Yeah, 2026 is right here. Are we completely happy about that? Now we’ve got the “Donroe Doctrine.” The rumble below our ft shouldn’t be an earthquake however our founding fathers and moms turning over of their graves on the newest escapade of 47. As soon as an actual property developer, all the time an actual property developer. And we thought 2025 was a dumpster fire.
Does anybody else really feel ambivalent about LinkedIn? Use LinkedIn and the tip consequence is similar: senses of panic, inadequacy, insufficiency, no matter you select to name a disaster of confidence. And that’s the sense I’ve each single time I sign up to LinkedIn. Who ARE these peeps who ask to attach? I can’t decide any of them out of a lineup.
Optimists, narcissists, pessimists, tireless self-promoters. I perceive the necessity to put your self on the market, to get seen, to get employed, however the place is the boundary between advertising and shameless ubermarketing? Proper, I suppose there’s not one any extra.
What’s our occupation going to do that yr to talk fact to energy? Will we’ve got any constitutional ensures left by the midterms? What sort of nation do we would like? What sort of nation do we’ve got now? What sort of nation will probably be there by the tip of this yr? Will this be one other yr of silence and intimidation, one other yr of knee-bending? Are we now so dulled by the occasions of final yr, to not point out the occasions of final weekend, that we are actually petrified of even squeaking up, not to mention talking up?
In the meantime, have you learnt the saying that too many cooks spoil the broth? The State Bar of California is soliciting feedback from its licensees (equivalent to me) concerning the “future of the bar exam.” As licensees, fka “members,” we have heard this before.
Survey questions embody “issues for examination improvement,” whether or not the examination ought to embody a California-specific part, varied future bar examination choices (e.g., new California bar examination, NCBE Subsequent Gen, and different selections to be ranked preferentially). The State Bar additionally needs to know what sort of regulation faculty schooling licensees had, if any, earlier than sitting for the examination, what number of instances wanted to go, and different statistical knowledge. The California Supreme Court docket had previously directed the State Bar to create a brand new bar examination, not a straightforward activity below the most effective of circumstances, and for my State Bar, circumstances usually are not the most effective. Will probably be attention-grabbing to see the outcomes of the survey.
For therefore a few years, the mantra has been “crucial pondering,” which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the target evaluation and analysis of a problem with a purpose to type a judgment.” That’s one of many components that has drawn numerous consideration when it comes to find out how to redefine and rework the bar examination.
Right here’s a suggestion for 2026. It’s known as “crucial ignoring,” and I’m not making this up. And what ought to we be critically ignoring? How about social media? If anybody has ever learn any of my posts through the years whining about social media — aka “unsocial media” — the idea of “crucial ignoring” may be very interesting.
I like the analogy Christopher Mims utilized in his latest column within the Wall Avenue Journal: “If social media had been a literal ecosystem, it might be about as wholesome as Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River within the Nineteen Sixties — when it was so polluted it repeatedly caught hearth.” Whereas lots of you weren’t even on the planet then, we dinosaur attorneys bear in mind. At this time, the consequences of social media have led to sad penalties, meant and unintended, for attorneys and judges, in different phrases, the fashionable dumpster hearth.
What precisely is “crucial ignoring?” It’s avoiding purple flags; it’s defending your individual vulnerability to social media by fixed vigilance. It’s ditching social media for psychological well being. It’s ignoring all the web rubbish, abandoning our on-line habit. Social media has captured your consideration: what do you consider and the way did you attain that conclusion? Mims says that the primary job is “… to battle our evolutionary intuition to soak up all out there data, and as a substitute filter out unreliable sources and unhealthy knowledge.”
We overlook that focus is a scarce useful resource — and rising scarcer day-after-day, particularly with AI. We’d like to have the ability to flip away from social media, from its faux information, exaggerations, and downright malicious mischief. Social media has turn into the village city crier, and you realize what can occur to messengers.
Jill Switzer has been an lively member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practising regulation in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a various authorized profession, together with stints as a deputy district legal professional, a solo follow, and a number of other senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which supplies her the chance to see dinosaurs, millennials, and people in-between work together — it’s not all the time civil. You’ll be able to attain her by electronic mail at [email protected].