Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Law School
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Review Student-Initiated Practice Exams Upon Request?
With this Teaching Tidbit, I move into my second year of blogging about teaching ideas. In this post, I explain why I have changed my practice of being willing to review practice answers to my past exam questions of any student who asks to, instead, structuring frequent opportunities for practice and feedback for all my students. For…
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For Bar Exam – Grades Matter More Than Course Selection
From the National Jurist: The course registration screen is open, and there is one spot left in your schedule. A clinic could give you experience with real clients. An elective could help you explore a career. Another bar-tested subject might help you sleep at night. Which choice will help you pass? An AccessLex Institute study…
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Four Honchos of the Academy
David Ray Papke, Professor of Law at Marquetts, has written this fun article, Profess, Apply, Pickle, and Trash, Four Legal Educators’ Approach to the Law in the Saint Louis Law Journal comparing and contrasting the approaches to legal education expounded by James Kent, Christopher Columbus Langdell, Karl Llwellyn and Duncan Kennedy. He offers neither idolatry…
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Short and Great Video: That Frustration When Your Students Are Struggling to Learn? It’s Resilience
In this wonderful and very short video from a Duke University “Learning to Fail” Class, the professor, identified as “Professor Becky” in the short video, beautifully explains something I wish all our law students understood: their frustration when they are stuck between not knowing and knowing how to perform a skill means they are in…
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Teaching Tidbit: Why I Have Abandoned Class Participation Grade Bumps
My return to full-time teaching after 12 years as a dean has been a joyous, invigorating, and yes, sometimes challenging experience. One of my favorite parts of the experience has been the opportunity to rethink my practices. This week’s post will examine a practice, awarding grade bumps for class participation, that I have chosen to…
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SCOTUS Declines Case re University of California College of the Law, San Francisco
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge by descendants of Serranus Hastings, allowing the law school to officially keep its name as the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. From the ABA Journal and others. The University of California College of the Law at San Francisco can retain its new name,…
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Another Law Dean Tapped for University President
Pace University, a private university with campuses in New York City and Westchester County known for combining academic rigor, real-world learning, and exceptional access to opportunity, today announced that Robert “Bobby” Ahdieh has been named the university’s ninth president, effective January 1, 2027.
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Grisham Strikes Again
When a best-selling author (and this is literal, not hyperbole) titles a book, The Law Student, readers of TaxProf Blog can’t help but be curious. This is a mini-book, just 24 pages of prequel to Grisham’s new thriller, The French Illusion. I’m daring you not to get hooked.
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Support Student Best Practices in Dealing with Disappointing Mid-Semester Grades
I find this time of year to be one of the most painful parts of the year. A subset of my students, most often 1Ls, have received midterm grades that disappoint them. This post is my advice for navigating your goal of supporting your students’ feelings and future success. Understand Your Students’ Perspective. Most of your…
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Grand Canyon University Names Inaugural Dean for the College of Law
James L. Williams has been named the inaugural dean of GCU’s new College of Law. Williams, a graduate of the Baylor University School of Law, is an attorney and shareholder with Phoenix law firm Schmitt Schneck Even & Williams and President of the Phoenix chapter of the Christian Legal Society, for which he has also…
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Writing is Learning . . . Still and Despite AI
Janet Emig, Writing as a Mode of Learning (College Composition and Communication, pp. 122-128, Vol. 28, No. 2) (May, 1977). In this short essay, Janet Emig beautifully articulates all the ways that writing is learning. Most tellingly, she concludes her essay with what can be seen, through the eyes of 2026 faculty, as a foreshadowing…
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Teaching Tidbit: Use These Strategies to Help Your Students Move Towards Expertise
This week’s post focuses on a set of three tasks you can ask your students to complete that will allow you to both assess their learning and help them move from understanding the words of the statutes and cases to developing deep understanding of the concepts. All three engage students in constructing their own hypothetical…
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On-Line JD Programs Advance
Christie Melendez offers this useful summary of the many schools now offering on-line JD programs of one sort or another. She explains different categories of school, how ABA approvals differ, and which schools offer which sort of program. We face a rapidly changing landscape and this helps readers keep up. Alas, I fear only Linkedin…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: What If Your Students Ask Too Many Questions? Be Transparent
In response to my call for topics you would like me to address in these “Teaching Tidbits,” I heard from a thoughtful and very student-centered colleague who teaches at a law school in the Midwest. This colleague shared that she very much appreciated student questions, but she was concerned that the questions were using up…
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Legal Education Podcasts
Most of my podcast listening and podcast producing has little to do with law or legal education (I am a long-standing GFOP, and IYKYK). Once in a while, however, I come across a legal education episode that is simply too good not to share. So: at the podcast “How to Navigate Law School,” produced by…
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GWU Law Financial Challenges
From the campus newspaper at George Washington University: “GW Law lays off personnel amid financial challenges, dean confirms” GW Law laid off personnel to tackle the school’s financial challenges, its dean confirmed Wednesday, marking the third school to publicly confirm layoffs this fiscal year. Dean Dayna Bowen Matthew confirmed in an email to The Hatchet…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: How to Build a Good Working Relationship with Your Students
The more you invest in your students, the more likely your students are to invest themselves in your class. We saw this principle play out repeatedly in student and alumni comments when we conducted the school visits for What the Best Law Teachers Do. Having witnessed these benefits myself, I have adopted two practices I first…
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Law Dean Gets Tattoo
Well now that’s some dean commitment…. From a local news story: A deal is a deal. That’s the way Elon University School of Law Dean Zak Kramer saw it after making a pact with the class of 2025. Earlier in the semester, he promised that if the law students as a class achieved an overall…
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ABA Council Repeals Diversity Standard
From the New York Times; The American Bar Association, the lawyers group that sets standards for the legal profession, eliminated on Tuesday a diversity requirement for law schools after facing pressure from the Trump administration. The bar association said that the diversity requirement could jeopardize its role as an accreditor that oversees nearly 200 juris…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: My Students Have Spoken; Now, It’s Your Turn
In each class I teach, I ask students to fill out index cards in which they share with me how they wish me to pronounce their names, why they are in law school, anything else they want me to know about them, their teaching method preferences, and what else I can do to support their…
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The Florida Bar Tax Section’s 2027 National Tax Moot Court Competition
Registration is open for the Florida Bar Tax Section’s 2027 National Tax Moot Competition. The competition will take place January 21-23, 2027: For almost 40 years, The Florida Bar Tax Section has hosted an annual National Tax Moot Court Competition to invite law students from across the country to demonstrate their written and oral advocacy…
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New Financial Aid Rules Did Not Impact Class Size, Other Impacts Uncertain
The latest from the ABA Journal: The much-anticipated crisis brought on by changes in federal regulations regarding financial aid has not manifested—yet. That’s the conclusion of law deans contacted by the ABA Journal as well as officials at the Law School Admission Council and the AccessLex Institute. . . . . [W]ith many schools now…
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Plans for New Arizona Law School
Last week, news indicated that Grand Canyon University is moving forward with plans to open a new law school in Arizona. From the announcement: GCU is moving forward with plans to establish a College of Law that would integrate the Christian worldview throughout its curriculum while emphasizing Constitutional law, free-market principles and the rule of law.…
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Who Finds the Facts
Duncan Hosie, Fellow at Stanford Law School,, offers this powerful critique in the Atlantic of the Supreme Court’s decision this week to allow President Trump’s Administration to proceed, for now, with its assault on mail-in voting. Hosie’s broader point, with significance for all of us trying to explain to students how our legal system finds…
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Kerry Abrams to Step Down as Dean of Duke Law at end of June 2027
Abrams informed Provost Gallimore at the beginning of June 2026 that she’d step down in June of 2027, after which she will resume her work as a teacher and scholar on the Duke Law faculty. During this academic year, the University will conduct a national search for her successor. Abrams became the James B. Duke…