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/

As Shane Dizon noted in his earlier post, December is a time to mind your boundaries. As part of setting those boundaries, setting time aside to revamp your courses can fuel your inner creative educator.

This post shares a series of recent articles regarding incorporating AI into your syllabus or classroom.

If you have not already incorporated AI into your work, here are some questions to consider prior to the spring semester:

• How might you restrict the use of AI in your classroom?
• How and if you will use AI for your course? To grade? To generate hypotheticals? To assist in the creation of rubrics? Perhaps you will show illustrative examples of fact patterns through generative art?
• What methods might you use to teach responsible and ethical use of AI to future lawyers?

Regarding personally observed abuse of AI in academic and bar success courses:

• What might your approach be to a student that uses AI to generate essay responses in your course or in their commercial bar course (to presumably earn completion progress credit)?

While this blog does not have answers, it does have resources to consider this month:

• Lande, John, Solving Professors’ Dilemmas about Prohibiting or Promoting Student AI Use (December 01, 2025). University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-53, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5841522 
• Lorteau, Steve and Sarro, Douglas, Artificial Intelligence in Legal Education: A Scoping Review (November 17, 2025). The Law Teacher [In Press], Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5762982 
• Liu, Nathan, Artificial Intelligence in Legal Education: Current Practices, Debates, and Recommendations (November 05, 2025). JusGov Research Paper No. 2025-07, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5821163 
• Sag, Matthew, AI Policies for Law Schools (October 17, 2025). Emory Legal Studies Research Paper No. 100, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5619534 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5619534
• Engle-Newman, Christopher, Assessing Law Student Learning in the Age of AI (September 05, 2025). U Denver Legal Studies Research Paper No. 25-24, 87 U. Pitt. L. Rev. XXX (2025), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5766523 
• Lande, John, Getting Help from AI to Update Your Syllabus (Even If You Think It’s Just Fine) (July 09, 2025). University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-32, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5345304

I also hope to see many of you at NECASP in New York City on December 19th!

 (Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

You may have previously heard of the “Rule of 3s” in the context of writing—a literary technique that uses groups of three to help with narrative storytelling and remembering. I have even become of fan of using this in some of my previous blog posts on advice giving.

However, the Rule of 3 I want to talk about today is that in the context of law school institutional memory. Institutional memory can provide strength through culture loss prevention. Yet, it can also be weak or non-existent, as is sometimes the case with student organizations and journals. The Rule of 3 in law school relies primarily on institutional memory that develops based on the traditional law school term length of three years. After three years, you have an entirely new law student body. So how does this help academic and bar success programs?  

For academic and bar success, we can use this Rule of 3 to our benefit because it has great value for programmatic change and innovation, which we are known for. Whether you are a rookie ASP/BP professional aiming  to shift the culture of academic and bar success in your school, or a seasoned veteran trying a new program meant to drive engagement, the Rule of 3 in law school can help you successfully overcome challenges and implement successful programming.

Having worked as the events director at the law school, and then a law student, and now as an academic and bar success professional, I have seen this story many times—new deans and new visions, new administrative procedures and processes, and new programs and courses. Each time, there was initial resistance to the change, followed by some adaptations to improve it based on feedback, and then ultimately it became “just how things are.” The Rule of 3s really can work wonders for programmatic change within law schools.

And because what is a Rule of 3 lesson without three pieces of advice to take away, here are three ways that leaning into the Rule of 3 and law school institutional memory can help you implement your programs:

• Consistency. To be sure, when we try something that is not immediately successful, we may feel the natural instinct to scrap it and start over. Whether lack of immediate success is due to resistance (discussed below) or programmatic challenges, overcome this instinct to bail. Instead, know that the plan was developed soundly, continue to implement it with each new class, and evolve the program.

• Evolution. We may spend significant time planning new programs before implementing them, but that does not mean they are infallible. Instead, just as teaching a new course for the first time can make us aware of different or better ways to teach it next time, so can the implementation of a new program. Learn from the challenges (and feedback if you can get it!), and as you build consistency in bringing the program back each year, also improve it based on the lessons learned. Each new class of students teaches you something new about the program such that you can evolve it along the way.

• Resistance. Trying to implement something new, something people feel they do not want or do not need, will often meet resistance. Yet, as the classes change, so too does the amount of resistance you may face. In fact, it will likely start to wane as students grow more accustomed to it and then by the time your third class arrives, it is all anyone knows—and it is accepted.

While helpful in the writing context, the Rule of 3s as it specifically pertains to law students and law school institutional memory can improve the programmatic offerings in your academic and bar success programs. This can lead to long-term engagement, buy-in, and perhaps the positive results you seek!

(Erica M. Lux)

Recently, as I applied for a tenure-track position, I struggled to put together a cover letter. For some reason, creating a cover letter for a faculty position was more difficult than the countless cover letters I had put together for jobs at firms as a law student. I had gone through several drafts, still not quite saying what I needed to say.

When a mentor reviewed my third cover letter draft, she said “I don’t know, it needs more specific facts.” And it hit me—I need to do more legal analysis!

As academic and bar success professionals, we are experts at good legal analysis and writing, especially in our ability to tie law and facts together—and to teach others to do so. And we should be using the same skills to write our own cover letters or review them for colleagues applying for faculty positions. So how do we do that?

• “Rules of Law” – Use the specific terms and phrases from the required and recommended qualifications in the relevant job posting as your rules of law—the key things you need to tie your experience and plans to. Faculty committees will use your cover letter and resume to see how well you meet the qualifications of the job posting. And just like a professor on an exam wants a student to state rules back to them before applying to facts, you should do the same for the committee members reviewing your application materials.

• Specific Facts – Use specific facts rather than generalizations to make your point that you are a good fit for the job. Have data? Use it. Have examples from class? Use them. Anything that can help you more specifically identify the ways in which you meet the rules of law—use them. Include at least two to three specific facts that help demonstrate how things you have accomplished meet each “rule of law” from the job posting.

• Tie Them Together – Make sure you are using good legal analysis to tie your “rules of law” to your specific facts. And don’t forget to because, which I am using here as a verb. Use “because” or other connection words like “therefore,” “when,” and “since” to show how you have specifically met the criteria for their job posting. Just like we tell students, show your math.

Use your expertise in legal analysis and set yourself up for an invite to the next stage of the interview process: the screening interview. Remember, we are masters of legal analysis skills—so why not showcase them?

(Erica M. Lux)