Jon Garon (Nova Southeastern), Empathy by Design: Rethinking Law School Engagement for Critical Thinking in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, 57 ST. MARY’S L.J. 41 (2025).

Professor Garon’s powerful introduction, excerpted in part below, introduces his insightful and convincing argument for redesigning legal education in the age of AI.

Introduction

. . . Treating law students as partners in the learning process requires a different, fundamental shift in the approach to legal education. The shift requires that law faculty understand more about the students in their classrooms and work empathically to build common goals and values regarding the shared expectations of learning . . .

By designing the classroom experience to collaborate with the students and illuminate the discrete skills required for a successful legal career, the students will achieve a deeper understanding of the critical thinking required to practice law, and the faculty will likely receive greater satisfaction with the teaching process.

The next generation of lawyers needs to be taught far more than how to “think like a lawyer.” They need to be instructed in each of the component steps essential to be a critical thinker. They also need to be trained in a set of skills that include emotional intelligence, professionalism (or so-called soft skills), and non-legal skills that are no longer required before law school, such as financial literacy and professional writing. Students will learn more skills and engage more deeply in courses following the empathy-by-design approach. This Essay will focus on the skill of critical thinking, but the approach applies equally to the other core skills needed to be a successful lawyer.