Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I checking in with Vanderbilt Law School's Cat Moon on what she has dubbed the #BloodyBarpocolypse. That's the practice of some bar exam jurisdictions prohibiting test takers from bringing in their own feminine hygiene products. For Moon and her supporters, the ban exemplifies more fundamental problems with the attorney licensing exam—which has been pummeled with criticism amid the COVID-19 pandemic. On a lighter note, I touch base with University of Iowa law professor Greg Schill in the final weeks of the Yada Yada Law School. The fake Seinfeld-based online law school has been a rousing success and now has a charitable bent. Read on and stay safe out there!

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

   

#BloodyBarpocolypse

Of all the things I thought I might write about the hot mess that is this year's bar exam, feminine hygiene products were definitely not on my list. But it's 2020 folks, so nothing is off the table. Here goes: Cat Moon, the Director of Innovation Design for Vanderbilt Law School's Program on Law and Innovation, caused a stir on Twitter last week when she pointed out that Arizona bans bar examinees from bringing their own feminine hygiene products into the test. (She learned of the policy after a candidate in Arizona tweeted about it.) It turns out that Texas, Pennsylvania, and possibly other jurisdictions have similar policies, and provide candidates with tampons and the like at the exam site. Bar examiners generally prohibit test takers from bringing possessions in with them, but for Moon—who has been monitoring bar exam cancelations and inaction from licensing body with increasing concern—the feminine hygiene product ban is a bridge too far.

"These restrictions are presumably to prevent cheating," she told me when I caught up with her Friday. "I don't know what someone is going to write on a tampon that's going to help them on the bar exam. But that aside, if you look at these security restrictions, they clearly communicate, 'We do not trust these adults at all to not cheat.'"

People responded to Moon on Twitter, noting that even in jurisdictions where test takers are allowed to being their own products, they must be brought in a clear plastic bag and be inspected. Now, Moon has launched an online survey to gather feminine hygiene product polices among different bar exam jurisdictions. A group of academics is also drafting a letter to the National Conference of Bar Examiners with a goal of getting them to push individual jurisdictions to rescind those policies. The online outcry has already paid dividends. Arizona on Friday reversed course and told examinees that they could bring in their own feminine hygiene products.

There's more going on here than just disbelief that some bar examiners view tampons as a potential security threat, though. This bar exam cycle has turned into a disaster, and the widespread frustration people feel over how bar authorities have handled the COVID-19 pandemic—which includes canceling in-person exams less than two weeks ahead of time, moving forward with in-person tests this month when the U.S. is hitting record highs for coronavirus cases, and pulling the plug on exams without telling candidates what their new options are—is resurfacing many of the long-standing critiques of the test. The biggest one, of course, is that the exam doesn't actually determine who will be a good lawyer and should be rethought entirely. Here's Moon:

"Following all of this has been incredibly disappointing. I see leaders of licensure in our profession completely fail to act creatively and responsibly. [The feminine hygiene products issue], for me, was kind of a final straw of such a fundamentally and deeply troubling way of controlling this whole process. I started sharing my concern on Twitter and the world has chimed in."

My thoughts: I agree with Moon that banning feminine hygiene products is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what has gone wrong and what bar examinees have to deal with. But this one is a quick and easy fix: Let examinees bring their own tampons! Sheesh.

 

A Return to the Yada Yada Law School

One of my favorite stories from the past few months is this one I wrote in May about the Yada Yada Law School—a faux online law school put together by a group of law professors who share a love of the 90s sitcom "Seinfeld." It gave me a nice break from the doom and gloom of COVID-19 coverage. So this week I decided to check back in with University of Iowa Law Professor Greg Schill, who is the mastermind behind the school, which is actually a weekly series of 13 hour-long lectures that explore different aspects of the law through the lens of "Seinfeld." (Schill is also the Art Vandelay Dean & Kenny Rogers Roasters Foundation Chair in Business Law, har har.)

The Yada Yada Law School had just wrapped up its ninth session when Schill and I spoke, and he told me that the project has been a rousing success. Weekly attendance has ranged from several hundred to nearly 1,000, and three more sessions were added to the original 10. More professors have also joined the Yada Yada faculty—so many people wanted to teach that Schill, "in true decanal fashion" gave up his spot teaching the session on contract law. The focus of the project has shifted as well. Here's Schill:

"We now have a charitable purpose. Initially, this was friends and colleagues from different schools putting something together that would be entertaining and hopefully a little educational during quarantine. But because we had the uptake that we did, we now have an email list which is several thousand people—we realized that we had become something larger than we intended. So we decided to raise money for the COVID-19 Relief Fund of Legal Services of New York City."

The classes are free but Yada Yada has asked for donations from students. They quickly blew past the initial $5,000 fundraising goal and have generated more than $13,000 in donations. Schill said they hope to reach $15,000 by the end of the project. Yada Yada even hosted a special Zoom presentation by TV historian Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, author of the book "Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything," for those who had made donations.

Another key part of the project is that all of the lectures are recorded and posted to the Yada Yada Law School's YouTube channel, so people who missed the live versions can still soak up the sitcom's lawyerly lessons. Moreover, the videos are under a Creative Commons license, meaning that law professors who want to use the lectures—or portions of them—are free to do so with attribution.

According to Schill, about 60% of the Yada Yada students have been law students, lawyers, retired lawyers or law professors. Another 20% are people considering law schools, and the remaining 20% are just people who love all things Seinfeld. And the fake school is quickly becoming Schill's claim to fame.

"I was interviewing someone at a major law firm for a research project I'm doing and the first thing they said was, 'So are you the guy behind the Yada Yada Law School?'"

Extra Credit Reading

There has been lots of action on the bar exam front. New York canceled its in-person September exam but hasn't yet told test takers what the new plan is. California switched its September bar exam into an online October test. New Jersey is also going with the October online test, and Louisiana pulled the plug on both the in-person and online that was scheduled for later this month.

The law school applicant pool has rebounded after a spring slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Law School Admission Council.

Hundreds of recent law graduates don't know when they're starting their new law firm associate jobs. A recent survey from the National Association for Law Placement found that half of law firms offices have yet to announce new associate start dates.

Law schools are relieved the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has walked back a rule that would have forced international students to attend class in-person this fall, but they say the issue created unnecessary chaos during an already difficult period.

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I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]