While debriefing a case the other day, one of my students said, “this case would make a great movie.” The class laughed and I agreed – action, pain, crazy lawyer antics, and greed all wrapped into one film.

You may have seen presentations before about using legal movies as a teaching tool. One of my law school Professors would use “My Cousin Vinny” clips to teach evidence. It was an excellent visual aid and an innovative way to engage our class.

My student’s comment and my memories from evidence motivated me to use Ai to create a video short this week. I limited my Ai use to free trials so this post in no way serves to endorse one program over another (unless someone from these programs is reading this blog and wants to send some upgraded subscriptions my way).

I started with a simple prompt into ChatGPT, “Please make me a video that depicts an auto-accident.” In hindsight, the prompt was too simple, and the robot’s response let me know that (thanks Robot). Now, the free ChatGPT cannot generate videos, but it did generate two options which could enhance our classrooms.

The first option was a visual storyboard. The robot provided a visual storyboard, a vision board if you will, that you could use to improve your slides or hypothetical storytelling in the classroom.

The second option was a ready-to-paste cinematic Ai video prompt with a referral to Ai video tools (Runway, Pika, Luma or Sora-style generators). The prompt provided, “A realistic daytime urban intersection. Two standard sedans approach from perpendicular directions. One vehicle enters the intersection late, causing a low-speed side-impact collision. No injuries visible. Cars come to rest. Drivers exit vehicles. Police lights appear in the distance. Neutral, educational tone. Cinematic camera movement, realistic physics.”

I chose to use the free version of Runway to test the prompt. After copying and pasting the cinematic prompt instructions, I was happy to see that the free trial of Runway produced a ten second video that sufficed to meet the needs for use in a classroom. An upgraded version could produce longer videos and allow for more Ai editing within the video itself.

Inserting a few cinematic clips based on your own prompts can help break up a dense lecture and is a great way to get students to creatively engage in written analysis. Instead of a written hypothetical prompt, try a visual depiction followed by a short writing prompt. The prep for this activity also only took five minutes, which is far less time than I would spend watching a legal movie (which may have problematic screenplay depictions of bias and stereotyping) to find certain teaching points. I hope today’s post serves to push your creative content wheels – happy “filmmaking.” 

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

With the start of a new semester, we start to hear from students (especially first-year students) who did not meet their own expectations. And while an exam review can be helpful for students, reading skills can often be a foundational cause of such challenges and something that a struggling student may not recognize the need to improve.

A law student who struggles with legal reading comprehension also often struggles with critical thinking about what to extract from a case to help them solve a future legal problem.[1] This can then lead to challenges with processing the law (outlining) and applying the law (taking exams).[2] And as Susan Landrum pointed out at her excellent presentation on “The Countdown to the NextGen UBE” at the AALS Annual Meeting, reading is one of those most fundamental skills that will also be key to a student’s success on the NextGen UBE—and one that students coming into law school continue to wrangle with.

For some, the Spring semester can be even more difficult for first-year law students. For example, at our school, students transition from Civil Procedure, Contracts, and Torts in the Fall, to Property, Criminal Law, and Constitutional Law in the Spring—courses we tend to see them face greater reading comprehension challenges in. Additionally, because students are now in their second semester, the same initial skill building that first-semester professors engaged in (whether in doctrinal or academic success courses), may not be as consistently supported in the Spring.

Outlined below are some suggestions for supporting law student reading that can be implemented in your teaching this semester for longer-term returns in student success:

• Give Students Options on How to Prime Their Learning. A student who primes their learning with a supplement can often better understand the context of the case they are about to read.[3] However, in today’s digital age and with students who have demonstrated attention span challenges, alternatives to some of the more traditional book options should be made available. For example, if your school has a subscription to learning supplement libraries, like West Academic or Aspen Learning Library, both include audio lessons. Many students will use these for exam preparation, such as Richard Freer’s Law School Legends Audio (a very popular Civ Pro supplement at our school). However, these can just as easily be repurposed for learning prior to reading a case. Similarly, many bar prep companies offer free law student resources, including overview videos that are mini versions of their bar prep lectures. These videos can be used in the same way to help a student understand a concept, such as the Commerce Clause, before a student starts to read the many opinions in their casebook on the topic.
• Adjust Reading Focus from Fact Summaries to Legal Takeaways. For students who struggle, the process of case briefing can many times result in a fact-heavy recitation of information—something that will help them feel successful in a Socrative dialogue in class but may not seem to directly connect to their outlining or exams. With students who struggled on their exams, I sometimes find it helpful to teach them to focus first on the issue and rule takeaway, then the legal sources and arguments supporting that outcome, and finally the legally relevant facts. Reordering their reading process and takeaways from fact and procedural recitations first can help a student understand that the law (which is what their outline should highlight) is key, while the facts support that outcome (and should show up in their outlines as examples). Not only can this help a student better see that cases are not just wells of facts, but it can also help them see more clearly the legal sources and analysis necessary to solve problems they will inevitably see on exams and in practice.

Given that exam performance may be a symptom of a more foundational skill challenge, such as reading, adapting traditionally proven methods of learning strategies can be helpful as we continue to work with ever-evolving student bodies.

What innovative ways have you found helpful to support law student reading challenges?

(Erica M. Lux)

[1] Patricia Grande Montana, Bridging the Reading Gap in the Law School Classroom, 45 Capital Univ. L. Rev. 433, 446 (2017).

[2] Id.

[3] Michael Hunter Schwartz & Paula J. Manning, Expert Learning for Law Students 65–68 (3d ed. 2018).

Please let me start by acknowledging that this country is enshrouded in darkness. We are facing crisis after crisis and unimaginable hate. I told one of my classes that it feels like an abusive relationship where we have lost perspective so that any glimmer of humanity is overblown into normalcy. This isn’t normal–and small shreds of past kindness are welcome, but not curative. This larger story must be told first.

Here is the smaller one. This past weekend I accompanied my daughter to an exercise class that was titled, “Gentle Heat Sculpt: Shake and Drake[1].”  This class took place in a room that comfortably fit about 12 “sculptors,” and I took my assigned mat along with the 31 others who came for an early morning workout. My mat was directly behind the instructor which I thought would be helpful to me since I am someone who needs to see what I am supposed to do in such a class-and also there was a mirror directly in front of me so I could see what I was actually doing (because what I think I am doing and what I am actually doing can differ). I was told to get ankle weights, a small towel, a ten pound ring, and a block (not concrete). Check, check, check, and check. I had brought a bigger than usual (for me) water bottle and had, despite it being 4 degrees outside[2], filled it with ice and water. I figured I could survive anything for 45 minutes and my daughter had kindly used her monthly guess pass on me[3], so I was ready.

I was not. The room was warm as we settled in and arranged our tools of torture around our assigned mats. It was a nice contrast to the weather outside. And then our instructor–with her hot pink stretchy clothes and Brittany Spears microphone–turned up the music and the temperature and lowered the lights….all the way. The hot pink that looked fluorescent moments before was not actually glow in the dark. The sound system was loud but also the microphone was so close to her now invisible face that if she had said, “stand clear of the closing doors,” I would have believed I was on the subway traversing the Bronx back in high school. Sometimes all I could make out of her commands were a countdown of repetitions of whatever we were doing.

With most of my useful senses muted-I couldn’t see her (or me) or hear the instructions-I felt lost. And if I was doing something that could have been dangerous, she couldn’t see or hear me either. I couldn’t touch or taste anyone else for help (frowned upon in public) and while I could smell everyone more and more as the temp climbed, it was not instructive. And then it hit me, is this what it felt like to be a 1L? Is this how we make our students feel when they start law school?

Think about it-we crowd them all into a room for orientation and while we don’t turn the lights off, it is August and a bit warm even with air-conditioning. And then we tell them what they need to do to succeed very quickly and as if they had already been to law school and know the rhythm of the work. We use a peppy voice to keep the energy going and praise them for coming. We even wear colorful outfits. And for all we know, at the end, they are just glad to have survived. Perhaps they all assumed that everyone else was doing it completely right because they couldn’t see the struggle next to them.

But survival and success are not the same thing[4]. This class reminded me that I need to slow down and check in with my students: lower the temperature and make sure they can see me and be seen.

At the end of Shake and Bake[5], I was a sweaty mess: my towel soaked, my ice water depleted. I cleaned and returned the torture devices and very, very quickly (and possibly aggressively) made my way to the door so I could take big gulps of cool air and light. Did I feel I accomplished something? Yes. Maybe. Maybe not. I have no idea if the other shake and bakers did this better than I did-I couldn’t see them. And I cannot even tell you what I did.

(Liz Stillman)

[1] Apologies to Kendrick. I was not aware of the subtitle and for what it is worth, the only music I heard during the class was my own heart beating and my companions sucking every non-hellish molecule of cool air out of the room.

[2] Yes, 4 degrees Fahrenheit-Boston does not mess around in winter.

[3] Yes, it was the last day of the month-and yes, her significant other had not wanted to do this with her.

[4] Unless, I suppose, you are on Survivor. Or The Traitors. If anyone wants to discuss the current season of The Traitors with me offline, please email me because I have thoughts. Many thoughts. We could even Zoom.

[5] A far more accurate name….

I admit it. I’m a sucker for day-in-the-life (DITL) reels (on Insta obviously…I’ve arbitrarily decided I’m too old for TikTok).

At AALS this year, I found myself in repeated conversations with academic success professionals about workload and work-life balance. Those conversations crystallized something I’ve sensed for a while: many people – students, faculty, and administrators alike – don’t fully understand what academic success and bar support professionals actually do all day. The scope of our work is often misunderstood, and the volume of it is frequently underestimated.

I briefly wondered whether a DITL video might help illustrate reality. Spoiler alert: I did not make a video. Instead, I went with what I know – a blog.

I chose a fairly typical workday and tracked how I spent my time, from morning routines to bedtime. For context, I am the Director of the Academic Success Program and an Associate Professor of Law. Our ASP currently consists of two people: me and our Assistant Director. We normally have three team members (a relatively large ASP department), so this year has been a bit busier than usual. I intentionally selected a day that was not pure chaos to provide a more representative picture of a “normal” workload.

My role includes both academic and bar support. Early in the spring semester, the balance tends to tip toward academic support, as students come in motivated to improve on fall performance. This semester, I’m teaching two in‑person courses and administering one online course. I chose a day without in‑person teaching obligations to track, though teaching‑related tasks still made appearances. Like many in ASP, I’m also an enthusiastic over‑committer, with external professional obligations layered on top of a full service load at my institution.

Before walking you through the day, I’ll note that this exercise was surprisingly valuable. Each afternoon, I preview the next day’s calendar and do some light hyperventilating (kidding…mostly), so none of what follows was a surprise. But seeing it all laid out reinforced just how much happens even on a day I would describe as “calm.”

So here it is:

6:00–7:30 a.m.: Get myself and my 3‑year‑old ready for the day
7:30–8:00 a.m.: Pre‑K drop‑off
8:00–8:30 a.m.: Commute to campus
8:30–8:45 a.m.: Morning check‑in with Assistant Director to plan the day
8:45–9:15 a.m.: Respond to emails
9:15–10:30 a.m.: Review submissions for The Learning Curve
10:30–10:45 a.m.: Respond to emails
10:45–10:57 a.m.: Final prep for 1L workshop presentation
10:57–11:00 a.m.: Psych myself up to make a phone call at 11 (peak millennial energy)
11:00–11:30 a.m.: Phone call with alum regarding bar application questions
11:30–11:55 a.m.: Respond to emails
11:55 a.m.–12:30 p.m.: Meet with a 1L about academic performance
12:35–2:00 p.m.: Attend and present at 1L Spring Reorientation Workshop
2:00–3:00 p.m.: Meet with Law Review leadership (faculty advisor role)
3:00–3:45 p.m.: Meet with a 1L about academic performance
3:45–4:00 p.m.: Respond to emails and complete class administration tasks
4:00–4:30 p.m.: Meet with a student to review their final exam from my fall class
4:30–5:00 p.m.: Final emails and organizing for the next morning
5:00–5:30 p.m.: Commute home
5:30–7:00 p.m.: Family time
7:00–9:00 p.m.: Review draft of internal report and submit feedback
9:00 p.m.–bedtime: Read a novel and doomscroll

That’s the entire day.

This post isn’t meant to spark an “I can do more than you” competition. Instead, it’s meant to document the breadth of tasks academic success and bar support professionals balance on a daily basis – often invisibly. Our work touches teaching, advising, assessment, compliance, student support, faculty service, and institutional priorities, frequently all in the same day.

I invite others in this community to try a similar exercise and share a snapshot of their own workdays. With greater transparency, perhaps we can dismantle lingering misconceptions about our roles, and, in the process, better advocate for the value of academic and bar support within our institutions.

(Dayna Smith)

“We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers and sisters.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , “Beyond Vietnam,” 1967.

On this day, when we commemorate and celebrate the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., there is still much work to do in the United States to make his vision a reality.  While the quote above is talking about those we sought to vanquish in the Vietnam War, it could easily apply to those now living in the United States, who have been deemed by the current administration as “enemies.”  Regardless of legal status, race, national origin, innocence, guilt, or accident, we have stopped treating people as family and have instead sought to banish and punish people based on false assumptions and group-think fears. And those who have used their voices to protest this mistreatment and injustice have been defunded, detained, dehumanized, and killed. Shouldn’t a shared humanity trump cruelty and hate? Who have we become?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  also said this, “[r]eturning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

I believe we are currently in a starless night. Maybe the ambient fury of those who are afraid to have brothers and sisters is obscuring our ability to find the stars. Education is a start. Combatting misinformation, stereotyping, scapegoating, and willful blindness are where we, as educators, can help the constellations shine because “[n]othing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

In 1957, Dr. King said, “[s]omewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.”

He went on to say, “[t]here’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate.”

We can choose love. It is always an option—hate is not a good look for anyone.

(Liz Stillman)

IYKYK that AccessLex is hosting a series of roundtable discussions on the NextGen Bar Exam. (Thank you for bringing our community together, AccessLex!)

Today’s post reflects on yesterday’s roundtable and provides four workflow tips to help simplify your workplace.

1. Transform your hard copy worksheets. If you are using hard copy worksheets with students, consider moving them into an online survey or form to easily gather information. These online tools help you review response rates, and track and analyze data. Some hard copy worksheets that you could transform include first year academic self-assessment surveys, orientation feedback forms, repeat bar taker self-report surveys, and final year bar planning surveys. If you are using a hard copy worksheet, here are a few sample instruction videos to assist in your online efforts:

– How to use Google Forms: https://youtu.be/BtoOHhA3aPQ?si=ZUTiFOQLr_2TVWun

– How to use Microsoft Forms: https://youtu.be/ffVolJTBVmE?si=l0jA7QZ1VGfxFymo

– How to use Jotform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEVsdL6NtE8

2. Create an interactive booking system. Forcing yourself to plan your availability also helps you set boundaries. Interactive booking systems help you track your calendar, track and report on the “hot topics for discussion” and input important breaks in the day like lunch. Here are a few online scheduling tools that may be helpful for you: Microsoft Bookings, Calendly, HubSpot Meetings and Google Calendar. 

3. Consider social media presence. Social media is an important channel to reach today’s students. Could your program benefit from scheduled social media posts? Social media can streamline communications and avoid the same individual conversation several times in one day. Social media also serves to reach students that might be scared or “too cool” to step into your office. Social media might intimidate you if you aren’t familiar with technology, but this is an opportunity to collaborate with students that frequently use the tool. You can employ a student or group of students to transform your ideas into creative content and assist in the posts. Collaboration generates buy-ins and brings a fresh take to academic and bar success programming. Here are two quick reads as you consider your path to becoming an “influencer.”:

• Castello, Rosa, The New Skill on the Block: Using Social Media in the Law School Classroom to Facilitate Learning (April 23, 2021). Southern Illinois University Law Review, Vol. 45, 2021, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4144978
• Social media in the Classroom, UNC Blog, Available at: https://journals.law.unc.edu/ncjolt/blogs/social-media-in-the-classroom/

4. The next forefront – incorporating AI into your workplace. We all understand that Artificial Intelligence isn’t going anywhere. As our brilliant colleague, Liz Johnson, highlighted yesterday, AI can also help simplify. As Liz proposed, efforts like using Artificial Intelligence to assist in study schedule creation, AI chatbots to answer questions about student handbooks, and AI assistance in course registration are new avenues to explore.

As the saying goes, “work smarter, not harder.”

[Amy Vaughan-Thomas]

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog entry includes a discussion of recent violence at Brown University on December 14, 2025. This content is disturbing and may be triggering to survivors of shootings, so we encourage everyone to prepare themselves emotionally before proceeding. If you believe that the reading will be traumatizing for you, then please forgo it. We encourage you to take the necessary steps for your emotional safety.

As exams move forward in most schools this time of year, I am inundated with students looking for tips on how to prepare and succeed on exams. I usually tell students to read less and practice more (apologies to Lin Manuel-Miranda). But I always ask, is there a teaching assistant for the class? Are they having a review session?

How many times have any of us told students that a review session with a TA is a don’t miss opportunity to get inside information about an exam? A TA speaks fluent [your professor here] and has been successful at their exam in the past. A TA can tell you how they studied, which supplements (if any) were helpful, and how to approach the questions once you are sitting down to take the exam. Some TAs are more helpful than others, but a good TA is the gold standard of exam advice for the professor they assist.

A TA conducted review session was the scene of a gruesome attack at Brown University this weekend. Two students were killed, nine injured, and scores were traumatized by this event. They were doing what I’ve urged students to do a million times: go to the review session and bring your questions. This was a session for what was mainly a first year economics class. There were 60 students in attendance in a bowl shaped room just trying to do their academic best by taking advantage of a great resource.

The TA in question was a 21-year-old senior at Brown who had offered 5 different review sessions for this very popular class. He sat silent and crouched behind the podium area with 20 of his students until police arrived. He attended to one student’s wounds and then accompanied her to the hospital in the back of a police car once they had been evacuated from the building.[1] He likely had the clearest and quickest path to the doors behind him when the shooting started. He stayed. I don’t usually consider 21-year-olds adults (regardless of what the government thinks and probably because I am old), but yesterday this 21-year-old was the Trusted Adult in a room mainly full of college freshmen. And today, I have no doubt he feels older.

Let’s take a minute and remember that TAs are heroes-even in situations where they aren’t literally called on to save lives. Today, I raise my glass to Brown TA Joseph Oduro, and I hope he finds a peace that will no doubt elude him for some time.

(Liz Stillman)

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/14/metro/witness-terror-brown-shooting-classroom-gunman/