ProfessorTommy.Tips

Yesterday, the National Conference of Bar Examiners released a new document: " NextGen UBE Constructed Response Guide ." It's touted as the "NCBE’s Official Resource for Understanding and Responding to the Written Components of the NextGen Uniform Bar Examination.” The document is attached for your reference. If you're taking the NextGen UBE in July 2026, I highly recommend that you review this new document and the previously released resources found at the end of the documen

Last week, journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were arrested and charged in connection with coverage of a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, with the government pursuing the charges through a grand jury indictment. I’m not weighing in on whether these indictments are correct, justified, constitutional, politically motivated, or anything else. I’m using the headline as a clean bar-exam hook to answer a question you may see in some form: What does it take to return

If you’re studying for the bar right now, you may have seen this NCBE update: "Effective with the July 2026 bar exam, the following areas will no longer be tested on the MEE: Conflict of Laws, Family Law, Trusts and Estates, and Secured Transactions. From July 2026 through February 2028, both Family Law and Trusts and Estates will be tested regularly through the Multistate Performance Test." That announcement might have you wondering: “Wait … do I still need to learn Family L

California is officially in “pick a path” mode for what comes after the Multistate Bar Examination (the current NCBE-licensed multiple-choice portion of the bar exam) is eliminated with the July 2028 bar exam. State bar leaders recently advanced two different routes for deeper study. Option 1: Go National (NextGen UBE, no California add-on) One track is to adopt the NCBE’s NextGen Uniform Bar Exam without a California-specific component. Supporters point to the benefits you’d

Yesterday, climber Alex Honnold completed a ropeless (“free solo”) ascent of Taipei 101 as part of a Netflix-produced event —an undeniably high‑risk feat that instantly sparked the same reaction most people have when watching extreme stunts: “That is dangerous.” I don’t know what the contractual negotiations looked like behind the scenes (permits, insurance, releases, waivers, safety protocols, etc.), including how risk and responsibility may have been allocated among the pr

Some pop-culture moments don’t happen because a studio planned a crossover. They happen because the calendar accidentally creates one. And people can’t resist treating it like an event. We saw that in Summer 2023 with “ Barbenheimer ”: Barbie and Oppenheimer opened on the same day (July 21, 2023) and audiences turned it into an unlikely double-feature phenomenon. Two completely different vibes. One shared release date. Suddenly, “which one are you seeing?” became “are you d

I recently broke my pinky toe. It’s the kind of injury that feels almost comical to even say out loud. A pinky toe? That’s barely a toe. It’s the bar prep equivalent of thinking, “It’s just one small issue. Surely it won’t matter.” So I did what a lot of smart, capable people do with small problems: I ignored it. I broke it on Dec. 21, 2025. At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal. I could still walk. I could still function. I told myself it would “work itself out.” I didn't

January 15 is National Hat Day. It's a fun excuse to break out your favorite cap, beanie, fedora, or “good luck” hamburger hat. But on bar exam day, headgear is one of those “seems harmless, becomes a problem” items. Here’s the big picture: State boards of bar examiners' and the National Conference of Bar Examiners' NCBE test-day policies generally require your head (and often ears) to be uncovered for exam security. And many jurisdictions expressly prohibit hats/caps/hoods i

For years, the Uniform Bar Examination portability pitch was simple: take the exam in one UBE jurisdiction place, transfer an eligible score to another UBE jurisdiction. The NextGen UBE transition is turning that simple idea into a more complicated planning problem, especially during the July 2026 through February 2028 window when some jurisdictions will be administering the NextGen UBE and others will still be offering the Legacy UBE. Recently, the landscape has started to c

Mike Tomlin is the longtime head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers , and he’s famous for delivering short, memorable one-liners in press conferences. (Steelers fans call them “ Tomlinisms .”) After the Steelers and Ravens played a chaotic, down-to-the-wire game that ended on a missed last-second field goal that sent the Steelers into the playoffs and ended the Ravens' season, a reporter asked Tomlin to put into words how razor-thin the margin was between season over and kee