Zak Kramer, dean of the Elon University School of Law, joined the faculty in 2023 where he met the class of 2025 as the students began their year of law school. The class made a deal with Kramer: if at least 85% of the class passed the bar exam on their first attempt, he would get a tattoo.
Elon Law’s class of 2025 had a 91.96% first-time pass rate on the February 2026 North Carolina Bar Exam. The National Conference of Bar Examiners reported that 75% of first-time test takers in North Carolina passed the February 2026 exam.
Kramer had one specific goal in mind for Elon’s School of Law: improve the first-time passage rate for the bar. The inaugural class set the record at 82% in 2009. Kramer said the benchmark had not been exceeded until the class of 2025.
“Our motto would be one and done,” Kramer said. “We were going to commit to that fully. I reject the idea that any of our students can't pass the bar.”
Kramer wasn’t joking about committing to the motto or his students. His tattoo reads ‘one and done,’ and is prominently placed on his forearm.
Kramer said the tattoo was always about the bigger picture. As an educator, Kramer believes his mission is to do the most that he can to set his students up for success.
“I just want them to succeed because we're in the dream-making business, ” he said. “If there's a different motivator, I'm open to it.”
Kramer said he had just one request for current and future students looking to strike a bargain: “Please, don't be a piercing.”
When the bar results were released, Kramer said he went to the offices of the faculty members who supported his efforts before sending out a mass email to the class of 2025.
“We had purchased in advance a huge amount of sparkling cider. We popped it, and it was great,” Kramer said.
Rebecca Bailey, a member of the Elon Law class of 2025 who first proposed the tattoo bet to Kramer, said she never expected that something she said in passing would become a reality.
“It was so informal,” Bailey said. “That is why it is so funny to me that this whole thing came to fruition, because I didn't come to him with some official proposal or anything like that.”
Bailey remembers hearing from the dean after bar results came out.
“He emailed me because it wasn't public information yet,” Bailey said.
Bailey said she recalled receiving many texts and calls from excited classmates when results were made public.
Bailey said she hopes Kramer will show off his tattoo to incoming law students as an incentive for success.