Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Teaching
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: How to Build a Good Working Relationship with Your Students
The more you invest in your students, the more likely your students are to invest themselves in your class. We saw this principle play out repeatedly in student and alumni comments when we conducted the school visits for What the Best Law Teachers Do. Having witnessed these benefits myself, I have adopted two practices I first…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: My Students Have Spoken; Now, It’s Your Turn
In each class I teach, I ask students to fill out index cards in which they share with me how they wish me to pronounce their names, why they are in law school, anything else they want me to know about them, their teaching method preferences, and what else I can do to support their…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: When You Don’t Know the Answer
Last week, based on a question from a brilliant and very dedicated new colleague, I shared good and bad advice you can give to your students about how to successfully learn in your classes. This week’s topic comes from a different, brilliant, and very dedicated new colleague. This second colleague asked what to do if you…
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Mock Job Talk Scheduling Poll
David Sella-Villa (South Carolina), Mock Job Talk Scheduling Poll Some candidates entering the U.S. legal academic market have a lot of people in their corner: mentors who read their job talk paper, colleagues who sit through practice runs, friends who explain what an appointments committee is really asking. Others go in without any of that.…
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Blaszczyk: “Field Notes from the U.S. Law Teaching Market”
Matt Blaszczyk (University of Georgia), Field Notes from the U.S. Law Teaching Market: The U.S. law teaching market is highly competitive and traditionally reliant on specific institutional signals. For non-traditional candidates, accessing the unwritten norms of this ecosystem can be challenging. This collection of notes functions as a strategic roadmap to demystify the process. It…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: (Bad and) Good Advice to Students
A brilliant and very dedicated new colleague asked me what advice he should give students about how they can do well in his class. That question inspired this blog post. My plan is to share four examples of what I regard as bad advice and, for each, suggest why I do not like the advice…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Fears and Nightmares for Our Fall 2026 Classes
Next week, as you may know, I will once again be a full-time law professor after serving as a dean for twelve years, eight at my current home, McGeorge, and four at the Bowen Law School in Arkansas. I am as excited as I am nervous, and, to implement a recommendation from a dear friend,…
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Deep Thinking about AI Literacy-Related Outcomes
Drs. Veronika Hackl, Alexandra Elena Müller, Maximilian Sailer (Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, University of Passau, Passau, Germany), The AI literacy heptagon: A structured approach to AI literacy in higher education, Computers and Education: Articial Intelligence 10 (2026). Abstract The integrative literature review addresses the conceptualization and implementation of AI Literacy (AIL) in Higher Education (HE) by examining recent…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Hopes and Dreams for Our Fall 2026 Classes
As some of you know, in this semester, I return full time to the classroom after serving as a dean for twelve years, eight at my current home, McGeorge, and four at the Bowen Law School in Arkansas. I am as excited as I am nervous, and, to implement a recommendation from a dear friend,…
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An Interesting Approach to Solving the AI Misuse Conundrum Regarding Take-Home Projects
Jasper Roe (Durham University), Mike Perkins (British University Vietnam), & Louie Giray (Mapua University), Assessment twins: An approach for strengthening assessment validity in the age of generative AI (6-4-26). This article is worth a read and some consideration. For those of us who teach legal writing and upper-division writing seminars worry equally about learning and…
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Wendel, Should Law Schools Teach Responsible Use of AI?
Brad Wendel, Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law (Cornell Law School), Should Law Schools Teach Responsible Use of AI? (August 2, 2026). Wendel begins his substack with one word, “No.” I will mostly leave it to you to enjoy Wendel’s very readable prose, but I will excerpt one quote to give you a flavor: I…
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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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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: (Beyond Questions and Lectures) Eleven Other Tools for the Teaching Toolbox
One facet of my efforts to promote excellent teaching and learning has been to support faculty who wish to expand their teaching techniques beyond simply asking Socratic-style questions every class. All class. Expanding one’s teaching repertoires engages students, improves learning, and, for me at least, keeps the class preparation experience challenging and stimulating. To be…
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Faculty Focus: Five Things I Wish I Knew My First Semester
Peter Szawranskyj (Faculty Focus), Five Things I Wish I Knew My First Semester (July 20, 2026). This article offers five excellent suggestions for new professors of all stripes. My first semester as a faculty member taught me something I wish I had understood on day one: most of the stress did not come from teaching…
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Cult of Pedagogy: The Art of Classroom Timing
Jennifer Gonzalez (Cult of Pedagogy), The Art of Classroom Timing: 10 Ways to Fit It All In (April 27, 2026) For most of my academic life as a student, I had observed classes ending in this way: The teacher or professor said, “I see our time is up. See you next time.” Then, I had…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: Two Exciting Ideas from Professor Mary Largent Purvis
This week’s blog feature re-introduces an intermittent feature of my contributions to this blog: teaching ideas from faculty colleagues. This week, I am featuring two ideas from Associate Dean/Professor Mary Largent Purvis of Mississippi College of Law. Professor Purvis presented these ideas in a memorable and inspiring presentation at this year’s Institute for Law Teaching and Learning…
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Edutopia, Five Tips to Address the Forgetting Curve
Edutopia, Boosting Student Memory. This very short video explains The Forgetting Curve and offers five tips for teachers to help their students remember. It’s a short video, but the ideas are supported by research and are good ones to adapt to law teaching.
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Justice Scalia’s Message To Law School Faculty
Josh Blackman (South Texas), Justice Scalia’s Message To Law School Faculty: I became a law professor in the fall of 2012. In January 2013, I attended the Federalist Society faculty conference in New Orleans. Justice Scalia was gracious enough to speak at the evening reception. His remarks stuck with me, and affect much of what I do.…
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Schapiro, Tripepi, & Blackley: Reclaiming the Writing Process Using AI
Hannah M. Schapiro, Manuela Tripepi, Julia Blackley (Thomas Jefferson University), Reclaiming the Writing Process Using AI: A Scaffolded Writing Assignment That Promotes Critical Thinking, Reflection, and Assignment That Promotes Critical Thinking, Reflection, and Accountability (Thomas Jefferson University College of Life Sciences Faculty Papers, 4-30-2026). In this article, the authors offer an idea that would work…
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Blackman: How to Assess AI-Aided Law Students? Oral Exams?
Josh Blackman (South Texas), How To Assess AI-Aided Students? My tentative plan for ConLaw in the spring is to switch to an oral, in-person midterm. Taking a step back, I have long struggled with how to use midterms effectively. The most useful aspect of a midterm is to provide an early intervention–feedback for students who…
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Garon, “Empathy by Design: Rethinking Law School Engagement for Critical Thinking in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”
Jon Garon (Nova Southeastern), Empathy by Design: Rethinking Law School Engagement for Critical Thinking in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, 57 ST. MARY’S L.J. 41 (2025). Professor Garon’s powerful introduction, excerpted in part below, introduces his insightful and convincing argument for redesigning legal education in the age of AI. Introduction . . . Treating law students…
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Cheating, Not Just an AI Problem
Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Thought at Amherst College, offers this commentary in The Conversation. He describes both his own conversations with students and a series of academic studies indicating that cheating in high school and college is far more widespread than we in the academy care to contemplate or…
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Teaching Tidbit of the Week: A Next-Gen Bar-Style Activity to Prepare Students for AI-Enhanced Law Practice
Two major challenges are hitting legal education at the same time: the NextGen Bar Exam and AI. Both feel threatening. This post offers an alternative to the natural human reactions to threats: fight, flight, or freeze. Instead, I propose combining the two, AI and a NextGen Bar testing format, to create a teaching tool for…
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What if 1L’s just won’t read
In My Students Can’t Read, Tyler Jagt, a teacher of literature and creative writing at several universities writes movingly in The Chronicle of Higher Education about his experiences with students who simply cannot handle the same level of reading assignments that his students managed easily just a few years ago. https://www.chronicle.com/article/my-students-cant-read. Those students are headed…