Author: Jeremy Paul
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Law Students do Field Research
Indiana Univ. Professors Bill Henderson and Anjanette Raymond (Kelley School of Business and also Queen Mary University of London) offer important insights based on work they did with the Indiana Supreme Court. They asked law students and undergraduates to observe courtrooms and interview lawyers with the goal of identifying pathways to increased access to legal
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Book of the Week
University at Buffalo Professor Matthew Dimick offers us Ending Income Inequality, a contrarian defense of the idea that legal rules, and not just the tax system, should be used to tackle the severe unequal distribution of wealth that characterizes (afflicts?) contemporary life in the United States. Here’s hoping it sparks lively debate on this important
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Open Letter from Minnesota Law Faculty
72 Members of the University of Minnesota Law Faculty have signed an Open Letter expressing horror over federal agents’ killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The letter proclaims our colleagues to be “deeply disturbed by the daily lawlessness and brazen abuses of power by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border
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New Dean at Northwestern
Zachary Clopton named dean of Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. A noted scholar of civil litigation, Professor Clopton has served as interim dean for the past six months and as a member of the Northwestern faculty since 2019. His extraordinary record of accomplishment is detailed here. Congratulations and good luck Dean Clopton.
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ALI Elects Wallace Jefferson President
The American Law Institute announces that Wallace B. Jefferson, former Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court has been elected its new President. President-elect Jefferson served on the Court from 2001-2013, and as Chief Justice from 2004 until the end of his tenure. He will assume office at the end of ALI’s annual meeting, succeeding,
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Book of the Week
University of San Diego Law Professor Lisa Ramsey is just out with Trademarks and Free Speech from Cambridge University Press. Her case is that current trademark law is insufficiently sensitive to First Amendment concerns, and she argues passionately for reform. You can sign up to hear her discuss the book virtually on Feb. 3 at
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Principles for Lawyer Independence
Retired Judges Shira A. Scheindlin and John Jones III are leading an effort to develop principles to secure the independence of the legal profession from outside sources, especially from governmental pressure They seek endorsement from lawyers across the land. You can find the principles HERE. They explain their efforts in today’s NYTimes.
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1L Realities
JD Next issues an extensive White Paper based on nationwide survey of law students who completed their first semester in December 2025. Demographic analysis, gaps between student expectations and reality, and practical advice for law students are just a few of the nuggets within.
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Loss of a Legend
Barbara Aronstein Black, the first woman to lead an Ivy League Law School has died at 92. Her career, briefly detailed in this NYTimes obituary below, is a story of resilience, talent and perspicacity. Her admiring colleagues, devoted students and legal education generally have lost a leader. May her memory be blessed and her pathbreaking
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Not So Practice-Ready
Washington University Professor Robert Kuehn shares via SSRN his work in the Clinical Legal Association Newsletter reporting on the results of a recent 2024-25 survey of 4,000 judges and 4,400 practicing attorneys undertaken by the Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform. Roughly half believe that law schools still are not preparing students adequately for
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Book of the Week
Coming this month a new monograph from one of the pre-eminent university leaders of our era. Lee Bollinger delivers University: A Reckoning In it Columbia’s Professor and former President Bollinger offers a robust defense of the University and the centrality of the search for truth and freedom of expression to preserving our constitutional values. Never
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Novel Critique of AI
Professors Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica Silbey of Boston University offer a profound critique of AI that you won’t read elsewhere. As they put it, “we hope to convince you of one simple and urgent point:the current design of artificial intelligence systems facilitates the degradation anddestruction of our critical civic institutions.” You can find their work
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Full-Time JD Study in Charlotte
Following its merger with Queens University, Elon University plans to bring full time law school back to Charlotte, currently the largest major U.S. city without such a program. See details here.
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Book of the Week
How can you not be drawn in by a serious effort from a journalist to tackle the paradoxes, challenges, and ultimate salvation lurking in the concept of democracy? Even more so, when he tells you that his motivation stemmed from boredom with mainstream press coverage of politics. The New Republic’s Contributing Editor and Guardian Columnist,
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SSRN Author Rankings
Year end results for total 2025 downloads are here. Sort of our version of the NYTimes bestseller list. Those who appear are proud and excited. Those who do not point out that quantity and quality don’t always mesh. In any event, two scholars, Daniel Solove and Cass Sunstein clearly stand at the top of the
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2026 Preview for Law Schools
Karen Sloan has a nice overview story for Reuters outlining some of the changes and pressures facing law schools in the new year. Find it here . Of particular interest is Santa Clara’s decision to award $16,000 scholarships to students to bring them all below the $50,000 cap that the Trump Administration has imposed on
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Legal Educators with Sway
National Jurist is out with a list of the 25 most influential people in legal education, a list they compiled mostly by surveying law school deans. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the list includes a large (some might say very large) number of deans and ex-deans. I know many of the chosen few (admittedly, an ex-dean myself) and
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Book of the Week
I missed this book when it appeared in 2024 (sounds longer ago today than it did on Wednesday), but I’m reading it now and it’s a treat. What Laura Field does so elegantly in describing the intellectual history of today’s New Right in Furious Minds, John Ganz does equally well identifying origins of today’s turmoil
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Law Firms and Private Equity Overseas
Law.com has done it again with an insightful recap of several powerful moves by private equity players to invest in small and mid-sized law firms outside the U.S. eventually, perhaps, paving the way for financial investors to capture Big Law. Law schools ignore these changes at our peril. Check the story out here: https://www.law.com/2025/12/31/5-private-equity-plays-that-are-rewiring-international-law-firm-financing/?kw=5+Private+Equity+Plays+That+Are+Rewiring+International+Law+Firm+Financing&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=newsroomupdate&utm_content=20251231&utm_term=law&oly_enc_id=6899F7393967D1A&slreturn=20251231103355
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Awards for Patricia Williams
My breathtakingly talented Northeastern colleague, Particia WIlliams, will receive not one, but two awards at this year’s AALS annual meeting. The Section on Minority Groups will present her with its Impact Legacy Award and the Section on Women in Legal Education will justly recognize her, along with NYU’s Peggy Cooper Davis, with its Ruth Bader
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Legal Tech Developments
Law.com offers a nice issue exploring various ways that law schools and law firms are innovating with legal tech, including a revamped contracts course using AI from Mitchell Hamline professor Gregory Duhl. You can find it here: https://www.law.com/2025/12/30/how-law-schools-advanced-legal-tech-in-2025-/?kw=How+Law+Schools+Advanced+Legal+Tech+in+2025
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Book of the Week
Following up on her widely-acclaimed monograph, The Code of Capital, Katharina Pistor, the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School offers us this fall, The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It. In an admirably concise effort, she tackles topics made central by the legal realists involving the role of
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Amicus Brief Decisive?
Adam Liptak’s NYTimes story, linked below, carefully explains how Georgetown Law Professor, Marty Lederman’s amicus brief may have provided the key argument leading the Supreme Court to put a pause on President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Illinois. Who says legal scholars can’t make a difference? Whether one agrees with Marty’s argument or
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New Dean at Yale
Yale names Cristina Rodriguez, currently the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law on its own Faculty to serve as its next dean, where she will be the Sol and Lillian Goldman Dean and Professor of Law. Her extraordinarily impressive qualifications for this prestigious post are well detailed in the press release you can find below.
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Book of the Week
Former Faculty member at Rhodes College, Georgetown, and American University, Laura K. Field has done all of us a great service in her new book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. Political leaders and pundits everywhere have decried many excesses of the current Administration in Washington. Now Dr. Field, a fellow in