This Year Is Still Different: An Outdated Bar Exam in Troubled Times
** This post is coauthored with Sara J. Berman, Marsha Griggs, and Carol Chomsky. All four of us are members of the Collaboratory on Legal Education and Licensing for Practice, a group of 10 scholars...
View ArticlePublic Comment on the Bar Exam
David Lat is hosting a “Notice and Comment on the Bar Exam” at Original Jurisdiction. Several commentators have offered thoughtful insights. Here’s mine: One of the many problems with the bar exam is...
View ArticleStephen Carter on the Bar Exam
Eminent Yale Professor Stephen Carter has penned a thoughtful critique of the bar exam. Professor Carter notes the exam’s similarities to the LSAT, which some law schools have abandoned as an...
View ArticleDon’t Disparage
The AALS Annual Meeting is wrapping up here in San Diego. I’ve attended several terrific panels, enjoyed time with old and new friends, and had many engaging conversations. But one comment from this...
View ArticleThe Rule Against Perpetuities
We’ve known for a while that the July 2022 UBE included two (yes, two!) essays requiring detailed knowledge of the rule against perpetuities. NCBE has now released the essay questions from that exam,...
View ArticleThe Bot Takes the Bar Exam
What does ChatGPT tell us about lawyering competence and the bar exam? I explore that with my colleague Mary Lu Bilek in this column for Bloomberg Law. Lawyers can do so much more than bots–it’s time...
View ArticleGPT-4 on Legal Education and Licensing
ChatGPT has written passable law school essays, and GPT-4 has aced the bar exam. But what if, instead of asking AI to take our tests, we asked it about the future of legal education and licensing? My...
View ArticleThe Bot, the Bar Exam, and Entry-Level Law Practice
Generative AI will transform legal education and law practice in ways that we are just starting to imagine. To stretch our imaginations–and begin thinking about the ramifications for legal education–I...
View ArticleThe Bot Labors On: More Help for the Entry-Level Lawyer
This post is part of a series in which I’m exploring how artificial intelligence (especially the GPT-4 tool available from OpenAI) can assist entry-level lawyers in their work. In my first post I...
View ArticleQuestions for Your Client
In my last two posts, I explored the ways in which GPT-4 could help a new lawyer identify legal issues in a client problem. Most law graduates are fairly adept at issue spotting, but they can still...
View ArticleGPT-4 Beats the Bar Exam
In the first three posts in this series, I used a bar exam question as an example of the type of problem a new lawyer might confront in practice. I then explored how GPT-4 might help a new lawyer...
View ArticleThe Bot Updates the Bar Exam
** Update 11/15/23: NCBE has deleted the sample question I discuss here from their site. If you want to see the original question, you can find it through the Wayback Machine at this link. In my last...
View ArticleLay Down the Law
In my last post, I discussed a sample bar exam question that requires knowledge of a rule followed by a minority of US jurisdictions. The question seems inconsistent with NCBE’s intent to test “a...
View ArticleFundamental Legal Concepts and Principles
I talk to a lot of lawyers about licensing, and many suggest that the licensing process should ensure that new lawyers know basic concepts that are essential for competent law practice in any field....
View ArticleThe Bot Takes a Bow
Late law month I wrote about a sample NextGen question that GPT-4 discovered was based on an outdated, minority rule of law. NCBE has now removed the question from their website, although it is still...
View Article