Upon the occasion of the 250th birthday of Jane Austen, let us learn how to ace a bar exam from Professor Jane Austen. Yes, that’s right, because Austen readers unwittingly learn law and legal principles surrounding several areas of law, but particularly in family law and wills and estates. Basic rules from these areas of law seem to appear in every one of Austen’s novels, offered with a savory richness of understanding of not only their importance but also their complexity.

This brief essay reviews basic legal rules and legal analysis by efficiently using fact patterns from four of our professor’s novels: Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. By applying the standard IRAC (Issue, Rule, Analysis, and Conclusion) method of legal reasoning to each, this essay undeniably endeavors to teach admirable bar preparation. General rules of American law are applied throughout, although legal rules and principles of Regency England that have a precise bearing on the fact pattern are explained as well. Can there be any more amusing way to prepare for the bar exam? One hardly knows.

This is a 'will-in-context' study of a Toronto bequest of the 1880s that shows how a testator's ideological commitment to freedom of willing and his retention of high-powered legal talent to actualize that commitment were derailed by a hapless or avaricious executor, unpredictable real-estate markets, a lethargic court, and eccentric beneficiaries. It also suggests that self-made private law like contracts, trusts, and wills may be as doctrinally, textually, or administratively contradictory, indeterminate, or unpredictable as state-made public or regulatory law has often been shown to be.