Yeah, 2026 is here. Are we happy about that? Now we have the “Donroe Doctrine.” The rumble under our feet is not an earthquake but our founding fathers and mothers turning over in their graves at the latest escapade of 47. Once a real estate developer, always a real estate developer. And we thought 2025 was a dumpster fire.
Does anyone else feel ambivalent about LinkedIn? Use LinkedIn and the end result is the same: senses of panic, inadequacy, insufficiency, whatever you choose to call a crisis of confidence. And that is the sense I have every single time I sign in to LinkedIn. Who ARE these peeps who ask to connect? I can’t pick any of them out of a lineup.
Optimists, narcissists, pessimists, tireless self-promoters. I understand the need to put yourself out there, to get noticed, to get hired, but where is the boundary between marketing and shameless ubermarketing? Right, I guess there’s not one any more.
What is our profession going to do this year to speak truth to power? Will we have any constitutional guarantees left by the midterms? What kind of country do we want? What kind of country do we have now? What kind of country will be there by the end of this year? Will this be another year of silence and intimidation, another year of knee-bending? Are we now so dulled by the events of last year, not to mention the events of last weekend, that we are now fearful of even squeaking up, let alone speaking up?
Meanwhile, do you know the saying that too many cooks spoil the broth? The State Bar of California is soliciting comments from its licensees (such as me) about the “future of the bar exam.” As licensees, fka “members,” we have heard this before.
Survey questions include “considerations for exam development,” whether the exam should include a California-specific component, various future bar exam options (e.g., new California bar exam, NCBE Next Gen, and other choices to be ranked preferentially). The State Bar also wants to know what kind of law school education licensees had, if any, before sitting for the exam, how many times needed to pass, and other statistical data. The California Supreme Court had previously directed the State Bar to create a new bar exam, not an easy task under the best of circumstances, and for my State Bar, circumstances are not the best. It will be interesting to see the results of the survey.
For so many years, the mantra has been “critical thinking,” which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.” That’s one of the elements that has drawn a lot of attention in terms of how to redefine and rework the bar exam.
Here’s a suggestion for 2026. It’s called “critical ignoring,” and I am not making this up. And what should we be critically ignoring? How about social media? If anyone has ever read any of my posts over the years whining about social media — aka “unsocial media” — the concept of “critical ignoring” is very appealing.
I love the analogy Christopher Mims used in his recent column in the Wall Street Journal: “If social media were a literal ecosystem, it would be about as healthy as Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River in the 1960s — when it was so polluted it repeatedly caught fire.” While many of you were not even on the planet then, we dinosaur lawyers remember. Today, the effects of social media have led to unhappy consequences, intended and unintended, for lawyers and judges, in other words, the modern dumpster fire.
What exactly is “critical ignoring?” It’s avoiding red flags; it’s protecting your own vulnerability to social media by constant vigilance. It’s ditching social media for mental health. It’s ignoring all the online garbage, abandoning our online addiction. Social media has captured your attention: what do you believe and how did you reach that conclusion? Mims says that the number one job is “… to fight our evolutionary instinct to absorb all available information, and instead filter out unreliable sources and bad data.”
We forget that attention is a scarce resource — and growing scarcer every day, especially with AI. We need to be able to turn away from social media, from its fake news, exaggerations, and downright malicious mischief. Social media has become the village town crier, and you know what can happen to messengers.
Jill Switzer has been an active member of the State Bar of California for over 40 years. She remembers practicing law in a kinder, gentler time. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see dinosaurs, millennials, and those in-between interact — it’s not always civil. You can reach her by email at oldladylawyer@gmail.com.
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