Andrew Hoffman’s Blog

As I sit and tirelessly read my BarBri bar review outlines and watch the lectures, sometimes my mind drifts off. There’s just so much law to review learn for the first time that it gets tedious sometimes. I think about how studying for the bar could be more exciting and what I would do if I were to start my own bar review company one day. I think my bar review company would have to involve Mr. T as the primary lecturer.

BarBri has a pretty good thing going with Chuck Shonholtz, one of the BarBri main lecturers. He has that cocky attitude that I love and hate at the same time. Chuck has called his viewers “sucker[s]” and “hippie[s]” and threatened to come to the viewers’ houses and kick us if we were to read a hornbook on the rule against perpetuities (not that I would ever do that!). He also said that viewers must use “common-freakin’-sense” in answering Multistate questions—does that imply that if we get the answer wrong, we have no common sense? And then he makes bombastic statements like, “the LORD does not look favorably upon jerks.” He does a good job.

But what Chuck does well, I think Mr. T could do better. Mr. T already has at least a 25 year record of “pity[ing] the fool,” a record I think Chuck is trying to emulate. Although Chuck does a good job, I think a Mr. T bar lecture would be more exciting. Mr. T could toss in his catch phrases to liven things up—who wouldn’t want to hear Mr. T say “don’t make me mad” and then growl? He could weave the phrase “shut up, fool” into his examples. Or if people were talking in the live lecture, he could say, “quit your jibba jabba!” These are things I would pay to hear and I think would make studying a little more exciting.

Additionally, Mr. T already has a long-established record of advocating for education and perseverance, qualities that are necessary to pass the bar exam. He is a fierce advocate of good study habits, as evidenced by his 1984 motivational video, “Be Somebody or Be Somebody’s Fool,” in which he rapped (at 2:55 in the video):

You better study real hard and stay in school /
And everybody knows Mr. T don’t knock /
And it ain’t no fun just scrapin’ by /
So if you want to be cool, just like me, /
You better try real hard to be somebody

With the broad U.S. economy arguably in a recession and the legal market suffering massive layoffs, passing the bar now is of the utmost importance. To “be somebody” and avoid “just scrapin’ by,” a law school graduate must procure legal employment; to accomplish this, passing the bar exam is necessary. I think Mr. T knows what’s best.