Professors Turn Focus to Practical Bar Passage Help
As a way to assist Florida bar passage efforts, Cooley Law School professors Paul Carrier and Matthew Marin, along with recent graduate Sara Marin (no relation) spent several years collaborating on a contract law project that teaches all MBE-tested subjects through the use of all-Florida cases.
The book is comprised of 26 chapters (easily broken down into one-term, two-term, and trimester teaching segments) and is supplemented by weekly fill-in-the-blanks outlines, one-page attack outlines, and “teacher’s manuals” in Spanish, French, Croatian, and Cyrillic Russian, along with a serious start on Swedish. Special thanks to Brittney Lainez, Sonja Nishku, Melisa Hrnjic, Nina Yakubov, Alexander Zaretser, Ronja Luka Akergen, David Levin and Amber Gonska for their incredible dedication to the translations, outlines, and website.
The book teaches all MBE-tested topics, and the laws of Contracts are substantially similar with very few state-specific differences. To make the information quickly accessible to readers, the authors uploaded all the materials to www.mylegs.org. (“mylegs” of course is the Statute of Frauds mnemonic device.)
With regard to the state differences, these appear to be related more to a state law’s place on a chronological timeline (older, more rigid and formalistic rules compared to newer, commerce-enhancing and flexible rules, i.e., the Williston- vs. Corbin approaches of legal formalism vs. legal realism.) Professor Marin, as Director of Academic and Student Services, ensures that no MBE topic is left unaddressed.
Having finished that project, Professor Carrier turned to blogging in short articles (50-plus) aimed at reminding upcoming bar-takers of the most important topics that may be tested.
Professors Carrier and Marin included a special chapter on government contracts in their casebook along with materials on third-party beneficiary rules, and Professor Carrier went so far as to predict that the Florida Bar Examiners could intertwine a third-party beneficiary question with some sovereign immunity implications. See posts of July 15, 2020 and Aug. 4, 2020 in the articles on Facebook page “Florida Contract Law.” It turns out that very issue showed up on Michigan’s most recent bar examination.
Professor Carrier blogs frequently on Contracts, Negotiable Instruments, and Secured Transactions at Facebook page “Florida Contract Law.”
