Legal Education Commons^™

My Fifty Years, Bennett L. Gershman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Teaching Contracts: My Journey With Spellbook And Ai Pedagogy, Gregory M. Duhl

Faculty Scholarship

I am integrating Spellbook, an AI tool for contract drafting and review, into my first-year law school Contracts course in Spring 2026. Although Spellbook is highly effective, its educational value hinges on the pedagogical framework structured around it, a framework typically not licensed along with AI tools. In-house instructional design expertise can provide this framework, and the professor-instructional designer partnership offers one model for successful AI integration. Strong tools paired with robust instructional design yield learning experiences in which AI augments, rather than supplants, the cultivation of legal judgment and critical thinking. This collaborative approach, among educators, instructional designers, and …

Critical Lawyering Pedagogy: Transformational Legal Education, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

In an era marked by democratic backsliding, systemic inequality, and widespread disillusionment with legal institutions, traditional legal education has proven not merely inadequate, but actively complicit in reproducing the institutional norms, professional identities, and hierarchies that have enabled democratic erosion and the misuse of law as a tool of exclusion and domination.

This Article describes a comprehensive, justice-oriented framework that reimagines the structure, content, and outcomes of legal education to better meet those needs. Critical Lawyering Pedagogy (CLP) draws from Critical Pedagogy, Narrative Theory, and Critical Lawyering and challenges the entrenched hierarchies and exclusionary norms that dominate most law schools …

Legal Professional Identity Development: An Exploration Of The Social And Emotional Processes By Which Law Students Transition From Novices To Professionals, David Hall Abney Ii

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

This dissertation seeks to heed the call for expansion of instructional communication research (ICR) beyond the undergraduate classroom and undergraduate learning objectives by exploring older learners and higher-order affective learning objectives. Legal professional identity development (LPID) is a discipline-specific type of higher-order affective learning that is conceptualized as a continuous nonlinear process that begins in law school and extends throughout a lawyer’s career, involving the internalization of the legal profession’s core values and norms and their integration with an evolving identity. Using a pragmatic ICR approach and a mixed-methods design, Phase 1 employed individual interviews and focus groups to investigate …

2026-2027, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Student Handbooks

No abstract provided.

Relentless: The Pressures Shortening Law School Deanships And What Must Change, Katie Kempner, Patricia E. Roberts

Faculty Articles

It is no small thing when a law school loses its dean. The departure triggers a national search, stalls institutional momentum, disrupts fundraising, and requires rebuilding years of relationships with faculty, alumni, and university leadership, all while the institution navigates one of the most turbulent periods in legal education's history. Approximately 25 percent of the nation's law schools transition to a new dean in any given year. That reality prompted this study.

This study combined a survey of 624 current and former law school deans, which yielded 256 responses and data on 294 deanships, with 70 qualitative interviews conducted between …

Dual Purposes Of A Plea Bargaining Simulation: Pedagogical Skills Training And Controlled Data Collection Experiment About Crime Victim’S Access To Justice Via Counsel, Tung Yin

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Grading Machines: Can Ai Exam-Grading Replace Law Professors?, Kevin L. Cope, Jens Frankenreiter, Scott Hirst, Eric A. Posner, Daniel Schwarcz, Dane Thorley

Articles

In the past few years, large language models (LLMs) have achieved significant technical advances, enabling legal-advocacy organizations to adopt them as complements to—or substitutes for—lawyers and other human experts. The role of LLMs in legal education, however, is underexplored. While several studies have examined LLMs’ performance in taking law school exams, finding mixed results, there have been no published studies systematically analyzing LLMs’ competence at one of law professors’ chief responsibilities: grading law school exams. This paper presents results of an analysis of how LLMs perform in evaluating student responses to legal analysis questions of the kind typically contained in …

Interrogating The Facts Of The Case, Anna Roberts

Indiana Law Journal

Buried within many criminal judicial opinions is the origin of their “facts”—the interrogation room. Criminal law pedagogy should expose this origin. If we treat the alleged product of interrogation as “what happened,” as criminal cases (and professors) sometimes do, we obscure the ways in which interrogators are trained to incriminate and to co-create confessions. We also risk obscuring subsequent layers of reporting by police, prosecutors, or judges.

Recent scholarly literature urges criminal law professors to teach differently, warning that we distort, sanitize, and bolster the carceral state when we erase governmental agents and bypass procedure. Treating the “facts of the …

Silos, Gaps, And Bridges: A Call To Action For Law Schools To Facilitate Collaboration Across The Curriculum At The Dawn Of The Nextgen Bar, Elizabeth Usman, Andrea Gemignani

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

Now is a time for action. With the advent of the NextGen bar exam and the recent changes to the ABA accreditation standards for law schools, which both focus on valuing practical legal skills, law schools have a unique opportunity. By coordinating practical and doctrinal content across the curriculum, law schools can ensure that all graduates are proficient in fundamental lawyering skills and prepared for both the bar exam and practice success. ...

Part I of this article examines the foundations of American legal education from apprenticeships to the emergence of the case study method. It then explores the calls …

The Most Important Lesson, Rodger D. Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

My Friend Dan Subotnik, Harvey Gilmore

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Memory Of Dan Subotnik—Friend And Scholar, David M. Phillips

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Memories Of Marian Pink, Marian Pink

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Memories Of My Father, Daniel Ezra Subotnik, Joseph E. Subotnik

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Moral Progress In Legal Doctrine, Philip Petrov

Faculty Scholarship

This article integrates the concept of moral progress – here, moral improvement in the thinking and behavior of individuals over time – into the study of legal doctrine. The article first presents a naturalistic account of what moral progress is and describes three of its most historically and analytically important forms: (1) moral circle expansion, (2) moral domain expansion, and (3) increasing sensitivity to proportionality. The article then analyzes three historical developments in U.S. tort law that qualify as instances of moral progress: (1) the partial demise of the “suicide rule” beginning around the 1980s (according to …

The Nevada Plan: Redefining The Bar In The Silver State, Grace Michaelson

Nevada Law Journal Forum

Nevada is rewriting the rules of entry into its legal profession. In 2024, the Nevada Supreme Court approved plans for a new state bar exam that will take effect in 2027. The new format, known as the Nevada Plan, significantly departs from Nevada’s traditional bar exam and fundamentally alters the licensure process for those aspiring to practice law in the Silver State. This Note will explore the proposed changes and their implications through three main sections. Part I provides essential context for understanding the current moment in bar exam reform. It begins by examining the traditional role of bar exams …

2025 Cardozo Life (Winter), Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Life Magazine

Table of Contents:

Top News & Events, page 3

Alumni News, page 15

50 Years of Daring to Illuminate, page 18

A Fearless, Undaunted Approach to Building a New Law School, page 26

50 Years of Daring to Innovate, page 42

Faculty in the Media, page 66

Faculty Scholarship, page 70

Retirements, page 76

Student Briefs, page 79

Alumni Signature Events, page 83

Classnotes, page 87

Cardozo in a Word, page 92

Put Me In, Coach: Enhancing Foundational Lawyering Skills Across The Curriculum With Neurodivergent Law Students In Mind, Erica M. Lux

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

As more adults discover that they are neurodivergent, the law student population is likely to be no different, and legal education must adapt to support the skill development needs of neurodivergent students as they prepare to enter the profession. Neurodivergence is a non-medical term that refers to a variety of conditions resulting from changes to a person’s brain structure and function. More commonly, academic discussions around neurodivergence focus on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—both of which have not been properly diagnosed over the past several decades. However, neurodivergence also incorporates anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), …

Unseen Labour, Unmatched Impact: Struggles And Strategies Of Supervising Lawyers In Canadian Clinical Law Programs, Sarah Buhler, Gemma Smyth

Dalhousie Law Journal

Supervision has been described as the “beating heart” and the “core” of clinical legal education. Yet lawyers who supervise law students in clinical programs have challenging and poorly understood roles within Canadian legal education. This article analyzes interviews with lawyers who supervise students in Canadian law-school affiliated legal clinics. Supervising lawyers describe the tensions between their roles as lawyers, supervisors and mentors, university or non-profit employees, social justice advocates, members of law societies, and clinic team members. These tensions often exist within an environment of lower pay, poor job security, substandard treatment by colleagues, and inadequate training. Despite these challenges, …