Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Legal Ed Scholarship
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Call For Papers: 10th Annual Michigan Junior Scholars’ Conference
Michigan Law School has issued a Call for Papers for its 10th Annual Junior Scholars’ Conference on Reimagining the Public-Private Divide: The University of Michigan Law School is pleased to invite junior scholars to attend the 10th Annual Junior Scholars Conference, which will take place in-person on April 12-13, 2024, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Conference…
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A Call To Integrate Skills Faculty And Courses Into The Law School Curriculum Ahead Of The NextGen Bar Exam
O.J. Salinas (North Carolina), Secondary Courses Taught by Secondary Faculty: A (Personal) Call to Fully Integrate Skills Faculty and Skills Courses into the Law School Curriculum ahead of the NextGen Bar Exam, 107 Minn. L. Rev. 2663 (2023): This Essay focuses on the disconnect between what law schools say they value and who they value.…
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U.S. News Recalculates Ranking Of 213 Colleges Due To ‘Code Anomaly’
Robert Morse (Chief Data Strategist. U.S. News), Corrections to the 2024 Best Colleges Rankings: U.S. News has recalculated the numerical ranks of 213 schools due to a code anomaly. After publication of the 2024 Best Colleges, an anomaly in the code used to output those rankings was discovered. As a result of correcting the anomaly, the…
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Racial Diversity And Law Firm Economics
Jack Thorlin (Georgetown), Racial Diversity and Law Firm Economics, 76 Ark. L. Rev. 131 (2023): Why racial diversity in law firms lags behind similar professions (and even other parts of the legal profession) calls for explanation. Often, explanations for lack of racial diversity in a specific field fall into one of two camps. One explanation…
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Language Models, Plagiarism, And Legal Writing
Michael L. Smith (St. Mary's), Language Models, Plagiarism, and Legal Writing, 22 U.N.H. L. Rev. __ (2024): Language models like ChatGPT are the talk of the town in legal circles. Despite some high-profile stories of fake ChatGPT-generated citations, many practitioners argue that language models are the way of the future. These models, they argue, promise…
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Symposium: The Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Conference
Symposium, The Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Conference, 38 Touro L. Rev. 1027-1167 (2023): Samuel J. Levine (Touro; Google Scholar), The Conference of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Foreword, 38 Touro L. Rev. 1027 (2023) Randy Lee (Widener), Can a Christian be a Lawyer or Can Both God and Jackson Browne be Right, 38 Touro L. Rev. 1029…
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A Taxonomy of Professional Identity Formation
Harmony Decosimo (Suffolk; Google Scholar), A Taxonomy of Professional Identity Formation, 67 St. Louis U. L.J. 1 (2022): Following the ABA’s mandate requiring law schools provide students with opportunities for “professional identity formation,” this article seeks to clarify and loosely taxonomize the field of professional identity formation as it is being advanced by scholars and…
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Apple Law School: Innovation, Leadership, And Technology Lessons From Steve Jobs
Byron G. Stier (Southwestern), Applying Steve Jobs's Insights on Innovation, Leadership, and Technology Toward an Apple-Inspired Law School, 38 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y __ (2024): Perhaps the most successful technology entrepreneur, Steve Jobs developed numerous innovations that transformed personal computing, computer-animated film, mobile phones, and music distribution. Over several decades, his efforts…
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Book Review: Rumors Of The Death Of BigLaw Are Greatly Exaggerated
W. Bradley Wendel (Cornell; Google Scholar), Rumors of the Death of BigLaw Are Greatly Exaggerated (reviewing Mitt Regan (Georgetown) & Lisa H. Rohrer (Boston University), BigLaw: Money and Meaning in the Modern Law Firm (University of Chicago Press 2021)): Many legal profession scholars have predicted the decline, or even demise, of large law firms. But…
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Artificial Intelligence For Academic Support In Law Schools And Universities
Michael D. Murray (Kentucky), Artificial Intelligence for Academic Support in Law Schools and Universities: The current models of verbal generative artificial intelligence (AI)—Bing Chat, GPT-4 and Chat GPT, Bard, Claude, and others, and the current models of visual generative AI—DALL-E 2, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and others—can play a significant role in academic support in law…
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McMahon Delivers Keynote Address On What Law Schools Must Change To Train Transactional Lawyers At Emory
Stephanie Hunter McMahon (Cincinnati) delivered a keynote address on What Law Schools Must Change to Train Transactional Lawyers, 43 Pace L. Rev. 106 (2022), at Emory last Saturday at the 8th Biennial Conference on the Teaching of Transactional Skills: Not all lawyers litigate, but you would not know that from the first-year curriculum at most…
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Barton: The Case For (And Against) ABA Regulation Of Non-J.D. Programs
Benjamin H. Barton (Tennessee), The Case For (and Against) ABA Regulation of Non-J.D. Programs, 85 U. Pitt. L. Rev. __ (2024): American law schools have pulled out of what looked like a death spiral. From 2008-18 job placement and bar passage cratered and applications and JD enrolment followed. Some law schools found themselves trapped between…
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Frye: Should Using An AI Text Generator To Produce Academic Writing Be Plagiarism?
Brian L. Frye (Kentucky; Google Scholar), Should Using an AI Text Generator to Produce Academic Writing Be Plagiarism?, 33 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 946 (2023): AI text generators are becoming increasingly sophisticated. In particular, the OpenAI ChatGPT chatbot is capable of responding to a prompt with text that appears remarkably sophisticated. Many…
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Leipold Reviews Hamilton’s Roadmap: The Law Student’s Guide To Meaningful Employment
James G. Leipold (Senior Advisor, Law School Admission Council), There Are No Shortcuts, But the Road Is Getting Shorter (reviewing Neil Hamilton (St. Thomas-MN; Google Scholar), Roadmap: The Law Student’s Guide to Meaningful Employment (ABA Books 3d ed. 2023)): Neil Hamilton continues to distill his roadmap for law students into ever more streamlined guidance on how…
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Santa Clara’s ‘Tech Edge JD’ Program Improves Admissions Yield, Diversity & Employment Outcomes
Laura Norris (Santa Clara) & Eric Goldman (Santa Clara; Google Scholar), How Santa Clara Law’s ‘Tech Edge JD’ Program Improves the School’s Admissions Yield, Diversity, & Employment Outcomes, 27 Marq. Intell. Prop. & Innovation L. Rev. 21 (2023): In 2018, Santa Clara Law (“SCL”) launched an innovative new certificate, “Tech Edge JD” (“TEJD”), for JD…
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Bernstein: Students For Fair Admissions And The End Of Racial Classification As We Know It
David E Bernstein (George Mason; Google Scholar), Students for Fair Admissions and the End of Racial Classification as We Know It, 2022-23 Cato Sup. Ct. Rev. 143 (2023): The Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) likely marks the beginning of the end of the overt…
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Beyond The Narrow Harvard Model Of Legal Education: The Regeneration of Fallen Jurisprudence
Brian M. McCall (Oklahoma), Beyond the Narrow Harvard Model of Legal Education: Restoring Legal Education According to the Proposals of Valentine Tomberg, 48 U. Dayton L. Rev. 1 (2022): Professor Mark Jones has argued that legal education needs to be “reliberalized” by returning to a state in which “all law students receive a basic minimum…
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Law School Grade Insurance
James Fallows Tierney (Chicago-Kent; Google Scholar), Grade Insurance: The conventional structure of law school assessments, particularly the pressure of end-of-term exams, tends to create a stressful environment for students. This article introduces an alternative form of assessment, drawing on “specifications” or competency-based grading in other fields. Under what’s known as “grade insurance,” students have the…
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Legal Ethics Education: Seeking—And Creating—A Stronger Community Of Practice
Justine Rogers (New South Wales), Legal Ethics Education: Seeking–and Creating–a Stronger Community of Practice, 36 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 61 (2023): This Article uses Community of Practice (“CoP”) frameworks and insights to examine legal ethics, a vital but challenging part of legal education and practice. CoP is a template to explain how the knowledge we learn…
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Covid Shifted A Law Prof’s Role From ‘Sage On The Stage’ To ‘Guide On The Side’
Debra Moss Vollweiler (Nova), Return of the Sage (on the Stage)?, 53 Sw. L. Rev. __ (2023): The Covid Care Crisis had an enormous impact on the legal academy, and specifically on the way that law professors conducted their classrooms. It is unquestionable that the March 2020 nationwide emergency conversion to remote teaching, followed by…
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Pittsburgh Tax Review Publishes New Issue
The Pittsburgh Tax Review has published Vol. 20, No. 2 (2023): Jonathan G. Blattmachr (Pioneer Wealth Partners), How Wealth Transfer Taxes Might Reduce Racial Wealth Disparity in America, 20 Pitt. Tax Rev. 297 (2023) Allison Tait (Richmond; Google Scholar), Tax-Free and the Offshore Imaginary, 20 Pitt. Tax Rev. 313 (2023) Eric Kades (William & Mary; Google…
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An Intelligent Path For Improving Diversity At Law Firms (Un)Artificially
Rimsha Syeda (Sidley Austin, Washington, D.C.), Note, An Intelligent Path for Improving Diversity at Law Firms (Un)Artificially, 29 Mich. Tech. L. Rev. 307 (2023): Most law firms are struggling when it comes to diversity and inclusion. There are fewer women in law firms compared to men. The majority of lawyers—81%—are White, despite White people making…
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A Faustian Bargain? Rethinking The Role Of Debt In Law Students’ Career Choices
Steven A. Boutcher (Law and Society Association; Google Scholar), Jason N. Houle (Dartmouth; Google Scholar), Anna Raup-Kounovksy (Penn State-University Park) & Carroll Seron (UC-Irvine), A Faustian Bargain? Rethinking the Role of Debt in Law Students' Career Choices, 20 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 166 (2023): Despite the absence of strong empirical evidence to support the relationship,…
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Legal Education And Trigger Warnings: More Harm Than Good?
Diana Simon (Arizona; Google Scholar), Legal Education and Trigger Warnings: More Harm Than Good?: Should legal educators give trigger warnings and, in our zeal to protect students from potentially triggering content, are we doing them more harm than good? First, the author addresses the motivation for writing the article—to ensure that in making decisions relating…
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Griggs: Outsourcing Self-Regulation
Marsha Griggs (St. Louis; Google Scholar), Outsourcing Self-Regulation, 80 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. __ (2024): Answerable only to the courts that have the sole authority to grant or withhold the right to practice law, lawyers operate under a system of self-regulation. The self-regulated legal profession staunchly resists external interference from the legislative and administrative…