, but nevertheless allows you to be forced to subsidize the religion of private citizens, is grossly illogical. But that is the First Amendment standard we are left with after Espinoza.
The differing outcomes in Janus and Espinoza reflect a broader trend over the past several decades where religion has been continually granted enormous and distinguishable favor in the law by our courts. A favoritism that comes at the great expense of everyone else’s free conscience liberty, particularly nonbelievers. To use just the latest examples, last year a federal court upheld a state’s disenfranchisement of nonbelievers from addressing their own legislatures with messages of unity and pluralism. In another federal court in Texas, nonbelievers — nearly one-fifth of the state’s entire population — were banned from performing private wedding ceremonies, for no other reason than their religious character (or lack thereof). More recently, the federal government has granted “special privileges to religious organizations beyond what is available to similarly situated nonreligious groups” under the Paycheck Protection Program. These privileges have allowed churches to receive hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars in free government subsidies while similarly situated nonreligious organizations are routinely denied any government help.
Possibly making matters even more uneven, the Supreme Court is widely expected this term to decide a case that could expand (or at the very likely minimum, keep in place) the Court’s recently created ministerial exception, meaning it is all but assured that employees at church-run schools, and only religious schools, will continue to be exempted from certain labor discrimination laws. Taken in combination, the ministerial exception and the Espinoza decision can create an even more facially absurd and legally incoherent legal standard where states can be both commanded to stay out of the employment decisions of religious schools, while at the same time existing under an obligation to fund religious schools.
The broader harm that comes from this favoritism of religion and from results such as Espinoza that force citizens to subsidize private religion is that churches become more associated with, and in fact more operationally dependent on, government. This not only furthers the increasing public trend of viewing church operations not as spiritual works, but as extensions of politics, it also causes shifts in the political order to represent direct threats to church operations as many religious schools will now be dependent (to some degree) on the Montana legislature, instead of solely on their “flock.” The “liberty” of the Establishment Clause is that it kept religion away from political influences. It is both depressing and scary to see the Court continually strip away the objectives and protections this liberty affords us all.
Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.
A lot of lawyers — particularly ones who have no direct experience with it — feel like sexual harassment is largely a thing of the past. But some select quotes from a new survey about sexual harassment in the legal profession shows otherwise. Just take a look at some of these statements:
“A judge put his hands under my suit jacket to cop a feel… in his chambers.”
“A male lawyer invited me to interview right out of law school, but instead offered me crappy pay, [and] then tried to get me to give him a blow job.”
“I had partners touch my hair, try to kiss me, hug me and pat my bottom. I was propositioned by a judge in his chambers.”
Those pull quotes are from a new survey done by Women Lawyers On Guard, a national non-partisan organization, and reveal the profession is “Still Broken” when it comes to this important issue.
In conducting the survey, WLG spoke with over 2,000 people in the legal profession, which broke down as follows:
Of the more than 2120 people who responded to the Survey, 92% identified as female and 7% as male (less than 1% preferred to self-describe or not to answer this question). The distribution of race and ethnicities paralleled that of lawyers in the legal profession and the age of respondents fell within a “bell curve.”
Of the self-identified women surveyed, 75 percent of them said they had direct experience with harassment, compared with only 22 percent of male respondents. Ninety-one percent of the harassers were identified as male. And as the chart below reveals, the frequency of harassment has decreased over the last 30 years, but not as much as one might hope:
And of the respondents who say they’ve experienced harassment, only 14 percent say they reported the incident. Thirty-five percent say they wanted to, but didn’t report, and 51 percent say they did not report the incident. Of those who reported sexual harassment, 41 percent say that those they reported the incident to were not supportive or actively harmful. Forty percent say the reporting process was supportive or very supportive and 19 percent say it was a neutral experience.
The report found that the barriers to reporting have not changed significantly over the last 30 years:
Most people do not report sexual harassment and very significant barriers to reporting still exist. Reasons for not reporting have remained stubbornly consistent over the last 30 years, including fear of job loss and other negative career repercussions, concerns about safety, the person to report to is the harasser, and doubts about whether reports will be believed.
And the study also investigated negative impacts to those who experience harassment — whether or not they reported it:
The real and lasting consequences to those who have been harassed have been largely a silent story. Respondents believed their careers and personal sense of well-being had been negatively impacted (often significantly and sometimes with lasting economic consequences) whether they reported or not. They experienced anxiety about their careers and well-being; feared retaliation; and lost productivity.
While the consequences for harassers remain frustratingly light:
Half of respondents reported that there were no consequences to the harasser even after they reported the incidents. Many more did not know if their harasser faced any consequences because the employers did not inform the respondents of any. For some respondents, the conduct got worse; the harassers often continued to work with (and some continued to harass) those they targeted. The most prevalent consequence reported by respondents was that managers gave the harassers written or verbal warnings, but this happened in only a small percentage of the situations.
All of which leads to WLG’s strong conclusion: sexual harassment in the legal profession is “sapping individual productivity and adversely impacting organizational economics at the very least, and destroying careers and organizations’ productivity, at the worst.”
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
Just a month before school is due to start, ICE is giving the boot to thousands of foreign students whose schools will be moving online this fall due to COVID.
In a three-page Broadcast Message released yesterday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that students enrolled in schools which go online-only due to the pandemic “must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status or potentially face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings.”
No one knows what will happen with coronavirus in the next four weeks. The entire California State University system announced in April that it would be offering the majority of its courses online-only, but most schools are in a sort of limbo. It was only yesterday that Harvard announced that undergrad classes would be online for the entire school year, with Rutgers following suit for the fall semester at least. Hundreds of schools are likely to do the same shortly, and now ICE has given them a hard deadline of July 15 to declare whether they intend to provide in-person instruction or go online.
It’s (probably) not that that the government is trying to unleash chaos in the student visa process and get rid of all those foreign enrollees, most of whom pay full tuition. It’s just that they don’t care if it happens.
If a foreign student just signed a yearlong lease, only to discover this week that her school is going all online, then she must leave the country right away. They do not care.
If a foreign student has enrolled in a program which will be online for the fall semester, but plans to resume in-person instruction in the spring, she has to leave now and reapply for a visa later. They do not care.
If foreign student’s program goes online-only mid-semester due to COVID, she has to leave the country immediately. They do not care.
If a university offers some in-person courses, but none in the foreign student’s program, then she has to leave. They do not care.
If a foreign student is immunocompromised and cannot attend in-person classes during a pandemic, she can’t do it from the safety of her American apartment. They do not care.
If a foreign student cannot participate in online coursework from her home country because of lack of internet, electricity, space, or due to time zone constraints, that is not ICE’s problem. They do not care.
If university enrollments across the country are thrown into absolute disarray because American immigration authorities forced thousands of foreign students to withdraw just days before school starts, then so be it. They do not care.
ICE waived the requirement for in-person instruction for the spring and summer semesters, but now they’re cracking down in a move the American Council on Education describes as “horrifying” and “both disappointing and counter-productive.”
But hey, it isn’t all bad news. Students get a whole 21 business days to coordinate with their schools to resubmit their visa paperwork attesting that they are enrolled in courses which will require physical attendance.
And if all else fails, they can simply “transfer to a school with in-person instruction,” three weeks before classes start during a pandemic.
That sound you hear is Stephen Miller laughing at the thought of excluding thousands of foreign students for an entire year no matter what happens in November.
Broadcast Message: COVID-19 and Fall 2020 [ICE Memo, July 6, 2020]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
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Less than an hour ago, we published a story about the North Carolina bar exam’s lack of even a modicum of professional respect for applicants as it locks into a July exam death drive. That’s apparently when the Colorado bar examiners asked someone to hold their beer.
This morning, the Denver Post wrote about the nascent movement to come up with some alternative to forcing over 1,000 applicants indoors for two full days of testing. For what it’s worth, the Colorado bar examiners have some powerful safety protocols planned like temperature checks (useless for pre-symptomatic patients), wearing masks (but only while moving around the exam), and an admonishment to try and stay out of gyms leading up to the exam (um, OK?). With a plan like that, it’s easy to see why so many of the applicants are up in arms.
Remember, this is the bar exam that couldn’t even report its results correctly earlier this year.
And while not every critic of the July administration is advocating for diploma privilege — the solution that some other Western states have adopted — attorney regulation counsel for the state’s high court felt the need to opine on the option specifically for the paper:
“The bar exam might not be a perfect instrument of competency, but it does help ensure basic competencies of the licensed attorneys who will be serving the public in all kinds of capacities once licensed,” Yates said. “The individuals who are asking for diploma privilege are not the members of the public who would need these privileges. The individuals who are asking are the individuals who don’t want to take the bar exam.”
Well, sort of. They’re individuals who don’t want to take the bar exam… because there’s no credible plan for giving them the test safely in July and probably not one this year.
But diploma privilege wasn’t singled out for the media by accident. It’s hard to poison the well of public discourse by complaining about an online exam or rescheduling for the October or even 2021. Those are proposals that most people would accept as entirely reasonable. Stirring up vague fears that students who already paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and three years proving their subject matter competency might be a threat to the public though… that’s the sort of message that can discredit anyone questioning the examiners!
There is, of course, little to suggest that the bar exam provides any additional assurance of basic competency. The ethics of future attorneys aren’t even covered in the same test and that professionalism exam and the character and fitness process (which has flaws but is generally a positive) are far more directly tied to public safety. But the canard that without the bar exam to weed out clearly incompetent attorneys like the then-dean of Stanford Law School is a valuable refrain for those who just want to take every opportunity to denigrate people worrying about the health of themselves and those around them.
In truth, law professors have provided a serious roadmap for a better path to licensing. Law school deans pushed the issue. State legislators are on board. But for the bar examiners, it’s all about pushing the narrative that this is less a policy proposal than a tantrum from lazy children. There is zero effort to listen, engage, produce countervailing data — just ad hominem attack after ad hominem attack.
Bierwirth said she has immunocompromised family members with chronic illnesses and autoimmune diseases who rely on her care.
“Should I go in there, take this exam and risk the life and health of my loved ones in doing so?” Bierwirth said, noting if she waited to take the exam in February, she wouldn’t have the means to support herself. “I will be forced to do it. It’s so hard.”
The Colorado bar examiners think that’s the bio of a lazy person. And they’re willing to say that out loud to anyone who will listen.
Worried about COVID-19, Colorado law school graduates seek alternative to in-person bar exam [Denver Post]
Earlier: Bar Exam Tells Woman To Stop Worrying About Petty Concerns Like ‘Health’ And Study More
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
As law school graduates plead for a licensing policy that respects basic public health concerns and some respect for the physical and psychological risks of asking students to expose themselves and by extension their loved ones to a serious and sometimes deadly disease, anyone wondering if the remaining recalcitrant bar examiners are acting upon anything but bad faith and utter contempt for the applicants, well, you’re wrong. Really, we didn’t need much more proof than reports of veiled threats of retaliation against critics in the character and fitness process, but every day brings us fresh reminders of how little the bar examination process has to do with “public protection” and how much it has to do with running an awkward Perry Mason convention.
Some bar exams have even outsourced their lack of respect for applicants. John N. Fountain of Young Moore represents the North Carolina bar exam, which plans to go off later this month despite a massive surge in infections in the state. But the exam has a waiver and isolation rooms for people actively dying during the exam so… it’s all cool. Last week, Fountain wrote a letter to a young mother and cancer survivor trying to deal with the bar exam during a global pandemic and after affirming that the examiners would grant a prior accommodation she’d requested, he decided to add some life advice in lieu of responding to her other concerns:
Should you find that your concerns as to your health and safety or that of others has become such a distraction that you cannot be prepared and at your best for the examination on July 28 and 29, 2020, then you may make the personal decision that you will not undertake the Bar Exam in 2020.
At this time, there are fewer than 30 days remaining before the administration of the Bar Exam. I urge you to spend the time wisely in preparation for the examination. It is important that you minimize distractions and focus on the upcoming examination as are the other candidates.
While this tracks the infamous, “I am altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further,” it’s an unfair comparison because Darth Vader said those words with far less dismissive condescension. The message is straightforward: the North Carolina bar examiners have what they think is an enforceable waiver so they’re sick and tired of having to worry about this superspreader event. And while Fountain may well have written these completely unnecessary words to any inquiry, the “quiet little girl, the men have made a decision” subtext is impossible not take away from this.
Your most recent email raises a number of questions as to future decisions or the rationale for past decisions by the Board. This is not the occasion for a policy debate. We wish you success in your future endeavors.
Yes, actually it is! Less than 30 days before contributing to one of the worst outbreaks of a deadly virus is absolutely the occasion for a policy debate! But of course the issue isn’t that the timing is off, it’s that the NC Bar doesn’t want to have a policy debate at all. It didn’t want to have one in March when states first started wondering if July bar exams would be a problem. It didn’t want to have one in April or May when the state was furiously patting itself on the back and planning reopening. And in June, when the risk of serious illness and even death became palpable, the bar examiners eschewed a policy debate and threw together some signs claiming the examiners were shielded from a lawsuit and called it good. If the time for a policy debate about this isn’t now when the f**k is it?
And the answer is “never.” Because the whole point is that the bar examiners in North Carolina don’t believe they should ever be forced to answer for their serial policy failures. Certainly not by mere applicants — you know, the people they theoretically trust with the future of the profession.
Earlier: North Carolina Also Demands Waiver In Case It Kills Anyone With Bar Exam
Concerned About COVID At July Bar Exam, Virginia Cancels Requirement That Applicants Wear Ties
Law School Implies Diploma Privilege Advocates Could Get Dinged On Character & Fitness
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
It’s just the flu, the test take you will.
I’ll pretend the COVID spike’s sinking.
And I’ll tell myself we must test you.
‘Cause I’m the king of wishful thinking.
–Apologies to Go West for ruining their song
BLE Member Opening Statement
Greetings and welcome to the Board of Law Examiners Zoom meeting to discuss why you think that you deserve not to kill yourself to take a test that is simply an entry barrier. We would have held this meeting in person, but to ensure our safety we decided Zoom would be better. Why do we even have a bar exam? Sure, you might cite this amazing Twitter thread about the racist history of the bar exam, but we’re here only to ensure that the bar continues with the dignity and professionalism you’ve come to expect from us BLE members.
Now, some of you have been clamoring for an online exam. We can’t have that without delaying the bar exam, costing you more money. But hey, we know you like bar loans. And, to be honest, we love all the bar exam peripheral markets, too. Some of us are even on the NCBEX board! Some state Supreme Court justices, too! Bar loans, Barbri, and, of course, the fees we charge you are ways to make sure you feel like you’ve worked hard for this.
Sure, you might have suggested that we should have planned for a COVID-19 spike all along, but we are not fortunetellers! It’s not like anyone else expected that there would be a surge in cases. Jeez. We’re doing the best we can with the information we occasionally read in the Bar Journal. Ooh, here’s a lovely article about how much we in the profession care about your mental health! I mean, once you’re in the profession. Not now.
Let’s talk about the meeting agenda. We will let the deans advocate on your behalf first. Because we recognize that they represent some semblance of the profession. But they don’t have your interests at heart! They just want to make money for their schools. We don’t see ALL of THEIR SCHOOLS going online! See? Only we truly care about you. For that reason, we will be very rude to them and hold them in utter contempt. We will roll our eyes at them and make sure you are very clear that we do not like them.
Next, we will eagerly await your stories about why you’re a lazy-ass piece of … I mean, concerned about your health. Some of us will look like we are bored or falling asleep, but that is because you have moved us so much that we can barely keep the tears from falling out of our eyes.
You might be outraged and try to take pictures of our seemingly snoozing and bored faces and claim we are cold-hearted, but we want you to keep in mind how important it is that you maintain your professionalism. You haven’t gone through character and fitness yet! No, we aren’t threatening you. We just want to make sure your deans do.
In any event, the death rate for COVID-19 is dropping, so please stop being so dramatic. There’s no reason that you all can’t show up and dress in three-piece suits (okay, in Virginia we’ll let you lose the tie) to take the bar exam. This is about professionalism! And part of being in a profession is treating people like shit! Ask many senior partners at major law firms!
Did I mention that I took the bar exam while having appendix surgery? These are different times indeed, my fragile test takers!
Now, some of you have actually had COVID-19 and have asked for an extension. Well, guess what? Life’s hard in the big law. Denied! Suck it up! Yeah, sure you have COVID-19. Whatever. Just take the damn bar exam!
By the way, did you see that great article in the Bar Journal about healing with compassion?
Speaking of which, we are very concerned for your health. For that reason, we’ll be making you show up early and quarantine at the bar exam site, where we have set up cots. But that is only after you have passed our mandatory $150 COVID-19 test. While you await the result, you must sleep in your car. Please be dressed professionally.
Also, you’ll need to sign a waiver. Basically, you absolve us of all liability for forcing you to take this exam. Consider it professional courtesy.
Lastly, I just want to say how important it is that we are very civil to one another during this heated time. Please make sure to keep your remarks civil. Don’t engage in any personal attack (like pointing out that we’re sleeping or maybe have conflicts of interest). This isn’t personal. It’s business! I mean, uh, professionalism.
Speaking of which, please catch the latest mandatory professionalism CLE after you pass the bar. Professionalism is important!
By the way, if we change the bar exam date and time, we’ll let you know at the last possible minute. Because being needlessly frustrated is all part of professionalism!
Okay, let’s hear from the deans while I do some online shopping!”
LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.
