Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Legal Ed Scholarship
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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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Journal of Legal Education Issue Explores Institutional Structures, Pedagogy and Curricular Design
In case you missed it on AALS LENS: Released in Fall 2025, issue (73-3) of the Journal of Legal Education includes articles that examine the relationship between legal pedagogy, curricular design, and the structure of organizations related to legal education and the legal profession. This issue was edited by New York Law School and the University of California, Irvine School of Law and…
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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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Shout Out to Larry Solum and the Legal Theory Blog
On the cusp of the new year and its new beginnings, I pause to celebrate the astonishing continuity of the Legal Theory Blog, published since 2002 (at least) by Lawrence (Larry) Solum, now at the University of Virginia School of Law. For anyone unfamiliar with it, Larry’s site is a combination of posts documenting new…
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Marchegiani on Getting Law Students Out of Their Seats
In the Fall 2025 edition of Syllabus, a publication of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, Paul Marchegiani writes about the importance of embodied learning in “Untethered: Why Legal Education Needs to Get Lawyers Out of Their Seats.” A taste appears after the jump. The piece reminds me of a…
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International Students – Home Countries
Northwestern Professor Carole Silver and Northwestern Data Scientist Ritika Giri have performed an invaluable service to the legal academy and the country at large by providing a systematic study of the home countries of the many international students who choose to study law in the U.S., particularly in LL.M. programs You can find their paper…
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Edutopia: The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025
Youki Terada & Stephen Merrill, The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025 (December 4, 2025). I have a new love: Edutopia’s (linked above) annual summary of important educational studies. Some explicitly address higher education teaching issues. Some only apply to k-12 education. And some purport to only apply to k-12 education, but their lessons…
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Cope et. al: Can AI Exam-Grading Replace Law Professors?
Kevin L. Cope (Virginia), Jes Frankenreiter (Washington University in St. Louis), Scott Hirst (Boston University), Eric A. Posner (Chicago), Daniel Schwarcz (Minnesota), Dane Thorley (BYU), Grading Machines: Can AI Exam-Grading Replace Law Professors? Abstract In the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have achieved significant technical advances, such that legal-advocacy organizations are increasingly adopting…
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Designing Better Metrics
Fans of The Wire, the greatest television show ever, know all too well that how we measure success can ultimately corrupt how we define it. So we owe Villanova Professor Cannan a debt for his efforts to explain how current measures of scholarly impact are deeply flawed and how we might do better. Law Library…
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Beyond Socratic Method
Professors Rory Bahadur and Kris Franklin offer exciting new insights on how to augment student learning through structured, sequenced inquiry Designing Directed Questions: A Conceptual Blueprint 57 Pages Posted: 17 Sep 2025 Last revised: 15 Oct 2025 Rory D. Bahadur – Washburn University – School of Law Kris Franklin – New York Law School Abstract This article…
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Clinics Face Political Pressure
Peter Joy and Robert Kuehn have provided us with an invaluable history of outside interference into the workings of law school clinics engaged in client representation. It could not come at a more opportune time. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5442156&dgcid=ejournal_htmlemail_legal%3Aeducation%3Aejournal_abstractlink An Anthology of Interference in Law School Clinics” PETER A. JOY, Washington University in St. Louis – School of LawEmail: joy@wustl.eduROBERT…
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Mitchell: Using Transformative Learning Theory to Teach Leadership
Jane Mitchell (Brigham Young University, J. Reuben Clark Law School), “That Class Changed My Life”: Using Transformative Learning Theory to Teach Leadership, 65 Santa Clara L. Rev. ____ (2025). Abstract Since the country’s founding, the legal profession has served as a springboard for some of society’s greatest leaders. But by and large, lawyers were not trained to…
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Katherine Kelly: The High Stakes Hypocrisy of Success in Law School
Katherine Silver Kelly, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, The High Stakes Hypocrisy of Success in Law School, ___ Albany L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming 2026): Introduction Read for class. Pay attention. Take good notes. Stay focused. Work hard. Manage your time. These are the keys to succeeding in law school. Or so it…
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Clinical Academic Freedom: Old Threats, New Protections
Clinical academic freedom remains under intense scrutiny, including federal pressures, in the current era. This Essay argues for a robust protection of clinical work under a revitalized rights framework that would more strongly protect the work of lawyers and the rule of law.
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Donna Adelson Sentenced To Life Imprisonment For Masterminding Murder Of Her Ex-Son-in-Law (Florida State Law Prof Dan Markel)
People, Donna Adelson, 75, Sentenced to Life for Masterminding Her Ex-Son-in-Law’s Murder, but Insists She’s an ‘Innocent Woman’: Donna Adelson, the matriarch of a wealthy Florida family who was convicted of murder for the death of her former son-in-law, has been sentenced to life in prison. On Monday, Oct. 13, Donna, 75, was sentenced to life in…
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Lederman: Making The Most Of VAPs And Fellowships — A Guide For Law Schools And Aspiring Legal Academics
This article is intended for both (1) Visiting Assistant Professors and Fellows (collectively VAPs) who plan to go on the tenure-track legal-academic market, and (2) law professors advising VAPs or developing a VAP program.
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The Law Professor As Public Intellectual: Felix Frankfurter And The Public And Its Government
R. B. Bernstein (City College of New York), The Law Professor as Public Intellectual: Felix Frankfurter and The Public and Its Government, 39 Touro L. Rev. 795 (2024): Professor R.B. Bernstein was a legal historian with a J.D. from Harvard Law School who taught at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at…
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Legal Education And The Rule Of Law
James Huffman (Lewis & Clark), Legal Education and the Rule of Law, 60 Cal. W. L. Rev. 571 (2024): There are many explanations for the current state of affairs in the American legal system. But surely, what goes on in our law schools is an important factor. For decades American youth have learned little about…
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The Role Of Intuitive Reasoning In Lawyering And Legal Education
N. E. Millar (Widener-DE), The Role of Intuitive Reasoning in Lawyering and Legal Education, 37 St. Thomas L. Rev. 49 (2024): Intuition-a process of "rapid cognition" that offers foresight and helps with creative problem-solving-is a powerful tool that lawyers can use to inform strategic decisions, avoid ethical pitfalls, enhance communication, and increase career satisfaction. However,…
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Assessing Accommodations For Law Students With Academic Disabilities
Jason Jarvis (Pepperdine; Google Scholar), Assessing Accommodations for Law Students with Academic Disabilities, 74 J. Legal Educ. ___ (2026): This Article describes the current landscape of academic disability accommodations in United States law schools, furthering the work begun in Susan Johanne Adams’s seminal article, Leveling the Floor: Classroom Accommodations for Law Students with Disabilities, 48…
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Lemar: Building Builders’ Clinics
Anika Singh Lemar (Yale), Building Builders' Clinics: In some significant part because of the structure of American law, both the private and public sectors underproduce crucial public and private infrastructure in the United States today. Housing, clean energy technology, sewers, and rail, for example, are all exceedingly politically difficult to plan and, not unrelatedly, expensive…
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2025 Meta-Ranking Of Flagship U.S. Law Reviews
Bryce Clayton Newell (Oregon), 2025 Meta-Ranking of Flagship US Law Reviews: This is an updated ranking of the top flagship law reviews at US law schools (updated as of August 4, 2025). For a summary and more details about method, see below the table. You can also compare MetaRanking from 2018-2024, including changes in ranking…
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How Casebooks Shape The Apprehension And Meaning Of Law
Sam Williams (Idaho), Authorship by Omission: How Editorial Choices in Casebooks Shape the Apprehension and Meaning of Law, 58 Ind. L. Rev. 335 (2024): The unique internal workings of the legal mind are a point of pride for the profession. But do those internal machinations reflect, and possibly reinforce, biases that ought to be examined,…
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Transnationalization Of Legal Education: A Confluence Of Multiple Factors
Md. Rizwanul Islam (North South University; Google Scholar), Transnationalization of Legal Education: A Confluence of Multiple Factors, 69 St. Louis U. L.J. 99 (2024) (reviewing Bryant Garth (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) & Gregory Shaffer (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar), The Globalization of Legal Education: A Critical Perspective (Oxford University Press 2022)): Legal education across many parts of the…
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Minecraft As A Teaching Tool: Online Experiential Learning For The Law School Classroom
Maria Jose Schmidt-Kessen (Central European University; Google Scholar), Stina Teilmann-Lock (Copenhagen Business School; Google Scholar), Florence Villesèche (Copenhagen Business School; Google Scholar) & Andrea Wallace (University of Exeter; Google Scholar), Minecraft as a Teaching Tool: Online Experiential Learning for the Law School Classroom, 35 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 1 (2024): The Article…