Before I get to the point I want to get to, you have to know two things:

1) There’s this thing called the “Rule Against Perpetuities,” which (aside from being impossibly complex in application) is, judging by how many questions on the bar exam deal with it, the pillar upon which the entire American judicial system rests.

2) If, on the bar exam, a high enough percentage of test-takers get a multiple-choice question wrong, the bar will throw the question out.

NOW, I’m not taking the BarBri bar review course, so I’m getting this story second hand, but HERE GOES:

BarBri says that if a long Rule Against Perpetuities question comes up on the multiple-choice, you should just pick ANSWER (A) and move on. The idea is, if enough people get it wrong, they’ll toss it out.

Not sure how this will work out. Seems like there’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation going on here: if you suspect that a question is going to be thrown out (because it’s long and tough and you think others will all pick (A)), and if you think there’s a slightly-greater than 25% chance that one of the non-(A) answer choices is right, then you have the luxury of picking that particular non-(A) answer, banking on the other test-takers not following suit. BUT if other test-takers realize this and they too go for the non-(A) answers, banking on other test-takers guessing (A), then the whole system won’t work.

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