For those of you who celebrate Christmas today, Merry Christmas! As we head into 2026, I decided to share 26 New Year’s Resolutions for Law Teachers. I offer this list as a menu of things each of us might do to improve our students’ experiences in our classes. Don’t try to do all of them!! I addressed a few of these resolutions in prior blog posts; many others will be the subject of future blog posts.
- Memorize your students’ names and faces before the start of classes in January.
- Create rubrics and give them to your students on the first day of class.
- Provide at least one new ungraded opportunity for practice and feedback in your spring 2026 classes.
- If you ask a hypothetical and can sense the students are struggling, invite the students to discuss their analyses with 1-2 peers; then ask your hypothetical again.
- Reframe your Socratic-style questioning as an effort to get students to say smart things and feel great about doing so.
- Take joy when a student offers a great insight. (Confession time: When a student offers a great insight, I shout “Booooom!” with great enthusiasm and joy.)
- Tell a short (two-minute!) story of a personal failure as a lawyer and what you learned from it.
8. Make sure a student who is not in the top 50% in your class knows you think they are smart.
9. Ask your students to share what teaching techniques work for them; use those suggestions later in the course (at least on one occasion).
10. Attend at least two student organization events.
11. Acknowledge an error you have made in class with self-deprecating humor and an apology.
12. Provide learning goals for each class session at the beginning of the session.
13. Try a teaching technique you have never tried before. Ask students for feedback on how it went.
14. For each class this spring, keep a teaching journal in which, after each class session, you write down what went well and what could have gone better.
15. Notice a student who seems to be struggling or down. Check in with them via email or out of the earshot of their peers, e.g., “You seem a little down today. Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to support you?”
16. Try to know if any of your students has had a recent major life event or accomplishment, e.g., getting married, winning a competition, having a child. Congratulate the student.
17. Read a law review article on teaching. Attend a conference on teaching. Write a law review article on teaching. Present at a conference on teaching. (Law professors report that all four of these have had positive effects on their teaching.)
18. Offer an occasional walking office hour for a few students at a time. There is good evidence that you and your students will feel happier and less stressed.
19. Halfway through each course, ask students for anonymous feedback on what is working and what can be improved in the class. (Students can write their feedback on index cards you give them or type their feedback and slip it under your office door.)
20. Pair up with a colleague or two and agree to visit each other’s classes and provide formative feedback on each other’s teaching.
21. If your university has a Center for Teaching and Learning Center, invite someone from the center to visit one of your classes and provide formative feedback.
22. Try starting a class session with a two-minute warm up in which each student pairs with a person or two sitting next to them and they work together to identify three takeaways from the readings for class that day.
23. Call or email the lawyers who represented the parties in a case you teach. Ask them for an insight you can share with your class.
24. For each case you teach, read it three times: once as a professor, once as a student (novice), and once as a practicing attorney.
25. Construct your final exam review as a Jeopardy game with prizes.
26. Celebrate the end of each of your spring courses with your students in some way–maybe treats or fruits and vegetables or silly awards (e.g., “most likely to be a Supreme Court Justice” for the student who asks the hardest questions) or thank yous.
