Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Legal Ed News
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Yale Grad, Who Left Practice After Bipolar Diagnosis and Joined Alabama Law Faculty, Publishes Book on Mental Health
ABA Journal, Mental Health Law Becomes This Law Prof and Author’s Focus After Walking ‘Through the Fire’: The most dangerous moments of Fredrick Vars’ life guided his career path. The first came in fall 2004, when he was a third-year associate at a law firm then known as Miller Shakman & Beem in Chicago. Just days…
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After Being Renewed For Another 5-Year Term in November, USC Dean Resigns Days Before Faculty No-Confidence Vote on B-School’s ‘Downward Trajectory’
Poets&Quants, USC Marshall Dean Geoffrey Garrett To Step Down Ahead Of Planned No-Confidence Vote: Seven months ago, Geoffrey Garrett appeared firmly in control of one of the nation’s most prominent business schools. In November, the University of Southern California announced that Garrett would serve a second five-year term as dean of the Marshall School of…
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American Constitution Society Convention
ACS opened its 25th anniversary convention at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Thursday evening with a panel emphasizing the role of State Attorneys General in defending the rule of law. Moderated by former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke (far left), the panel featured California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, Minnesota’s Attorney…
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LSAC & NALP Report: Impact of Accelerated Big Law Recruitment
NALP and Law School Admission Council (LSAC) examine the impact of accelerated Big Law recruiting on first-year law students in a new report. You can find the report here and an introduction to it can be found on the LSAC website. From NALP Executive Director Nikia Gray: “To date, conversations about accelerated recruiting have been…
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A Majority of Law Professors Say Legal Education Is Heading in the Wrong Direction
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Free Expression in a Climate of Self-Censorship: A National Survey of American Law Faculty: Executive Summary. This report presents findings from a national survey of 1,959 law school faculty at 192 American Bar Association (ABA) approved law schools in the United States, conducted by the Foundation for Individual…
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Lunar et al.: GradeLegal: Automated Grading for German Legal Cases
Abdullah Al Zubaer (U. Passau), Lorenz Wendlinger (Deggendorf Inst. Tech.), Simon Alexander Nonn (U. Passau), Michael Granitzer (U. Passau) & Jelena Mitrović (U. Passau), GradeLegal: Automated Grading for German Legal Cases, arXiv:2605.21076 (cs) (May 20, 2026):
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Book of the Week
Professor Jessica de Perio WIttman, Director of the Thomas J. Meskill Library at the the University of Connecticut School of Law and Beth G. Adelman, Director of the Law Library and Vice Dean for Legal Information Services at the University of Buffalo have been awarded the 2026 Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award by the…
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Legal Education’s Greatest Hits Revisited
The editors of the Journal of Legal Education, now housed at UCIrvine and New York Law School, had the great idea of inviting today’s law faculty members to look back on some of the most influential articles published in the JLE over the past 40 years. These reflections are collected in a forthcoming double issue,…
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Law Jobs: Historic High for US Legal Jobs; NALP Podcast
Lots happening in the legal market. An interesting piece by Karen Sloan on the historic high of legal markets jobs in May suggesting “that the rapid adoption of legal AI tools has not yet impacted staffing, even as experts predict it may in the near future.” From Reuters: The U.S. legal sector posted another historic…
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Law Deans and Principles of Professional Independence
Stories in the ABA Journal and Law.com cover a recent letter sent by former and current law deans to “former judges John E. Jones III, from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, and Shira A. Scheindlin, from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, who led the…
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Projected 2027-28 U.S. News Law School Rankings: First-Time Bar Passage
In the current 2026-27 U.S. News Law School Rankings Methodology, first-time bar passage counts 18% in the overall ranking: Bar passage rate for first-time test-takers (18%): U.S. News used its treatment of bar passage rates to incorporate all graduates who took the bar for the first time, not just those from the state with the most…
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A Law School Dean, a Secret Recording, and Questions That Linger
Following up on last Sunday’s post, UC-Berkeley Law School Cracks Down on AI: Chronicle of Higher Education, A Dean, a Secret Recording, and Questions That Linger: Erwin Chemerinsky on AI, DEI, and that video that won’t go away. Last month, the law school at the University of California at Berkeley released a terse new AI…
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Touro Law to Expand from New York to Montana
“Touro University to Establish a Law School in Great Falls, Montana // Innovative Hybrid Program Designed to Address Critical Attorney Shortage in Montana” Press release from Touro University. Coverage via the ABA Journal: The program, which aims to launch its first cohort in August 2027, will combine in-person instruction with online coursework, aiming to attract…
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Touro Law Center to Establish New Campus in Montana
From one of the articles covering the announcement: Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center has received approval from the American Bar Association to establish a law school campus in Great Falls, Montana, and will start recruiting and enrolling for the inaugural cohort to begin in August 2027. The Great Falls campus of Touro Law…
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UNC Appoints Dean
Andy Hessick has been named the permanent dean of the UNC School of Law. Hessick, the Judge John. J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, previously served as associate dean for strategy and planning under former dean Martin Brinkley. He stepped into the interim role after Brinkley stepped down last year.
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Tennessee Announces Interim Dean Selection
Professor Paula Schaefer, Art Stolnitz Distinguished Professor of Law, has been selected to serve as interim dean of the Winston College of Law, beginning July 1, 2026. She will succeed Lonnie T. Brown, Jr., who has been named dean of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law.
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NY Times: UC-Berkeley Law School Cracks Down on AI
Following up on Mike Madison’s post, UC Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Policy: New York Times DealBook: A Law School Cracks Down on A.I., by Andrew Ross Sorkin: A.I. may be changing legal jobs. But Chris Hoofnagle, a professor at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law, doesn’t want the technology to transform legal education. “It’s just like…
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18 Year Old CPA | Law School Graduate to Pursue Tax LL.M. at Northwestern
Jimmy Chilimigras fast-tracked timeline: People, 18-Year-Old Student Becomes One of the Youngest to Ever Graduate from Law School:
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Washington State and ABA Accreditation
A fair amount of coverage of Washington State’s recent decision to recognize graduates from non-ABA accredited law schools in other states as qualifying for admission and licensure. Information from the Washington State Bar Association’s Board of Governors meeting can be found on their website (on pages 153-155 of the meeting materials). From Reuters: Washington state…
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UNC Law Appoints New Dean
Adding to a recent post on law school dean appointments and reappointments, Andy Hessick has been named dean of the UNC Law (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). From the announcement: Andy Hessick, who has served as interim dean of UNC School of Law since September 2025, has accepted the role on a permanent basis, effective…
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Law School Rankings: Bar Passage
Following up on my previous posts: This post ranks law schools based on the combined First-Time Bar Passage and Ultimate Bar Passage for the most recent data, using the weighting in the current U.S. News methodology: First-Time Bar Passage Rate (Class of 2025): 18%, and Ultimate Bar Passage Rate (Class of 2023): 7%: School First-Time Bar Passage…
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Federal Judge Refuses to Order Law School To Retract Negative Report to Texas State Bar on Graduate’s Celebration of Charlie Kirk’s Killing
Texas Tribune, Texas Tech Discipline Against Law Student Over Alleged Charlie Kirk Comments Stands After Court Ruling: A federal judge refused to order Texas Tech University to retract a report it made to the state bar about a law student accused of celebrating conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing [Fisher v. Campbell (N.D. Tex. May 12,…
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LSAC Update on In-Person Testing
Yesterday, LSAC provided an update on the return to in-person testing. While the LSAT will be offered in August, September, October, November, January, February, April, and June (as well as the LSAT-Puerto Rico in February), LSAC will require “in-person testing for the LSAT, starting with the August 2026 test, with only limited exceptions for test…
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“Claude for Legal” and Conventional Legal Education
Anthropic’s brand new “Claude for Legal” suite of AI tools for law and lawyers accelerates – dramatically – the pace of AI technology deployment in and around law schools. Seth Chandler (University of Houston) has a characteristically thorough (and completely geeked out) review of how law students and law professors (especially clinicians) will find abundant…
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Law School Rankings: Ultimate Bar Passage Rate (Class of 2023)
Following up on my previous post, Law School Rankings By First-Time Bar Passage Rate (2025): here is the ranking of law schools based on Graduation Year 2023 Ultimate Bar Pass Data from the ABA’s spreadsheet. The Ultimate Bar Pass rate includes all 2023 graduates who sat for a bar exam and passed it within two…