Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Law School
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The Trend Away From Lawyers’ Serving Organizational Clients
Jordan Furlong on Substack, “The coming revival of the PeopleLaw sector: Generative AI will inadvertently reduce the legal profession’s disproportionate focus on organizational clients — and could end up redirecting lawyers to meet the legal needs of everyday people.” This is a typically Furlong-esque thoughtful speculation about the legal profession, lawyers, and (implicitly, in this
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The Personal is still Political
Stephanie Thompson, Instructional Professor of Law at Texas A&M Law School, treats us to aninteresting analysis of the phenomenon now referred to as microfeminism, a term she tells us has garnered one billion views on Tik Tok. The idea is that women can be lifted up through small actions that redirect or alter personal interactions.
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Beyond the Best and Brightest
Expanding on a story in Above the Law, Judd Legum reports how Liberty Law School is openly recruiting interns for the Department of Labor with postings that suggest alignment with President Trump and hard work are all that’s necessary. Strong GPA’s not required. [Posting below.] There may be more to the story but if it’s
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Cult of Pedagogy: The Case for Warm Demanders
Wendy Amato and Marcee Harris, The Case for Warm Demanders in Today’s Schools (March 1, 2026). Amato and Harris effectively make the case for warm demanders, explaining what make someone a warm demander, someone who connects with students and has very high expectations, and what does not fit within the paradigm, e.g., someone who is
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Elements of Effective Teaching
In Teaching Law by Design: Engaging Students from the Syllabus to the Final Exam (new edition forthcoming 2026—any day now), my co-authors, Gerry Hess, Sophie Sparrow, Olympia Duhart and I identify eleven elements of effective teaching. Below, I identify each of the eleven and offer a short explanation of each. I have addressed some of these topics
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Abramowitz on Lawyer Value in an AI World
No scan of legal futurology is complete without keeping up with Zack Abramowitz, a lawyer, entrepreneur, investor, and advisor who posts essays and podcasts about legaltech at “Legally Disrupted” on Substack and at “Killer Whale Strategies.” His writing and speaking can come across as “over the top,” especially in the context of the legal profession’s
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Stanford Law Hires ED for AI Initiative
“Stanford Law School has appointed Irene Liu as the executive director of the Stanford Law School AI Initiative, co-chaired by Nathaniel Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and Professor of Law Julian Nyarko. The AI Initiative advances interdisciplinary research, teaching, and engagement with industry leaders and policymakers. It brings together faculty,
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Entry Level Tenure Track Position at UCONN
The University of Connecticut School of Law invites applications from entry-level and junior-lateral candidates in their first or second year of law teaching for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position commencing in the fall of 2026. Candidates must be interested in teaching Legal Profession, and preference will be given to applicants who also have curricular and
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Alternative Paths to Licensure Engender Revisions to ABA Standards
Wisconsin’s diploma privilege and New Hampshire’s Daniel Webster Scholars program are inspiring additional states to consider paths to bar admission other than the bar exam. In light of this development, the ABA’s requirement concerning 75% pass rate on the bar exam no longer fully reflects the extent to which law schools are succeeding at preparing
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ABA EDGES TOWARD AXING DIVERSITY REQUIREMENT
Having already suspended its accreditation rule requiring law schools to demonstrate a commitment to diversity in admissions, student recruitment and programming, the ABA Council took the next step in potentially eliminating the rule altogether when the Council voted, pending a notice and comment period, to suspend the rule through August 2027.. Final decision is expected
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USC: 2026 Poverty Law Conference: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Community in a Time of Attacks on the Vulnerable
Professors Ariel Jurow Kleiman and Clare Pastore hosted the 2026 Poverty Law Conference: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Community in a Time of Attacks on the Vulnerable on February 20-21, 2026, at USC. The panels were as follows: Thank you to Mira Dalpe and Angela Houff for their work making the conference possible.
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: A Favorite Radical Law Reaching Idea
This post focuses on a brilliant, inspiring, and original law teaching practice used by Professor Roberto Corrada of the University of Denver Sturm School of Law. Professor Corrada structures entire courses as “whole-class simulations.” Many of us, of course, use simulations in our teaching; we have students act in role as lawyers and argue hypotheticals,
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Edutopia: Retrieval Practice Strategies
Benjamin Barbour, Easy Ways to Have Students Review Material Frequently: Students retain information better when they have consistent opportunities to engage with previously taught content (February 17, 2026). In my first posting for today, I link to an article in Inside Higher Ed that details ten, excellent, evidence-based books on teaching for law professors. The
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Inside Higher Ed: 10 Books for the Evidence-Based Professor
Benjamin Pacini (BYU Idaho), 10 Books for the Evidence-Based Professor (February 25, 2026) . . . I think that you can read just 10 books about teaching—and if they are the right 10 books and you read them deeply, and you deliberately apply a little of what you learn—I am willing to guarantee that you
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Law Students Performed Significant Pro Bono Legal Work in 2025
From the ABA Journal: More than $178 million of legal services were contributed by the law school class of 2025 via legal clinics, experiential courses, externships and other pro bono activities, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Association of American Law Schools. In December, the survey found that 22,336 law students in the class of 2025
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Law School Rankings Season
The 2026 rankings are starting to appear, including the Times Higher Education, QS World University, and PublicLegal-ILRG’s rankings. As with all rankings, there are limitations, anomalies, and they emphasize or focus on different areas. On the next page, are the top 25 rankings for the Times Higher Education Best Law Schools in the U.S. –
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The Undergraduates Take Notice
Law blogs usually take notice when the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or Bloomberg News write about the state of legal education. It is less common to take notice when undergraduate journalists do. Here is a story from the Pitt News, the University of Pittsburgh’s student-produced newspaper, that combines interest in “application numbers
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West Virginia Extends Search for Dean
After the final finalist wrapped up their campus visit in December, Interim Provost Paul Kreider told the Board of Governors that he anticipated that a selection would come in January 2026 and expressed that “the search has been very successful.” That timeline has now shifted. In his most recent update, Kreider announced the search will
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Kentucky Names Law Dean Finalists
The finalists for the position are: Michael Higdon, associate dean for academic affairs and law professor at the University of Tennessee; Mary Graw Leary, law professor at The Catholic University of America; Milena Sterio, law professor at Cleveland State University; Gregory Van Tatenhove, U.S. District Judge, Eastern District of Kentucky. Read more here.
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The Impact of Grades on Student Motivation
Kelsey Chamberlin, Maï Yasué (Quest University Canada), and I-Chant A Chiang, The impact of grades on student motivation, 24.2 Active Learning in Higher Education (2023). Many commentators have noted that legal education, more so than our peers in medical and dental education, have designed grading systems that primarily serve legal employers, particularly private legal employers, rather than our
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Edutopia: Frequent Review Strategies Promote Retention
Benjamin Barbour (Edutopia), Easy Ways to Have Students Review Material Frequently: Students retain information better when they have consistent opportunities to engage with previously taught content (February 17, 2026). The science of learning is clear: Students need to review material continuously. This includes material from prior lessons and chapters. All too often, teachers wait until
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Teaching Tidbit: Harsh, Authentic, and Caring
This post focuses on two professors who teach at law schools almost 1,700 miles apart. For many years, on the very first day of one of the two professor’s first semester course, he would tell students to clear their desks, inform them that they have an examination that counts that day, and distribute bluebooks and
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Accelerated JD/MBA Redux
Contrary to one of my earlier posts, I have learned that Southwestern Law School and the Drucker School of Management have been operating an accelerated JD/MBA program in Los Angeles since 2010. The National Jurist covered the announcement here. This information suggests the the brand new, similar program, at USC is the second such program
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The New Places of Legal Expertise in an AI World
I’ve written a number of posts here about how Generative AI is making its way into law teaching and legal scholarship. This post has to do with legal expertise as such, as the “destination” of professors’ effort. We are legal experts, helping to produce expertise and to train more experts. How is Generative AI changing
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Bloomberg: Bridging the Gap: The New Realities of Law School and Legal Practice
Bloomberg Law has released its Winter 2026 Path to Practice report, which includes survey responses from 1558 practicing lawyers, 264 law students, and 79 law school faculty (collected in fall 2025). The report’s headline topic: the implications of generative artificial intelligence for legal practice, ethics, and employment, now and in the future. As a bonus,