ProfessorTommy.Tips

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