Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Legal Education
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After Raising Associate Salaries, Milbank Announces Summer Bonuses
In June, BigLaw firm Milbank LLP announced an increase in its lockstep associate salary scale. In July, Milbank announced further compensation news: it will pay 2026 summer bonuses to associates on the same schedule as in 2024 and 2025. This compensation news meshes well with this spring’s Am Law 100 analysis, which found broad increases…
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Book of the Day: Research Handbook on Global Legal Education
Research Handbook on Global Legal Education (Elgar 2026) Research Handbooks in Legal Education and the Legal Profession Edited by Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, University of California Irvine School of Law and Bryant G. Garth, American Bar Foundation, USA Publication Date: August 2026 This Research Handbook examines legal training and its impact on law and society. Leading experts…
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The Most Stressful Law Schools
Chat GPT generated the following response to “what are the most stressful law schools?”: “There’s no universally accepted ranking of the “most stressful” law schools, because stress depends on grading policies, academic culture, cost of attendance, job placement pressure, and student support. However, schools with highly competitive environments, demanding workloads, or intense recruiting cultures are…
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Article: Reimagining Legal Education: The Transformative Power of Small-Group Instruction by Michael I. Meyerson
This law review article caught my eye. I have always enjoyed teaching medium to large classes. But seminars were often the best learning experiences for all involved. Reimagining Legal Education: The Transformative Power of Small-Group Instruction by Michael I. Meyerson Abstract Legal education is failing its students. Those entering their first year of law school…
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How legal education is adapting to AI
Check out this website to compare policies, teaching guidance, and institutional strategies across law schools—grounded in the schools’ own documents. So far, it has the responses of UC Berkeley, Chicago, Suffolk, and Texas.
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Book of the Week
Martin Krygier, Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory at the University of New South Wales.has penned an erudite analysis of conventional approaches to the Rule of Law. Available reviews of Tempering Power suggest Krygier has presented a compelling case that the Rule of Law can only be understood in context and that we…
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Academic Freedom Threatened at West Point
We should all be following what’s happening at West Point, where Professor TIm Bakken is suing the military academy arguing that his First Amendment freedoms have been violated by new politicies that restrict what he may teach. A commentary on the controversy by Lucian Truscott is here and the Washington Post account of the the…
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Washington (state) Deans Weigh In
Following up on Dean Parrish’s earlier post detailing technical difficulties that forced cancellation of the bar exam’s July Administration, we see now that Seattle University Dean, Tony Varona, has penned a letter to the Washington Supreme Court urging that diploma privilege be granted to those whose tests were shut down. (note the actual letter corrected…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Teaching Using Multiple-Choice Questions
In last week’s blog post identifying 11 teaching technique alternatives to Socratic-style questions and lectures, I promised that, among other things, I would create a post that explores teaching using multiple choice questions. This post explores four such uses, but I start with a recommendation. How Students Should Communicate Their Answers. Regardless of which of the four uses…
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How Students Justify Academic Dishonesty
Honorlock, How Students Justify Academic Dishonesty, June 25, 2026. For this article, you may want to make sure you read it while sitting down, perhaps with an excellent glass of wine, and definitely when you are in a good frame of mind. Below, I share two of the justifications the article articulates, which may encourage…
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Illinois Institute of Technology declares “financial exigency” and begins firing faculty
Brain Leiter breaks the news that Illinois Institute of Technology has declared a “financial exigency” and has begun firing faculty. “Up to one-third of the faculty may be terminated, although in the law school, Chicago-Kent, it appears the number is lower (maybe one-fifth by some accounts). . . . If readers have more details, please…
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New Loan Limits and Responses
As student loan caps go into effect, we are seeing media coverage over the way some law schools are responding. A story yesterday on this issue from Bloomberg Law: Students pursuing graduate or professional degrees previously were able to borrow up to the full cost of attendance through federal loans. Uncapped loans were eliminated by…
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Washington State Bar Exam Cancellation
Many law graduates sat for bar exams this week, with almost all jurisdictions having their exams yesterday and today. Yesterday there were connectivity and technical issues in Missouri and Washington (and some reports of a delayed start in Maryland). NBCE, Statement on the July 2026 NextGen Bar Exam Administration, July 28, 2026; see also Ryan…
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Boyko on Lawyer Training
Anastasia Boyko (formerly Yale Law, formerly Utah Law), at Law.com (July 23): “The Future of Lawyering: Lawyer Training“: Once I came full circle to law school administration, I saw the root cause of lawyer training and development dysfunction. We have not created the right container for development for years. Limited psychological safety. Faculty more focused…
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Law Faculty Innovating With AI Policies
Increasingly, and as the Summer draws to a close and the Fall semester looms, I come across examples of individual law professors developing and advocating for their own custom classroom policies relative to Generative AI use by students. I’ll post links to particularly thoughtful examples, as I encounter them. Here are two: Matthew Sag, (Emory…
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UC Law SF to Require AI-enabled Lab for All Students
UC Law San Francisco (the law school once known as Hastings College of the Law) announced that the school is making its AI-enabled lawyering lab “AI-enabled lawyering lab a requirement for all JD students, starting with the incoming class of 2029, who will complete the course in their second year.” From the announcement: Launched as…
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Law Deans by Ethnicity and Gender
I previously posted about data (here, here, and here) from AALS Rosenblatt’s Deans Database. Below is the database’s Deans by Ethnicity and Gender “Caucasian Male – 89 (44.28%)” “Caucasian Female – 44 (21.89%)” Black or African American Male – 16 (7.96%) Black or African American Female – 27 (13.43%) Hispanic or Latino Male – 6 (2.99%) Hispanic or Latino Female…
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Law School Dean Tenure Shrinks to 2.8 Years Due to Financial Constraints and Strained Relationships With University Administration
ABA Journal, Financial Pressures Lead Law Deans to Leave Their Posts, New Study Finds: The average tenure for law school deans has shrunk from 10.3 years in the 1950s to 2.8 years since 2020—and financial pressures are largely to blame, according to a study published Wednesday by the Association of American Law Schools. … While 65.9% of…
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High Point Law School Dean Mark Martin to Receive ABA Civility Award
ABA Press Release: The American Bar Association Judicial Division will present its William D. Missouri Civility Award to Mark Martin, former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, ,,, on Thursday, July 30, during the 2026 ABA Annual Conference. Martin will receive the Missouri Civility Award, which is named in honor of Judge William D.…
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Choi & Connell: AI Deceleration (or Acceleration) by Taxation
Jonathan H. Choi (Washington University) & Paul Connell (Wisconsin), AI Deceleration (or Acceleration) by Taxation: Even the chief executives of America’s leading AI companies cannot agree on whether their products will substitute for or complement human labor. Yet most policy proposals, from data center bans to bonus depreciation for AI hardware, commit policymakers ex ante to just…
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Union Controversy Brewing in Recognition of University Non-Tenure Track Faculty
Union activity of non-tenure track faculty has been on the rise in recent years. There has been some and controversy surrounding the activity and university responses. Mark Kreidler for Capital and Main reports on a controversy at the University of Southern California. A group of faculty “voted to unionize in June, the university cloaked its decision…
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The NextGen UBE Launches Next Week
The first NextGen Uniform Bar Examination will be administered on July 28–29, 2026 in ten jurisdictions. Best wishes to those law graduates sitting for the new exam, both for their final preparation and in the inaugural administration! Although the redesigned exam is 25% shorter than the legacy UBE, the focus appears to be more demanding:…
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Dean Conway’s Return to the Faculty: Politics at Work?
Austen Parrish offered a wonderful post on Dean Danielle Conway’s legacy as dean at Penn State Dickinson Law. A true visionary and dear friend to many, Dean Conway is returning to faculty as a Distinguished Professor of Law after a tremendously impactful seven years as dean at Penn State Dickinson Law. She is the current President of…
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Book of the Day: How to Offer Effective Wellbeing Support to Law Students
How to Offer Effective Wellbeing Support to Law Students Edited by Lydia Katherine Bleasdale (Elgar 2024) Publisher’s description: This How to Guide will provide readers with information and insights which will better equip them to support law students in a higher education setting. Featuring contributions from an array of eminent academics and student support professionals, this book…
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Most Bike-Friendly Law Schools
A Chat GPT artificial intelligence search generated the following for the most bike-friendly law schools: Law School Why it’s bike-friendly University of California, Davis School of Law Located in Davis, often considered one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the U.S. Over 100 miles of bike paths, flat terrain, and most students bike to campus.…