For our blog this week, Christopher Engle-Newman and I discussed our experiences with legal scholarship and the AASE/AccessLex Scholarship Grant, in hopes that it might inspire you to pursue your own scholarship and some funding to help it along!

Chris: Erica, I am excited we get to talk about scholarship and the opportunity for grant money for the ASP-community to promote scholarship, especially since we did not initially see ourselves being scholars in our roles. I don’t know about you, but I found the idea of producing scholarship very intimidating, and I definitely felt like an imposter simply thinking about writing an article, especially since it wasn’t required or part of my role.

Did you experience something similar, and what prompted you to write your first article?

Erica: Thanks so much for reaching out and helping get this conversation started, too! Yes, I have always felt like an imposter—in law school, in practice, and in academia. Though, I think that is a more common feeling than many of us know.

When I first started to think about legal scholarship, I had just started my new role in law academic success. I had also (within the last couple of years) learned just how neurodivergent I was. And as I started my new job and began to learn about the NextGen bar exam, I did some practice questions online, which helped me realize just how challenging some of the wording and skills features could be for neurodivergent law students like me. Then it hit me, “I should write about this!” Having a faculty mentor tell me that my idea was not silly, that people would find it valuable, and that I should add to the conversation was immensely motivating and encouraged me to apply for the AccessLex Scholarship Grant with my idea.

Was your journey similar?

Chris: For me, scholarship was one of those things I had a love-hate relationship with, and as part of my faculty status, I was not required to do it, so I avoided it. At the same time, as a visiting professor, I knew that scholarship is currency in academia, and so my motivation to write something started from an extrinsic point of motivation — to become a permanent faculty member. Even if it wasn’t required for my role, I knew that it would benefit me to show I was capable.

Erica: Chris, I can definitely understand the love-hate relationship. It is time-consuming, especially for those of us in A/BSP who already feel stretched thin with our administrative work and bar efforts. But I find that the right project can move my feelings on a piece from an obligation or drag on my time to something that keeps me writing and researching. How did you decide to write on legal online education and what motivated you to write about it?

Chris: Finding a subject to write about was difficult at first, for me. I felt pressure to write something novel, and I did not think I had anything to add to any conversation. Then, in early 2024, I wanted to submit a presentation proposal for the AASE conference in Boise that year. AI had just made its big entrance to the world stage, with its ability to “pass the bar exam” and mounting worries educators had about AI, and I had an idea! That proposal led to me presenting at the Boise AASE Conference and then wonderful AASE colleagues immediately told me I should turn it into an article. Because I had already done some research, I thought, okay, I’m going to do this. It ended with a final published product just this last couple of weeks!

Erica: Congratulations on publication! That’s exciting!

Chris: Thank you! I am pleased the process is fully finished. I thought I was done for a little while, but then I attended the AASE Scholarship Committee Brainstorming session last April. In brainstorming, I knew a number of law schools were getting acquiescence from the ABA to offer fully online, even asynchronous, JD programs. With my background in online education, I leaned into my educational psychology background and this prescient issue to write about how to move legal education fully online using the learning science theories that exist. This new project is the basis of my AASE/AccessLex Scholarship Grant. 

Have you had any discoveries from writing scholarship that surprised you or you didn’t expect?

Erica: Although I was not seeking a faculty position when my scholarship idea came about, a couple of years later when a tenure-track opportunity opened that I really wanted to apply for, I was so glad I had my AASE/AccessLex scholarly work in my background. I also found, like you did, that as I learned more about this topic, I wanted to explore other ideas related to it (so I have now a backlog of ideas that sit in a regularly updated email message, each idea waiting to be chosen like the little alien dolls in Toy Story).  My scholarship has also opened opportunities to speak and present at conferences and to work with organizations on neurodivergent legal education. I have also met so many other great legal scholars and educators writing on neurodivergent tangential topics like accommodations, bar exams, and legal writing, which has grown my professional network.

As for getting started itself, that can seem daunting. I imagine many others relate to the question “But what do I write about?” I face this quite often even when writing on this weekly blog! However, to that, I will pose back a question my mentor recently asked: “Is there something in legal education you have an opinion on?” I found it to be such a simple question with such a profound answer. Because yes, we all have opinions about something in legal education. When you’re engaged in this field, as many of us within AASE are, you inevitably have opinions that can lead to greater conversations on the matter. That can be the start of your AASE/AccessLex Grant Scholarship application and scholarly work.

How do you identify ideas for future scholarly projects?

Chris: I love the question your mentor posed! I think that is a critical starting point. I had the experience early on trying to identify specific projects that I thought would help me professionally, often focusing too narrowly on topics that I ended up not caring about. Did those projects go anywhere? No, not an inch.

Then, once I identified something I had an opinion about, it went from a presentation to a publication. Since then, I have been invited to talk about my paper at my own law school, elevating how the faculty view my expertise outside of solely “bar prep.” It also helped me connect with others in the AASE community who were interested in scholarship (like you!). It has really enriched my experience as a member of AASE and the academic community at large.

In terms of future projects, I let my interests lead me! As I now work on that idea from the AASE Scholarship Committee Brainstorming session (and after being awarded the AASE/Access Lex Scholarship Grant from that idea), I am starting a longitudinal study of an intervention my colleague and I want to see if it helps with academic performance and bar exam success. Now, I find myself needing to avoid getting ahead of myself and ensure I can commit to the projects I started.

Since we’ve both been grant recipients for this scholarship award, what advice do you have for others who are considering whether or not to apply? What would you say to someone who is on the fence and worried about whether or not they can do this?

Erica:  I think it really comes down to: “Why not?” First, the application is simple, asking only for the general idea of what you are thinking about researching. Even for me, my idea that I pitched, that I presented on at AASE, and even ended up publishing evolved as I went. The best way to think of the AASE Scholarship Application is simply to say, “This is my starting point in scholarship.”

I think one of the things I was most worried about with the Grant was the requirement to submit for publication in a year. I was not sure how I could do that on top of my full-time staff role, which also did not require me to publish—so everything I did on it was in addition to my job. However, I found that it was more manageable than I thought. I got a mentor from the Scholarship Committee who I could run things past and brainstorm with. My university, recognizing the interest in my scholarship, opened up opportunities to support my time writing. Even preparing for the AASE presentation was a relatively light lift given that I had already done the research and was more using it as a sounding board and spotlight of my work.

Honestly, getting it out the door was probably the hardest part. I wanted to keep writing, keep making it better. But that was perhaps more me.

What would be your advice to someone on the fence as to whether they should apply for this Grant?

Chris: I echo everything you wrote about your process. The application is a starting point. It does not need to be a fully fleshed out idea that is fully crystalized and never changes. In fact, if the contours of your project don’t change as you research, then that is probably more concerning. The application is very straight-forward. If you have an idea you want to share with the world, then you should definitely apply.

Erica: Chris, thank you again for your time and thoughtful discussion!

Chris: I really appreciated this conversation, Erica! We plan on being at the brainstorming sessions, and if anyone has questions, you can reach out to either of us!

If you have an idea, but you’re shy about sharing it with the world, or you’re just not sure it’s worthwhile, come to one of the AASE Scholarship Committee Brainstorming Sessions this month. They are a great opportunity to talk about your ideas in small groups and get some very supportive and nonjudgmental feedback on how to shape your ideas further:

• Friday, April 10 – 2:00pm ET / 11:00am PT
• Friday, April 17 – 2:00pm ET / 11:00am PT

The links will be in your email box this week!

And make sure you submit your application for the AASE/AccessLex Scholarship Grant by Sunday, May 2.

(Erica M. Lux &

Guest Blogger: Christopher Engle-Newman, Associate Professor of the Practice and Director of Bar Success, University of Denver Sturm College of Law)

Every academic support educator has heard them:

“This class is confusing.”
“The exam was nothing like what we learned.”
“I studied so much and still did poorly.”

It’s easy to dismiss student complaints as frustration, defensiveness, or misplaced blame. And sometimes, they are. But complaints can also be something else: data. When approached thoughtfully, they offer a window into how students are experiencing the curriculum and where learning may be breaking down.

The goal isn’t to validate every complaint. It’s to translate student feedback into pedagogical insight.

1. Listen for Patterns

A single complaint may reflect an individual experience. Repeated complaints, especially across different students or semesters, often signal something worth examining. Are multiple students describing the same confusion? Does the concern appear at a predictable point in the semester? Is the concern tied to a specific skill, like issue spotting or rule synthesis? Discovering patterns turns students’ concerns into potentially actionable information.

2. Translate Complaints into Learning Problems

Student complaints are often framed in emotional or general terms. Our job is to reframe them into specific learning challenges. Student complaints are often a window into where students are struggling with a specific skill or where there’s a breakdown in communication between the professor and students.

For example, “this class makes no sense” may actually mean that the students are struggling with conceptual organization. “The exam was unfair” may mean there is a misalignment between the students’ expectations and the assessment. And, of course, “the exam was too long” or “I ran out of time” may mean that students aren’t practicing under timed conditions.

By translating complaints and concerns into their deeper learning challenges, you can help turn the conversation from venting to problem-solving.

3. Separate Signal from Noise

Not all feedback should drive change. Some complaints reflect discomfort with rigor or resistance to unfamiliar learning methods. When trying to sort through what you’re hearing from students, some good points to consider are whether the complaint relates to a core learning objective, whether addressing the complaint would improve learning outcomes for most students, and whether the core issue is about difficulty or clarity and support.

4. Close the Loop with Students

One of the most powerful (and often overlooked) steps is letting students know they’ve been heard. This doesn’t mean changing everything. It means communicating that you heard their feedback, what adjustments, if any, will be made, and why certain aspects will remain the same. Even brief acknowledgment builds trust and encourages constructive feedback in the future.

Further, how we respond to student complaints teaches students how to engage with critique in their own professional lives. By demonstrating curiosity (instead of defensiveness), thoughtful analysis, and willingness to adjust where appropriate, we can model the kind of reflective practice we want students to develop as lawyers.

5. Partner with Faculty Thoughtfully

Academic Support professionals are often in a unique position to observe trends across courses. However, sharing those insights requires care. The most effective approaches include framing feedback in terms of learning outcomes, bringing aggregated patterns rather than individual complaints, and offering solutions, not just problems. For example, you might share with a faculty member: “Several students are struggling to translate case concepts into rule statements. Would it be helpful if ASP ran a short workshop aligned with your next unit?” Collaboration works best when it feels like partnership, not evaluation.

Student complaints are inevitable. But they don’t have to be unproductive. When we approach them as data, they become a powerful tool for improving teaching and learning. The question isn’t whether students will complain. It’s whether we’re prepared to learn from what they’re telling us.

(Dayna Smith)

Are we the paranoid androids of legal education? Is our fear of AI casting such a negative shadow that we are more skeptical of our students’ abilities? Could they (our students) really have made this much improvement to their writing in a short period of time?  Are we supporting and fueling bias with this skepticism? Again, are we paranoid androids?

I don’t have the answers, but I want to learn more so do as the doers do… ask.

I sat down with an honest and highly regarded law student (that is not currently in my class) and asked, “How are you and other law students actually using AI?” I made it clear that I earnestly wanted to know… no repercussions besides me writing their honest (and anonymous) response into this week’s piece.

I am a firm believer that the best way forward is to learn about AI and incorporate AI into legal education. Resistance is futile.

So here was my student’s unfiltered response in order of most often observed AI use to less frequent AI uses. I understand this is only one student’s observations and one experience does not speak for all, but their responses provide us with fuel for thought:

1. Case Briefing: inputting the case citation and requesting that AI generate a case brief to replace the reading preparation or to check that their prepared case brief is correct.

2. Summarizing Readings: inputting a PDF scan of the assigned readings and prompting AI with key takeaways of the chapter preps in “notes” form.

3. A prompt to AI requesting a comparison to explain the difference between two or more laws that are similar subject matter but have key distinctions.

4. Not so much on in class writing assignments but increased use of AI on take home assignments/exams or legal skills long term assignments.

5. Uploading recordings and prompting AI to summarize the recording or search transcriptions.

6. Creating flashcards and practice questions using input class notes into AI.

7. AI research tools, for example Westlaw and Lexis, which is sometimes emphasized as a necessary skill at internships.

… so no, we’re not paranoid… but we need to accept the androids.

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

We all know that law school isn’t just about learning doctrine and passing exams. It’s about becoming a lawyer. Yet for many students, professional identity formation feels abstract and disconnected from the day-to-day work of reading cases, outlining, and preparing for exams.

Academic support can help bridge that gap. Academic support professionals work closely with students on how they learn, think, and perform. As such, they can also shape how students see themselves as emerging professionals. When done intentionally, academic support helps students develop not just competence, but clarity, confidence, and purpose as they move into the professional world.

One hurdle academic support professionals face is that students often view academic support as separate from their future careers (it is called academic support, after all). Yet the skills we teach in academic support directly tie to professional identity. For instance, time management practices perfected in law school translate to reliability in the workplace. Issue spotting becomes analytical judgment. Seeking feedback becomes professional growth. If academic support professionals name these connections early in the JD program, students will better understand that what they’re doing now isn’t just about grades; it’s about becoming effective lawyers.

Another hurdle to professional identity formation is that it does not happen overnight. It requires continual reflection and growth. Because academic support professionals are so integrated into the student experience, we have an opportunity to engage students in reflective practices. For example, after practice exams, in workshops, and during individual meetings, invite students to consider how they are approaching their work. What kind of thinker are they? How do they approach a complex problem? What habits are helping or hindering their growth? Even brief reflection prompts can help students connect their academic work to a broader sense of self as they move toward a legal career.

There are other practices academic success professionals can integrate into their programming to help with professional identity formation. For example, academic support programs can reinforce agency and ownership in student development. Students need to see themselves as active participants in their development, meaning they should be involved in goal setting and encouraged to self-assess. When students feel agency, they engage more deeply and develop confidence in their evolving identity.

Additionally, academic success professionals can model their own professional identity. By demonstrating respectful communication, thoughtful feedback, and accountability, students will start to also internalize those behaviors. Further, students want to hear about diverse professional pathways. If they only see one model of success, they may struggle to find their own place, meaning academic success professionals should highlight different career paths and encourage exploration. Finally, academic success programs should place an emphasis on values rather than just outcomes. Obviously, grades, rankings, and bar success play a large role in joining the profession, but we all know they don’t define professional identity. Encouraging students to consider how they define success and what type of lawyer they want to be will help students anchor their identity in something more stable than academic performance metrics.

Ultimately, embedding professional identity formation into academic support does not require a separate curriculum. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if everything I’ve mentioned was already embedded into academic support programs across the country. But, with small, intentional shifts, academic support professionals can further bolster student success in the professional world.

(Dayna Smith)

This week’s post is a sneak peek into my presentation time at AASE (I hope to see you there!)

Many of our institutions use the phrase “academic probation” to signal that a student is in academic trouble. Of course, the ABA has requirements that institutions work to identify and support students that are not meeting certain academic thresholds, but must we label it probation?

This stigmatized, targeted and racially charged word does not serve our students or our work. 

Without reviewing the etymology of the word probation (because this is a short post), let me illustrate my argument using a different example. You are a person that struggles with your weight. You know that you are much heavier than is healthy for your body. You walk into a doctor’s office and glance at your chart. You see that your label on the chart is “morbidly obese.” Does that label help inform the reality that you already know and have been grappling with for years? Likely not. You watched yourself gain weight. You saw the scale numbers tick up. You watched yourself eat unhealthy food. You know what is happening. The label in your chart instead further demoralizes you. 

This example is just like how most of our students know that they either 1) studied all the time but completely missed the mark or 2) did not study and it shows. 

Our students saw their outcomes upon grade release. Our students are already in the reality of “fight or flight” because these outcomes trigger fear. How does the label of “probation” improve or increase the likelihood that our students will bounce back? Frankly, it doesn’t. The word probation serves to harm students, not help them. Exploring other phrases and pitching this change to those in charge of academic standards better supports our students and may even increase their likelihood of success in the future. 

More to come on this at AASE! 

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

This week, as I sat down with students to help them create their own realistic plans for Spring Break, I realized that my own plans were quite lofty and unrealistic. I say this especially because I had planned to take most of Spring Break off for personal time (something I don’t do as often as I perhaps should). And yet I slated so many class and administrative tasks for this same period. So, as I helped law students set their Spring Break goals, I realized that I needed to adjust and be more realistic about my own goals.

The traditional paradigm for goal setting—SMART goals—can help you set goals that are “achievable.” And honestly, for many, I imagine setting goals that can actually be met may be one of the hardest parts of goal setting.

For me, setting realistic, achievable goals during Spring Break can be especially difficult because in my mind I have classified it as a “free week,” so I start saving everything for Spring Break (while also not realizing I’m doing that). And rather than seeing it as a week when I will still have regular things happening, my mind characterizes it as a week that I have nothing going on—no student meetings, no classes—so “I can get so much done!” Even when I was a student, the goal of “I’ll get caught up on everything for the semester” was often too much for the same reason. And then, much like I’d set myself up now, I struggled to reach my goals because I would also want to claw back time to rest, relax, and recharge.

So, this week as I met with students, we started by identifying the things they felt the most behind on. We also acknowledged what they most needed to accomplish to feel like Spring Break was productive for them. Then, knowing when they planned to dedicate time to their studies (and when they planned to relax), we divided the bigger tasks and mapped out smaller, more achievable goals.

And, in an effort to put my own advice to use, and turn over a new Spring Break leaf, I decided to do the same. This year, I started by identifying all the tasks I need to accomplish, —writing an exam, grading (and more grading), and finalizing my legal writing brief problem. Then, I broke them into smaller tasks and began prioritizing them, which was harder here because each of these items are “due” the week we get back from Spring Break.

As I worked through this list, I recognized some tasks I could make smaller and get done this week, before Spring Break even started, especially if I dedicated an extra hour or two in the evenings and over the weekend. From this list of tasks, exam and brief problem writing would take the most focused brain power, so I needed to dedicate those tasks next week. I also rarely get grading done at the office, so I often grade from home in the evenings. And I reasoned that by working on my blog posts and smaller grading “chunks” at night this week, I could free up time to write exams and brief problems next week. In doing so, I created a plan where I would be able to slowly whittle away at my larger goals. And by restructuring my plans, I was able to create a more manageable and “achievable” to-do list for Spring Break.

So, regardless of whether you are a law student with lofty studying goals for the break or an academic professional gearing up for the last half of the semester (or looking ahead to bar prep), I encourage you to set yourself up for success. Get realistic, think small, and rearrange a few things to have a positive Spring Break.

Happy Spring Break!

 (Erica M. Lux)

As online JD programs flourish and more students turn to online materials to supplement their learning, academic support programs now offer a wealth of online resources. Guides, videos, checklist, outlines – ASPs have it all! Yet a common challenge is that students don’t use all of the resources available to them. Or they open them once, skim briefly, and move on.

The issue is rarely that students don’t want help. More often, digital resources are designed for storing information rather than engaging students. When academic support materials are created with active learning in mind, they become tools students may actually return to, rather than just files sitting in an LMS.

Here are a few principles I’m trying to integrate into our program’s online resources to encourage active use:

1. Start with Timing

Every resource should solve a concrete problem students are experiencing at the moment. We do this with live workshops all the time; I would never schedule my 1L Preparing for Final Exams Workshop in September! Yet I often find myself updating and posting my digital bar exam handouts in August, when most of my 3Ls won’t be taking the bar until next July. With online resources, I am lured into the idea that the students will find the information when they’re ready, but this probably isn’t the case. Now, I am trying to time my digital resources (or at least when I promote them!) with what’s happening in the students’ world to boost timely engagement with the material.

2. Design for Action, Not Just Information

We all know that students retain more information when they do something with the material. So, when I record a live session and post it online, I’m probably not getting the best engagement or learning from my students who have to watch it later. Instead of (or in addition to) posting recordings of live sessions, I am trying to develop videos aimed at my asynchronous participants.

For me, this means building prompts and opportunities to try the skills into the recording, rather than just explaining the concepts. For instance, in a case briefing video, I might prompt the students to “pause the video and identify the rule statement from the case on the screen.” By integrating prompts for active learning into the video, I hope to shift the resource from passive consumption to active engagement.

3. Keep Resources Short, Organized, and Modular

Attention is limited. Long recordings or dense PDFs can unintentionally discourage use. Whenever possible, I am trying to keep videos under 10 minutes, break longer documents into sections, create separate resources for distinct tasks, and allow students to access pieces individually. Each resource should clearly address a specific task, rather than a broad topic. For instance, around final exam time, a video entitled “How to Turn a Case Rule into an Exam-Ready Rule Statement” is probably going to get more views than one called “Exam Skills Workshop Recording.” Students are more likely to click on a resource that they can identify as addressing a skill or task they should be developing at that moment.  

Additionally, simple design choices can make a big difference. I tell students to break up their exam answers using headings, white space, and a clear structure so I can read them easier, so why shouldn’t I do the same for them? Headings, white space, and consistent formatting can make a resource much more user-friendly. Additionally, integrating components for different learning styles, such as including diagrams, will help more students interact with the concept.

4. Make Navigation Intuitive

The most frustrating thing for me is when I spend a lot of time creating and promoting resources that students later claim they’ve never heard of before. Students just aren’t going to use resources they can’t find easily. Effective resource hubs include things like:

• Clear categories (e.g., exam skills, time management, bar study)
• Descriptive Titles
• Consistent Formatting
• Limited Layers of Navigation

The goal is for students to reach the needed resource in one or two clicks, not five.

While an overhaul of online materials can seem daunting, I recommend starting with student feedback. Ask students questions about which resources they use the most, which feel confusing, and what they want to see to get an idea of where to start the process. Ultimately, digital academic support resources work best when they are designed not just to inform, but to engage. By focusing on clarity, action, and accessibility, academic support professionals can transform online materials from static repositories into active learning tools.

(Dayna Smith)

We know that the upcoming AASE Annual Conference is going to be like our Vegas location: bold and full of excitement! As a special priority of the planning committee, we wanted to make sure we incorporated timely topics that are of interest to us in legal education, professional licensure, and academic support/achievement. So we are doing a second call for proposals – this time for HOT TOPICS! We are specifically soliciting proposals that are of a timely nature and will be slotted for approximately 30 minutes in the conference schedule.

The proposal submission form opened on Monday, March 9th and proposals are due by Friday, March 20th at 11:59 p.m.

This is an excellent opportunity for any member – seasoned, new, or somewhere in between – to share your knowledge about the timely topics that we are all facing. Please submit a proposal and share your knowledge with us.

Please check the AASE Newsletter or your AASE emails for how to submit.

I recently attended a brief presentation on Ai as it relates legal writing and research courses. Post presentation generated a robust discussion about observations of Ai use in the classroom. Most of the discussion centered on students’ use of Ai to quickly find answers when called upon in class. I sensed a lot of fear and dismay during this discussion, but yet not many answers.

Fears may cause faculty to tighten class policies like restricting computer use or penalizing students for lack of preparedness. But maybe there is a more open-minded way to incorporate Ai into the classroom. Perhaps a way that fosters learning and helps meet our students where they are on their journey.  

Cue “Ai vs. Non-Ai Classroom Challenge” lesson plans:

These lessons could be done in a few ways, but the goal is to foster open dialogues about the use of Ai in the classroom, see how it turns out and as the instructor be open to the idea that Ai might harm or help your students.

The theory I want to test for lesson one is, “Do Ai systems truly assist unprepared students during class?” My inclination is no, but I’ll report back when I run this lesson to see if the test proves otherwise.

Here is lesson one’s structure:

Step 1: Remind students in advance to bring their laptops to class. When it is time to review the cases for the day – split the classroom.

Step 2: At the start of the lesson announce; (1) there will be no penalty to students that select the “Ai Group” and no reward for students that select the “Non-Ai Group” and, (2) re-explain that this is a learning experience to evaluate Ai for everyone in the class, including you as the instructor. 

Step 3: Prompt students to self-select into the “Non-Ai Group” or the “Ai Group.”

Step 4: Debrief a case with the “Non-Ai Group” and the “Ai Group” as you normally would. Students in the “Non-Ai Group” are permitted to respond to your questions using their notes, case briefs, and text for class. Students in the “Ai Group” are only permitted to enter your question prompts when called upon and can only respond with the Ai generated response – nothing more (even if they prepared for class).

Step 5: Evaluate. What strengths and areas for improvement did the “Non-Ai Group” have in debriefing the cases versus the Ai Group? How might this change students’ considerations of using Ai during class? Be open to the students’ thoughts and input and provide some of your own observations too.

A few weeks later, run lesson two:

Step 1 through 3 are the same as above except assign a brief recording on best practices in creating practice questions prior to class.

Step 4: Break the “Ai” and “Non-Ai” groups into smaller internal groups (3 – 4 people max)

Step 5: Instruct all groups to create a practice prompt using at least two doctrines covered in class. Non-Ai Groups must draft the questions using class materials and their study materials. Ai Groups can only use their minds and the LMS. Give students thirty minutes to draft and refine their practice questions.

Step 6: Have the “Non-Ai Groups” and “Ai Groups” pair and share their work at the end of class and debrief the findings: What is the same and what is different? What did they learn from this lesson?

Step 7: Ask students to submit their draft questions and provide written or recorded feedback on all practice question prompts. Assess the prompts for accuracy and then debrief your observations of the Non-Ai versus Ai questions at the next class. This lesson promotes feedback loops and collectively explores Ai together. It also helps students understand the importance of testing themselves through practice questions.

I want my students to know that I am consciously aware of the society and professional world they will soon step into as lawyers. Now is the time for us to learn together. As my colleague said earlier this week, “steer into the (Ai) skid.” But Ice Cube said it best, “check yourself before you wreck yourself” which in my case means “test myself before I wreck myself” with unfounded fears about Ai use in the classroom.

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

For many minority students, legal academia and the bar exam can be isolating and is often coupled with the mental gymnastics of battling systemic inequalities, generational trauma, and the quiet yet persistent questions that linger: Will I get in to law school? How will I pay for law school? Will I feel like I belong there? Will I pass the bar exam? It is in this space where the culmination of doubt and determination breeds the need for better representation of minorities in legal academia. However, considering the current political landscape of the United States and the legal community’s shifting position on the importance of representation of minorities, marginalized individuals, and other underrepresented populations, it is crucial now more than ever to remind our legal institutions of why it became necessary for policies to be put in place to ensure these populations would be seen, heard, and valued in spaces they would not have otherwise have access to.

D**, also known as DEI, or better known as diversity, equity, and inclusion are principles that work together to foster fair, respectful, and supportive environments for individuals from all backgrounds to live, work, and exist together[1]. Diversity, equity, and inclusion gained traction in the late 80s when the civil rights movement began to push for research on how to cultivate and manage diversity in the workplace, id. This birthed affirmative action which required industries to hire diverse candidates to create opportunities for underrepresented individuals[2]. At its inception, affirmative action was a bipartisan policy enacted to mitigate the consequences of racial and systematic inequities existing in the workplace and higher education.[3] Decades later however, the social and political landscape of the United States has seemingly shifted as it relates to affirmative action. The same industries that once prided themselves on believing in the need to have a diverse and well-represented workforce have since overturned their policies that once gave marginalized populations access to careers or educational opportunities. It did not help that there were executive orders put in place by the current administration and requisite court decisions. As we have seen since then, legal academia was not left unscathed.

On May 9, 2025, the American Bar Association (ABA), publicly announced that its Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar voted to extend the suspension of Standard 206, or what would be considered its “DEI clause”. Standard 206 was first suspended in February of 2025.[4]Prior to its suspension, Standard 206 stated:

(a) Consistent with sound legal education policy and the Standards, a law school shall demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion by providing full opportunities for the study of law and entry into the profession by members of underrepresented groups, particularly racial and ethnic minorities, and a commitment to having a student body that is diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.

(b) Consistent with sound educational policy and the Standards, a law school shall demonstrate by concrete action a commitment to diversity and inclusion by having a faculty and staff that are diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity.[5]

In essence, Standard 206 once required law schools to be inclusive of members of underrepresented groups even if it meant admitting students based on their race and ethnicity to ensure that students from those minority backgrounds would have access to “full educational opportunities”. This indicated that there was an understanding and agreement from the ABA and the leadership of the Department of Education that underrepresented students do not always have the privilege to access higher and quality educational opportunities due to oppression and other systemic inequities. As such, to combat these systemic inequities, or to “level the playing field”, it was once an important societal norm to include such policies to guarantee privileges to minority students who would not have otherwise been afforded them.

Additionally, the verbiage of Standard 206 provided that a “sound legal education” is one that composes of “enrollment of a diverse student body that promotes cross-cultural understanding, and helps break down racial, ethnic, and gender stereotypes, and enables students to better understand persons of different backgrounds”. This then presents more concerns of what type of legal education will minority students receive moving forward if there is no rule in place to ensure representation of their diverse cultures, experiences, and backgrounds. Moreover, this brings forth the concern of whether this will further deter minority students from wanting to even pursue a legal education.

According to the American Bar Association (ABA), from 2009-2016, the overall number of black men enrolling at accredited U.S. law schools dropped 9.4% and 4.9% for black women. [6] Further, from 2013-2016, despite being known to “graduate more black lawyers than any other law school apart from Howard University School of Law, Harvard Law School experienced a drop in black 1L enrollment from 10.4% to 5.9%, id. It is important to also note the seminal case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina et al 600 U.S. 181 (2023)[7], where the United States Supreme Court struck down Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s use of race as metric for admission as a violation to the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. This case created a domino effect and ended affirmative action in this manner altogether. It also further pushed the rhetoric that certain demographics do not need to be given “special treatment” simply because of their race. Although the Court mentions that an applicant may still be admitted if their experiences with racism shaped their path to college, this in my opinion, is essentially the reason race-conscious admission was enacted to begin with. Affirmative Action and race-based initiatives in hiring and admission to college were enacted due to said racist experiences and inequities. Lastly, the Court points out that there are numerous other institutions who have already stopped using race-based admissions for years, however, the Court still fails to note that these institutions then did a complete overhaul by implementing other initiatives that broke down systemic barriers that were placed in front of individuals of a certain race. As such, it is now illegal to hire, admit, or place higher value on individuals who have endured centuries worth injustices due to their race. The illegality of D** has been painted as way to level the playing field of all races, ethnicities, genders, and ability, however, very seldomly have there been other ways in which there is acknowledgement of systemic inequities posed on minorities and marginalized communities and caveat-like actions to combat them.

With the current backlash on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in legal academia and the broader country, one can only hope that minorities and underrepresented individuals in legal academia remain dedicated to simply showing up and fostering meaningful relationships and contributions to the institutions we value. Additionally, one can only hope that underrepresented students will continue to pursue a legal education with passion, confidence, and unmitigated fervor despite the disparaging headlines.

[1] Ronnie de Souza Santos et al, From Diverse Origins to a DEI Crisis: The Pushback Against Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (2025).

[2] M. Russen and M.Dawson, Which should come first? Examining diversity, equity, and inclusion.

 International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 25 (2023).

[3] Natasha Warikoo, The Demise of Affirmative Action in College Admissions, Annual Reviews of Sociology

[4] American Bar Association, Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education extends Standard 206 suspension to 2026, Americanbar.org, https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2025/05/aba-council-extends-206-suspension/ (last visited October 3, 2025).

[5]ABA Standards and Rules. Chapter 2. Standard 206.

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/standards/2024-2025/2024-2025-standards-chapter-2.pdf

[6] https://clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hub/magazine/issues/where-are-black-lawyers-today/the-education-of-black-lawyers/

[7] Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181 (2023) (consolidated with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Univ. of N.C., No. 21‑707)

Guest Blogger: Jima Fahnbulleh, Associate Director of Academic and Bar Success, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

Brittany Raposa’s recent published book “Fostering First Gen Success: A Guide for Law Schools” hit the stands a few weeks ago. Brittany has been involved in our field for over ten years and during this time has written several pieces and served in leadership roles in our field, all the while adventuring into motherhood, raising two young children. Today’s question & answer post serves to spotlight her accomplishments and allow others to learn from her success.

Question: What motivated you to write this book?

Answer: I was a first-generation law student—the first in my family to graduate high school, let alone college or law school. During my time in law school, I was often in “fight-or-flight” mode, anxious about whether I was keeping up, and constantly worried about being academically dismissed. I remember hearing whispers that people like me didn’t make it through law school, and at times it felt as if faculty doubted me too. Looking back, it’s hard to tell whether that was reality or imposter syndrome—but probably a bit of both.

This book is my response to that experience. I wrote it to urge law schools to recognize these challenges and, more importantly, to offer guidance and practical strategies so first-generation students don’t have to feel alone, confused, or filled with self-doubt. My goal is to help law schools foster an environment where students like me can thrive—not just survive.

Question: How do you manage your work responsibilities while also becoming a parent?

Answer: To be honest, I’m still figuring this out and learning every day. Managing work while becoming a parent is definitely a challenge. I try to approach it with intentionality: setting boundaries around my time, prioritizing what truly matters each day, and being realistic about what I can accomplish. Flexibility is important. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations, knowing that some days parenting demands more attention than work.

My stubborn self has also learned to ask for support—from my partner, family, and colleagues—and accepting help without guilt. It’s the guilt that chips away at me sometimes. But I’ve realized that “doing it all” does not mean doing everything perfectly, but rather being present and intentional in both roles. Being a mom has taught me patience, perspective, and creativity, which actually has helped me in my work.

Question: How do you make time to write?

Answer: Sometimes, after I finish a writing project, I ask myself: “How did I even do this?” But, when I think about it, I think I just set aside dedicated blocks of time, often early in the morning or late at night, when I know I can focus without distractions. Even small, consistent writing sessions add up over time. I also love writing, which helps. I remind myself why I’m writing: the impact I hope this work can have on others keeps me motivated.

Question: How did you secure this book opportunity?

Answer: I had the idea to write this book when I worked as a bar support professional in a law school. As a first-generation law student and law professor, I recognized a gap in guidance for students like me and really wanted to address it. I developed a proposal that outlined the book’s purpose, audience, and impact, and I reached out to publishers. I put myself out there, but I had never done anything like this before. I was really nervous, but I’m so happy I did it.

Question: What is one piece of advice you wish to share will our community as it pertains to career building?

Answer: I think it’s so important to lean into your unique perspective and experiences. Your background is a strength, regardless of what others think about it. Bring that authenticity into your work, put yourself out there, and remember: you are your best self. Approaching your career with that mindset helps quiet the voices of doubt—ones I know from experience can get very loud. Trust your voice and let it guide your career.

In the coming weeks, Brittany will be hosting a series of roundtables with other authors that contributed to this book. More information will be shared with our community once those roundtables are scheduled. Bravo to everyone that worked on this book’s and well done, Brittany!

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

Another bar cycle is behind us. The post-bar adrenaline drop is real.

The weeks leading up to the exam are always intense—strategy meetings, one-on-ones, workshops, essay feedback, data tracking, encouragement emails sent late at night. Academic support professionals carry a unique kind of responsibility during bar season. You are coaches, accountability partners, and steady voices in the middle of it all.

Now that the exam has passed, this is your reminder to pause.

Catch your breath.

Academic Success work, specifically supporting bar preparations, often operates in sustained urgency. Students are stressed. Outcomes matter deeply. The calendar compresses. Always, everywhere, all at once, you show up. You are calm, prepared, and relentlessly focused on student success. It is meaningful work, but it is also extremely demanding work.

Take a moment to acknowledge all that you are.

You helped students who doubted themselves sit for a professional licensing exam. You translated doctrine into strategy. You turned panic into actionable plans. Above all, you modeled discipline, resilience, and professionalism.

Not every impact is visible immediately. Some will show up in passing results. Others will show up years later when a former student remembers the person who believed in them when they struggled to believe in themselves.

This period after the exam can feel oddly quiet. The adrenaline fades. The urgency disappears. The inbox slows down. That quiet is not emptiness—it is earned space. Use it.

Reflect on what worked. Release what didn’t. Rest where you can.

Academic success work is long-game work. The relationships you build and the confidence you help students develop extend far beyond a single exam administration. Even when outcomes vary, the effort, care, and professionalism you bring to this role matter profoundly.

It is easy, in this profession, to immediately pivot to the next project. For now, give yourself permission to decompress before ramping up to full speed.

This is just a simple reminder for you.

Your work changes trajectories.

Students often measure success in scores. Institutions measure it in pass rates. Your influence is measured in persistence, self-efficacy, and professional identity formation. It is these outcomes that are harder to quantify but no less significant.

I echo all the voices that have come before mine. Thank you for the care you invest, the rigor you maintain, and most of all, continuing to show up for students during one of the most high-stakes periods of their academic lives.

Take a breath. Hydrate. Sleep. Take a walk that does not involve mentally grading an essay.

Academic support work changes lives. Your worth is reflected in every student who feels seen, supported, and capable because of you. After you take that well-earned rest break, keep going. Your contributions matter more than you know.

When I made the decision to apply for a tenure-track position last summer, I was frankly not sure where to start or what to expect. What I did know was that I needed someone to help me—someone who could help me advocate for myself and be honest when I needed to change course or adjust. Below are some parts of mentor selection and the mentorship process that you may not be aware of, in hopes that it can help you find the right mentor when it is time for you to apply for a faculty position.[1]

• Researching. This part probably took the longest time in the mentor selection process because I was trying to decide between a couple of professors I respect and who I knew would support me in this endeavor. The good news, though, is that whoever you have on your “short list” of mentors will likely be good references for you for the position. As you start to develop that list, make sure that you add people who would be supportive of your transition to faculty, especially if you are applying at schools that you do not presently work at. Of course, your mentor does not have to be from your school, as we have many fine faculty mentors in the ASP/BP community, too.

I would also recommend that you find out whether the mentor you are requesting has participated on a faculty search committee. Having a mentor who is familiar with the faculty search process from developing the job description and metrics to how to give a good job talk presentation are all key things that will help you find a mentor whose background will help in your search[2].

• Asking. Was I ever nervous when I called up this professor to ask them to serve as my mentor. Looking back, I would definitely have practiced this conversation an extra time or two, so I didn’t repeat myself or sound as nervous as I was. Luckily, I had chosen a mentor who I know well and who knows my quirks—so I imagine she was rather forgiving of my nerves.

When asking someone to be your mentor for this process, you should explain your interest in seeking a faculty position, why you are a good fit for the position that you are applying for, and what you hope your mentor will support you with. I suspect that if you did the research phase correctly and outlined your goals, your mentor will be delighted to help you advance your career to the next step after you ask. If they decline the offer, re-evaluate your research phase and try again.

• Learning. Once I selected my faculty mentor—and she’d agreed—, the hard stuff started. Your mentor should help guide you as they review your resume/CV, cover letter, and any other supporting documents required in your application.

After I worked on my resume/CV and cover letter and thought about what my scholarly agenda should include, I sent them over to my mentor. Here, I learned a lot from my mentor over several Zoom calls discussing what was and wasn’t working. This particular process of pulling my initial application materials together took several iterations, so give yourself enough lead time. In fact, as I noted in an earlier blog, I had such a hard time making my cover letter sing until it was pointed out to me that I needed to do legal analysis with it.

Finding a mentor who can give you the hard facts on the materials you have prepared is so important. Hearing “This cover letter just seems very general and doesn’t really make you stand out,” can make you feel deflated—as it did me (even if just for a moment). But my mentor was so patient with me; we started just talking about the things I had done and what made me shine in my current role, and as we talked, the pieces really started to come together. So not only should your mentor be able to tell you what you (maybe) don’t want to hear, but they should also be patient and supportive of your learning in this process, just like we are with our students.

• Practicing. If after all of the hard work on the front end—finding a mentor, writing application materials, and submitting your application—you find yourself with the fantastic opportunity for interviews, your mentor can also provide valuable support for interviewing and job talks. They can give you insight into the types of questions you might see, input on how to structure your job talk (especially if you need to balance ASP/BP topics with your scholarly agenda), and they will likely offer to moot your job talk.

I found getting advice on my job talk from my mentor (and others I ended up listing as references) very helpful. While this is perhaps a story for a later blog post, I will briefly share that for my first job talk moot, I made such very bland slides because I thought that I should. When my mentor saw this, she pushed back because she knew it was not my style—so I changed my deck to be more engaging (which was the right decision). As you work with your mentor and other references to prepare for your job talk, make sure to get feedback on the whole process—presentation style, timing, slide style, language on the slides, ability to answer questions, and demeanor.  

The advice and guidance my mentor provided me truly made me a better applicant and I could not be more grateful to her. I hope that in your upcoming job search, you can find my experience searching for and working with my mentor helpful—and that you find your own supportive mentor to help you reach your goals!

(Erica M. Lux)

[1] A huge resource that also helped me get started in the process, with some example materials, was the AALS “Becoming a Law Teacher” website—highly recommend you also get familiar with it.

[2] For obvious reasons, you will probably want to speak with your faculty mentor and/or your Dean and administrative leadership if you are applying in house. There could be some key conflict of interest issues regarding mentors and references that you need to work through, or they may alert you to other factors to be aware of.

I teach Legal Methods in the spring semester. In my school, Legal Methods is a required course for 1L students who did not perform well academically in their fall semester. For many of them, this is their last chance to stay in law school.

Unsurprisingly, part of my role in teaching the class is to help students navigate a variety of emotions as they process being in my class. Something I often come back to with students is what success in law school means. We know that law school is filled with visible markers of achievement: grades, class rank, law review, clerkships, offers, and bar passage. While these milestones matter, they can quietly crowd out the more important individual question of what success means to each student.

When students measure themselves only against external benchmarks, they may achieve impressive credentials while feeling disconnected, burned out, or uncertain about their own goals. Alternatively, students may miss the external marks and feel disheartened and uncertain about whether they belong.

Academic support professionals are uniquely positioned to help students define success in a way that is both personally meaningful and professionally sustainable. Here are some things I keep in mind as I navigate these conversations with students:

1. Widen Traditional Narratives of Success

Many students arrive with an implicit script, including top grades, prestigious internships, elite employers. While those paths are valid, they are not the only versions of success. Naming this openly helps students see that there are many fulfilling legal careers, and career paths are rarely linear (mine certainly wasn’t!). Additionally, students should recognize that prestige is different from fulfillment. By widening the narrative of “success,” we give students permission to explore what actually aligns with their values.

2. Separate Performance from Worth

High-achieving environments can blur the line between how students perform and how they see themselves. A bad exam becomes a statement about identity. A missed opportunity becomes a referendum on belonging.

Academic support can help students practice language and thinking that separates what happened (a performance outcome) from who I am (a capable, growing professional). This distinction supports resilience and reduces the emotional weight attached to every data point.

3. Encourage Values-Based Goal Setting

Often, I find myself asking students only, “What kind of job do you want?” However, this closes the discussion. Instead, I try to be deliberate about asking questions like:

• What kind of lawyer do you want to be?
• What kind of life do you want your career to support?
• What values do you want your work to reflect?

This also works when narrowed to the academic setting. Rather than assuming every student wants a 4.0, asking students why they came to law school and what experiences they want to have while here can help shift the conversation from grades to values. And, values-based conversations help students connect daily effort to long-term meaning, making motivation more intrinsic and sustainable.

4. Normalize Changing Definitions of Success

What success looks like in 1L year may not match what it looks like in 3L year, or five years into practice. Students should know that redefining success is not failure; it’s growth. We can model this by sharing nonlinear career stories, alumni paths that have changed over time, and examples of lawyers who recalibrated their priorities. Flexibility in goals is a professional strength that we can start to normalize early in law school.

5. Teach Students to Track Personal Wins

Not all progress shows up on transcripts. Encourage students to notice the non-grade-based wins, such as improved time management; greater confidence in class; stronger analysis; healthier boundaries; or an increased willingness to seek feedback. These are all skills students should be developing in law school, and tracking these wins helps students see growth that grades may not capture.

Helping students develop a personal definition of success doesn’t mean ignoring institutional benchmarks. It means placing them in a broader, healthier context. When students define success on their own terms – grounded in values, growth, and professional identity – they are more likely to persist through challenges, make intentional choices, and build careers that feel meaningful.

Academic support plays a powerful role in helping students ask and answer the most important question of all: What does success look like for me?

(Dayna Smith)

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)

I actually uttered these words at my aqua aerobics class.

I have probably written about my fitness with octogenarians class in the past, but for the last two weeks, I have been working on convincing my water buddies that Bad Bunny is actually very good and quite clearly not a rabbit. This may have been the most difficult teaching I have done recently-and I am teaching an Intro. to Con. Law class to international LL.M. students this semester. I live in New England where even harmless looking seniors in old fashioned bathing caps[1] have strong opinions about football and halftime shows. Especially this year-but no more on that: it is too soon.

They had heard there was controversy about the choice of Bad Bunny to perform at Super Bowl LX[2]. So, I asked them what they had heard. They had heard a bunch of things that were the talking points from the loud –but inaccurate– folks out there who seem to forget that Puerto Rico is part of the United States. They had heard that his music was full of hate. But they hadn’t even listened because it was in Spanish. I told them that he was a champion of women, fervently against ICE, and (I know my crowd), just an adorable young man. His current–grammy winning–hit even talks about playing dominos with his grandfather (Ey, hoy voy a estar con abuelo to’l día, jugando dominó[3]).

These people are retired doctors, lawyers, nurses, and high level administrators; folks who had stayed in the area after graduating from Harvard or MIT. They are older but also wiser people who are well educated and fascinating to talk to-and yet, they believed the pre-packaged story about Bad Bunny. They were, to their credit, taken aback about who had manufactured the packaging when told, but if these folks could believe things without firsthand knowledge, I have to wonder about what our students “know.”

I think we, as law educators, have to remind students not to believe everything they hear. Curiosity is a valuable tool as a law student and more so as a lawyer.  I think we also have to remind students to not bad mouth themselves–to themselves– and then believe the bad hype they have self-generated. Interrupting this narrative loop is crucial to success as well. We can help students look for other metrics or even just share better information[4]. Asking questions is a strength not a weakness.

As someone deep in Patriots’ territory, I can say that Bad Bunny’s performance was the best part of the Super Bowl. He warmed up a very cold night with a simple idea, “…hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love.[5]”  The wedding during the show was real love on national display.[6]

My next instructional hurdle: getting them to love Zohran.

(Liz Stillman)

[1] https://nanaswhimsies.com/tag/esther-williams/

[2] Can we talk about how many students may only know roman numerals from football sometime??

[3] From Debí Tirar Más Fotos

[4] I also worry that students will look for and find alternative sources of information that some will tell them is better but isn’t the main show like those who sponsored a second halftime show.

[5] Bad Bunny at the Grammy’s, 2/2/26.

[6] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-news/bad-bunny-couple-married-super-bowl-halftime-show-1236500136/

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).

“History repeats itself” is deeply on my mind. Why can’t some individuals acknowledge and learn from past mistakes? As I reflect on the state of our world and catch myself in a spiraling thought, I quickly return to work, focus my energy and make something out of these thoughts.  

Perhaps we need to slow things down to learn our mistakes. When I think about my recent work, I notice that I started to slow more and want to share my observations for today’s post. For example, in my second-year skills course, students receive feedback on their essays individually in writing, followed up by a required group recording video, which ends with three specific objectives that the students need to improve and accomplish in their next written piece. Instead of providing individual feedback and expecting the students to review while I move on to the next writing exercise, I’m slowing down and repeating the information through a few different formats and providing my students with a center point before moving forward. The additional recordings and stated objectives provide my students two to three targeted improvements to digest and focus on for the next exercise.

Another exercise that I’m using to slow down my practicum course is a repeat simulation structure. In prior semesters, students were asked to verbally or in writing to reflect on, “if they were to do the simulation again, what would they do the same and what would they do differently?” Instead of packing in seven simulations this semester, I’ve downsized to four simulations with intermittent opportunities to repeat the simulations. This slowed process pushes students to identify and actively practice implementing the adjustment.

Today’s post is a light one… there is too much heavy plaguing our society. So, slow it down, have your students try one exercise again, again (and maybe again). You will be happy that you did.

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

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….

Mid-year is a tough time to receive student evaluations. If you receive your fall evals over the holidays, it is not prime timing to review some difficult comments. If you receive your fall evals later in the winter, it is also difficult to adjust your teaching until the following year. And of course, there is also the reality that Academic and Bar Success workflow does not look like a traditional faculty member’s workflow. (See Danya Smith’s post earlier this week for comfort in that regard – I feel you, girl!)

We all bring our big hearts into this work, and it can be difficult to read student comments or dissect student ratings to identify areas for improvement. This year, in my continued pursuit of everything AI, I decided to run three years of student evaluations through an LLM system. My prompt, “I am a 36 year old, cisgender, white, female law faculty instructor. Please review these three years of student evaluations in Professional Responsibility to, (1) remove any comments or feedback that includes express or embedded bias, and (2) summarize areas for improvement and areas of strength in my teaching of this course.”

First, and in acknowledgement of the available data about some challenges with bias built into the LLMs, I was impressed with the AI’s ability to flag the bias comments in my evals. Comments that included gender, age and authority-based bias were intentionally discounted. Specific remarks were heavily discounted because the comments reflected the well-documented bias against women faculty members, especially younger women in authority positions. Comments that were removed from the AI read included, “She’s intimidating as a person,” “too intense,” [she is] “talking down to us,” and complaints about my confidence without any linkage to a learning outcome for the class.

Second, this exercise provided a good summary of areas for improvement which I can now focus my energy on as I prepare to teach this course in the future. Targeted adjustments that I will make next year include moving core skills instruction exercises (focused on IRAC and MCQ strategies) up in the semester, additional diagnostic feedback on multiple choice, and additional signaling for specific language cues in dense rule statements. These are all specific, actionable takeaways that help inform my approach moving forward.

Finally, this exercise provided reassurance that I am on the right track. My summary noted that I am highly invested in my students’ success, I critically prepared and organized my class, and I was a clear and effective teacher. We work in a fast-paced environment which sometimes can fuel those inner self-doubts. If you’re like me, having an objective assessment and review is a necessity. The next time you have the opportunity to reflect on your teaching, I encourage you to try this exercise out for what it is worth.

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

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)

I met with a student this week to review her final exam. During the fall semester, I watched this student seek support, utilize resources, and pour her energy into her studies. The hard work paid off, and she was very successful. This student also happens to be a caregiver. During our meeting, I shared my exam feedback but also expressed admiration at her ability to balance her coursework alongside her caregiving responsibilities. She said her family pushed her to be more efficient. She had to prioritize and be more effective with her available time at school because she wanted to be fully present during family time.

Not all caregivers strike this balance as early as my student. This is mainly because law school wasn’t designed with caregivers in mind. The rigid schedules, heavy reading loads, and high-stakes assessments often assume students have unlimited time, flexibility, and emotional bandwidth. But many law students are also parents, guardians, caregivers for aging relatives, or supporters of family members with medical needs. These students are no less committed, but they’re carrying more than the “traditional” law student.

On the plus side, law schools are becoming more accessible. With more part-time and online options, more people with outside responsibilities are able to access legal education. Academic support programs play a critical role in ensuring that caregiving responsibilities do not become an invisible barrier to success. With intentional design and compassionate practices, law schools can help caregiving students persist, thrive, and feel that they truly belong.

• Acknowledge Caregiving as a Reality, Not an Exception

Caregiving students have often felt pressure to keep that part of their lives hidden, fearing judgment or assumptions about their commitment. I often hear from students who feel less able to connect with their peers because they feel unable to connect with those who are able to focus all of their attention on law school. Simply acknowledging caregiving as a normal part of the law school community is powerful.

This can come in many forms. For instance, we might acknowledge our students could be caregivers in orientation, syllabi, and support materials. Also, use inclusive language that recognizes that students may have responsibilities outside of school. And, of course, continuing to make clear that support services are available without stigma. Visibility sends a message that caregiving students are not alone.

• Build Flexibility into Programming

Caregiving responsibilities can be unpredictable. A child gets sick. A parent has an emergency. Rigid support structures can unintentionally exclude students who need them most. As such, ASPs should increase access by offering workshops in multiple formats; scheduling sessions at varied times of day; providing short resources instead of longer one-time programs; and allowing flexible meeting times for individual coaching when possible. Flexibility can be key in removing an unnecessary barrier.

• Teach Strategic Time Management

Like the student I spoke with about her exam, caregiving students need efficient, high-impact strategies. They often have less time to devote to endless study hours, so they need advice to get the most out of every minute they spend on law school. This might include helping them with prioritization, identifying shorter focused study blocks, teaching active study techniques, and helping them plan for disruption. Helping students work smarter respects the reality of their lives.

• Coordinate Across Departments

The job of supporting caregiving students cannot fall on ASP alone. We often serve as the bridge between faculty, student affairs, accommodations offices, and financial aid. Sharing patterns (without breaching confidentiality) helps institutions identify where policies, schedules, or expectations may unintentionally disadvantage students.

• Foster Community and Connection

Caregiving can be isolating, especially in environments where students assume everyone is “all law school, all the time.” Creating opportunities for connection can help counter that isolation. Schools might start a caregiver affinity group or peer mentoring programs to let students connect with one another. A sense of belonging goes a long way in law school.

Supporting students who balance caregiving responsibilities is about equitable access to success. When ASPs (and law schools!) design with caregiving students in mind, they create systems that are more flexible and effective for all learners. Law school is demanding. Caregiving is demanding. Students doing both deserve intentional, visible, and sustained support. Academic support is uniquely positioned to participate in – or lead – the effort.

(Dayna Smith)

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]

I recently stumbled across an article from Business Insider recounting advice from John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T.[1] The advice was for young professionals to think of their careers in four- to five-year chapters and to focus on skill development and self-education in each chapter.[2]

The article specifically focused on the changes in technology and business models, but the advice made me pause. Should I be thinking of my career in ASP in the same way? I think so. With changes to bar licensure, AI, and student needs, the need to grow and adapt is ever-present in academic and bar support programs. In order to meet our students’ changing needs, we must also focus on our own development.

 As I look toward the new year, I find myself asking: What chapter am I in now? And just as importantly: What skills am I intentionally cultivating for the chapter ahead?

In ASP, it’s easy to become absorbed in the daily work of supporting students – meeting with them, designing workshops, analyzing data, coordinating programs. All of that work matters deeply. But if we want to keep serving students with clarity and purpose, we also need to step back and invest in ourselves with the same dedication we ask of them.

For me, that means embracing new learning curves rather than avoiding them. It means staying curious about emerging tools, examining how students’ habits and stressors are evolving, and seeking training or mentorship that helps me show up stronger. It means giving myself permission to rethink old assumptions, experiment with new approaches, and bring fresh energy to my work.

And it also means recognizing that each chapter deserves its own theme. Maybe one chapter is about becoming a better teacher. Maybe the next is about program design or leadership. Maybe another is about understanding new technologies or developing a more trauma-informed lens. Whatever the focus, being intentional about our growth creates space for the kind of transformation that ripples outward to students.

As we enter this new chapter, I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect on your own journey: what you’ve learned, what you’re proud of, and what you want to build next. And if you’re a student reading this, know that we’re on this path with you. We are learning, adapting, and growing alongside you because your success fuels our purpose.

Here’s to a year of thoughtful development, renewed commitment, and the courage to keep turning the page.

(Dayna Smith)

[1] Shubhangi Goel, AT&T CEO Says That Young People Should Think About Their Careers in 4- to 5-Year Chapters (Dec. 4, 2025), https://www.businessinsider.com/att-ceo-john-stankey-career-advice-young-people-college-tech-2025-12.

[2] The article went on to question the value of formal education with the increase in AI. I feel the need to state the obvious that I believe formal education is valuable for professional growth.

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/

Continuing the tradition that seems to have emerged this week, I am going to build off Shane’s blog post and Amy’s blog post about how you can make the most of December—and wrap up the Fall semester with a bow.

A teaching challenge that I have encountered over the years comes from the on-off cycle. I teach a class one semester, but then I do not teach the same class in the next semester—sometimes maybe even for multiple semesters. So, for example, by the time I get around to preparing my Fall semester courses again I have forgotten some of the lessons that didn’t hit the way I wanted them to, or I forgot that I wanted to move things around. And just like we teach our students, the longer the time elapses between learning, the greater the chance of forgetting.

To avoid this lag and set yourself up for success, debrief your Fall semester courses now as you wrap up the semester and do final grading. Debriefing gives you an opportunity to ensure that you do not forget the things that went well or didn’t, and is used formally in military and corporate culture, and even in event planning.

Before I went to law school, I was an event planner and for some of our more major annual events, we would hold a debrief meeting the week or two after the meeting. All key planners, stakeholders, and team participants attended, and we were able to improve the event plan for the next year.

The same principles apply to us as instructors—even if we are a “team of one” when it comes to teaching our courses. Rather than waiting until just before we teach the course again, we can review now the assignments, lessons, notes we made in the margins of our teaching plans, and more to make a clear roadmap for adjustments for future semester. Doing this before the holidays and grading deadlines can also help you better prepare any Spring courses you will be teaching.

As students stop coming for support because they have begun to dive into their own final exams and before bar prep truly “kicks off” for the winter cycle, spend a purposeful hour or two making a short list of things you want to adjust in the classes you just finished teaching. Look at this as a self-reflecting exercise that can be done thoughtfully, but without a ton of pressure. Don’t let it overtake your schedule. But do allow it to take pressure off of future-you’s plate.

If you’re needing a list of helpful things to review in your course debrief, check out Dayna’s previous blog post on this topic.

Happy Wrapping!

(Erica M. Lux)

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)

Fellow ASPers – the familiar churn of the end-of-semester rush is upon us. We are seeing, hearing, and feeling the crush of student demand ahead of final exams – or perhaps we are artificially rushing to fill an engagement void that seems an ill-fitting claim before the storm. In either case, we almost reflexively rush to support our students in their days, hours, and minutes of greatest need. The door stays open, the meeting calendar expands to blowfish-size proportions, and the supplies of tissues and candy receive one more re-up.

At semester’s end, it can seem very selfish to center ourselves, and to preserve our boundaries rather than to artificially inflate our capacities. Yet this commitment to boundary maintenance has to be at its strongest when the demand is at its highest, and when the upper range of our students’ struggle is at its peak. As many wise ASPers have said over the years, this is like putting your oxygen mask on before helping others. (Which is an ironic thing for me to type 5 days before embarking on a 19-hour travel day across an ocean and a continent.)

My fellow blog contributors have more than set the stage this week with short, numbered lists of excellent advice. So I’ll try to do the same.

1. Further Codify Your Individual Meeting Protocol

If you’ve held out on a meeting scheduler – or new to ASP, and you missed how we kept that relic of pandemic-compelled remote learning for ourselves – create one. If you already have one, customize your landing page to reflect exactly when you’re available. Create a new meeting type to account for your time restrictions during this period – that yields data on how many requests you had that you should share with stakeholders. Put a sign on your door indicating your availability and including a QR code so they can easily schedule a meeting if no one is around to do so.

Have two out-of-offices messages cued up! The first is for the exam period indicating your reduced/limited availability (both to students and other non-student stakeholders). The second is for when exams are over, and you’re on break and/or entirely focused on February bar takers.

2. Better Returns on Investment: Change Drop-In/On-Call/Office Hours to Hall/Library Walks

Some of you may be constrained by an extremely big “Return to Office” culture.[1] But the truth of the hunkering down our students do means they very rarely stray from their preferred on-campus study spots (for those even still on campus). The on-call nature of just sitting in our offices prevents us from, say, engaging in something that requires deep work and also comes with semester’s end (reports, conference prep, work product assessment, advance planning for next semester or bar season).

So, let’s steal a page from our bar season playbook, and meet our students where they are literally and geographically at. In as short as a half-hour walk, we gain valuable insight in return: the mood on campus; the proportion of folks who prefer/need to be here to get their prep done versus off-premises; the responsiveness of our students to our presence. Our students appreciate the visible support. And we’ll need the walk to stave off all that terrible stuff that comes from being hunched over at a desk, looking at a screen, for far too long.

3. Triage: Who to See for What … Not “You, for Everything”

The substantive/skills divide becomes your biggest boundary patroller. Redirect a “teach me X, please” ambush to the doctrinal professor (not even the TAs – they have exams too); help your student re-frame how you can help them. Refer out anything your spidey senses are telling you is a larger quality of life issue to Student Life.[2] Make clear what answers you will/won’t answer. Include this triage policy, or links to it, in any weekly newsletter to students; share it with your doctrinal professors.

Have a reading/exam period checklist of self-remedies students should consult before seeing you. Require a study schedule as a condition of meeting. Re-direct the student to any accumulated resource bank, student portal page, or LMS page. This all encourages resourcefulness and self-assessment – exactly the skill that needs a leg-day-like boost, since they should be gorging on timed practice exams and sample answer review anyway.

4. Plan a Trip, A Pro Tip That Is Not a Joke

I recently talked to a friend of a bestie who wanted advice on moving, post-haste, to the country in which I currently reside.[3] I must’ve said at least five times during the video chat, and again in the follow-up e-mail, that he needed to book a scouting visit. Among other practical reasons for doing so, I reminded him that it would provide “needed inspiration and motivation when things will get challenging.” There is a terrible, terrible norm in American work culture – and in the legal profession in particular[4] – that taking a vacation is a self-centered affront to productivity, provider efficacy, and putting students first. And sadly, our employers almost unanimously make it clear they expect us on-call, year-round.[5]

But all that couldn’t be further from the truth. Taking care of you is taking care of everyone else. If we can, our goal should be to exhaust our vacation allotment every year. Not doing so intensifies the burnout effect – ask those whose jobs literally (not figuratively) are matters of life and death![6] Many of our present – and many of our now-former – colleagues in ASP can attest to that.

So now that I’ve scrambled your algorithm just by mentioning it, it’s up to you to do it. (Maybe … after booking your AASE travel.) Come back recharged, with fresh perspective on your plate’s challenges.

[1] There is mixed sentiment on the wisdom of this kind of mandate. See, e.g., Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, “The Real Reasons Companies Are Forcing You Back To The Office,” Forbes.com (Mar. 8, 2025), available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2025/02/28/the-real-reasons-companies-are-forcing-you-back-to-the-office (last visited Dec. 4, 2025). My current location makes obvious into which camp I fall.

[2] It’s only fair that if we preach the expertise model as support that we should be trusted in all things learning science and bar exam, that we use that same norm to direct student life issues to the experts our institutions hired in student affairs. Admittedly, this line isn’t as clear when the ASP educator is also a student affairs professional.

[3] Still waiting for a first ASP friend to come visit over here! We promise excellent lodging and even more excellent gastronomy.

[4] See, e.g., Jordan Rothman, “Lawyers Have A Harder Time Taking Vacation Than Other Professionals,” Above the Law (Nov. 14, 2025), available at https://abovethelaw.com/2025/11/lawyers-have-a-harder-time-taking-vacation-than-other-professionals  (last visited Dec. 4, 2025).

[5] Every year that I’ve done my presentation at NECASP for the national job posting data, I have not separate out how many openings specify the position is 9-10 months versus year-round; all of the postings check the latter box.

[6] Christine A. Sinsky, Mickey T. Trocke, Lotte N. Dyrbye, Hanhan Wang, Lindsey E. Carlasare, Colin P. West, Tait D. Shanafelt, “Vacation Days Taken, Work During Vacation, and Burnout Among U.S. Physicians”, JAMA Network Open, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Jan. 12, 2024), available at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2813914 (last visited Dec. 4, 2025).

(Shane Dizon)

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)

Whenever final exams roll around, I find myself inundated with requests for study help. Students come to my office wanting detailed study plans and advice on how to make it all click before the exam. It can be easy to get bogged down in these meetings. Shouldn’t the students have been studying this whole semester? I don’t have a magic wand that can make a semester’s worth of knowledge make sense!

These requests make me pause and consider what law students actually need. Law students don’t need more willpower; they need smarter systems. Behavioral science shows that small, strategic “nudges” can dramatically improve how people learn, plan, and follow through. In Academic Support, nudges can help students study more consistently, avoid procrastination, and engage in deeper learning without feeling overwhelmed.

The best part? Nudges are subtle, simple, and require almost no extra time from students or faculty. Here are some nudges I suggest as students come to discuss study plans, no matter where we are in the semester.

1. The Implementation Intentions Nudge

Most students say things like: “I’ll study Evidence this week.” But behavioral research tells us that vague goals like this rarely lead to action. Instead, an implementation intention can spur students into action.

The base model for an implementation intention is: “On [day] at [time], I will study [topic] in [location].” So now, our vague “I’ll study Evidence this week” becomes “On Tuesday at 4pm, I will work on my Evidence outline in the library.” This provides students with a much more specific plan of attack.

2. The Two-Minute Starter Nudge: Reduce the Psychological Barrier

We all know that big tasks feel intimidating. Yet students often set lofty goals for themselves like “outline for two hours” then feel disappointed when they don’t meet those goals.

The two-minute rule starts by reframing the larger task as something too small to avoid. So rather than setting a goal to “outline for two hours,” students should instead tell themselves to “open your outline and update one case.” Then, once students start, momentum often kicks in. This nudge is especially effective for students who shut down when the work feels overwhelming.

3. The Commitment Device Nudge

People are more likely to follow through when they tell someone their plan. Implementing “commitment devices” are ways to capitalize on this. ASPs can help students use commitment devices by asking them to share their weekly study goal with a peer or mentor; offering a study check in form on Mondays and Fridays; and building micro-accountability into workshops (e.g., “before we leave, write one thing you’ll do this week and who you’ll tell”). The magic in this nudge is the social signal, rather than the work.

4. The Environment Nudge

Students often believe their habits are about motivation, but they may be more about environmental design. Students may not be setting themselves up for success because they’re trying to study in an environment not optimized for that purpose. Small nudges can help create a more productive environment:

• Encourage students to create a study-only spot even if it’s a corner of their apartment.
• Suggest phone baskets, website blockers, or do-not-disturb settings during deep work.
• Recommend that students set out books and laptops the night before to reduce friction.
• Encourage using visual cues in the study space to prompt action, such sticky notes and printed study plans.

When good habits are built into the environment, students won’t have to fight themselves to do the work.

5. The Pre-Commitment Calendar Nudge

This nudge encourages planning before stress hits. Planning in a calm state leads to better decisions than planning in moments of stress. ASP can nudge students to pre-commit to key tasks each week by encouraging weekly “study preview” meetings; sending weekly email reminders that includes planning templates; and encouraging time blocking. The goal here isn’t perfection; it’s proactivity.

6. The Reflection Nudge

Students often repeat ineffective habits simply because they don’t pause to evaluate them. Weekly reflection can help students understand what is and isn’t working for them. Sample prompts include:

• What study strategy worked best for me this week?
• What didn’t work, and why?
• What is one small change for next week?

Build reflection into workshops, coaching, or even quick end-of-class prompts to encourage this practice. Over time, students will realize that reflection turns experience into strategy.

Behavioral nudges aren’t about forcing students to work harder. They’re about helping students work smarter. When ASPs integrate small, science-backed prompts and advice into programming, students naturally build stronger habits, follow through more consistently, and develop the kind of sustainable study routines that lead to long-term success. A nudge may be small, but the cumulative effect can be transformative.

(Dayna Smith)

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)

First-gen students are often on my mind when we reach the first midterms and especially when we are near the first set of final exams. Schools are increasingly recognizing the importance of welcoming first-gen students during those early days, but support doesn’t end when the nametags come off. Supporting first-gen students must be embedded throughout the entire law school experience, and Academic Support programs are uniquely positioned to lead this work. Here are a few strategies to help build first-gen supports into the full semester:

1. Normalize the First-Gen Experience

First-gen students often carry invisible burdens like imposter syndrome, financial strains, and uncertainty about expectations. I often hear from first-gen students that they feel they’re navigating these feelings alone. Academic support professionals know that these feelings are not unique to first-gen students but are perhaps most keenly experienced by them. This makes normalizing this experience even more helpful to supporting first-gen students. Integrate first-gen stories and perspectives into workshops, panels, newsletters, faculty conversations, and alumni events. Additionally, celebrate first-gen achievements by highlighting first-gen graduate and faculty accomplishments. When first-gen students see their experiences reflected and honored, it lessens the sense of being “the only one.”

2. Demystify the “Hidden Curriculum”

Law school is full of assumptions about what students should already know. However, first-gen students usually don’t have access to that cultural knowledge, making them feel alone and behind those who can rely on lawyers in their families to share tips and tricks. Providing ongoing instruction on topics such as outlining, interpreting feedback, networking, and navigating summer job hiring cycles can help even the playing field. While all of these are not necessarily inherent to academic support programs, there are opportunities to collaborate across departments to support students’ holistic success. All of this should not just be one session, though; integrate it into courses, workshops, and small-group coaching throughout the semester for the greatest impact.

3. Foster Community, Not Just Programming

Programming alone cannot fully support students because support is relational. Instead of just adding more formal programming, create opportunities for first-gen students to connect with faculty, alumni, upper-level students, and peers. Community combats isolation and builds the sense of belonging that directly supports retention and well-being.

Faculty should also be a part of this community. Faculty often want to support first-gen students, but they may not be sure how. Offer interested faculty short, actional strategies for clarifying expectations, demystifying assignments, inviting questions, and using inclusive teaching practices. When faculty reinforce support in the classroom, students see themselves as legitimate members of the academic community.

Supporting first-generation law students beyond orientation isn’t just an equity initiative. When students feel seen, supported, and empowered throughout their law school journey, they engage more deeply, persevere through challenges, and grow into confident, capable professionals. Academic support plays a vital role in that journey. By offering continuous guidance, demystifying the law school experience, and building community, academic support programs help first-gen law students not just enter law school, but thrive within it.

(Dayna Smith)

When schools talk about student retention, conversations often center on admissions metrics, financial aid, and student life. But one of the most powerful drivers of retention sits quietly at the heart of the institution. Academic support professionals don’t just help students learn legal doctrine. They help students belong, persist, and believe they can succeed. When that work is integrated into a school’s broader retention strategy, the impact can be transformative.

Students rarely leave law school because of a single bad grade. More often, attrition starts quietly with confusion, isolation, or discouragement. Academic support educators are often among the first to see the signs. By tracking early indicators, like missed assignments, disengagement, and repeated skill gaps, academic support programs can serve as the early warning system of the institution. Proactive outreach, coupled with partnerships across the institution, can turn early struggles into early recoveries.

Retention also has more depth than just academic mastery. It is often about emotional endurance. Law school tests identity as must as intellect, and academic support offers a uniquely safe space to teach students how to recover from setbacks, manage self-doubt, and reframe failure as feedback. Workshops and coaching on self-regulation, metacognition, and exam reflection don’t just improve grades; they build the grit that keeps students enrolled and engaged.

Ultimately, retention strategies thrive when decisions are both data-informed and human-centered. Academic support can lead the way by collecting meaningful data and interpreting it through a student-focused lens. Some data might include attendance trends, self-assessment results, and reflections surveys. Instead of just asking “who’s struggling,” we can ask: what patterns in our programming predict continued engagement? Which interventions most effectively rebuild student confidents? How do different groups experience our curriculum and culture? This deeper analysis helps schools invest resources where they’ll make the most difference.

Too often, academic support is framed as a safety net rather than a partner in institutional success. Academic support often occupies the middle ground between faculty, student affairs, and administration, making ASP teams powerful connectors. When academic support professionals share data and insights, they can help the institution align academics, wellness, and financial support around a common goal: student persistence.

Retention isn’t just about keeping students enrolled. It is about helping them flourish. Academic support professionals do this every day through mentoring, coaching, and teaching. When institutions recognize academic support programs as a central pillar of retention, they stop viewing it as a back-end intervention and start leveraging it as a front-line strategy for equity, engagement, and student success.

(Dayna Smith)

Preparing for finals doesn’t have to be scary!

One of my favorite ways to study for exams, especially as a 1L but even sometimes for some of my advanced required courses, was to analyze hypos in shows I was watching.

Whenever I studied (or now when I write), I struggled to do so in total silence—so I always had a show on that I had already watched enough times to not have to pay attention to it. One of those shows was Grey’s Anatomy. However, once I started law school and began learning things like Torts, Property, and Contracts, I found that Grey’s Anatomy had another benefit—hypos for me to practice for final exams with!

For example, there is an episode (S8:E23) where one of the residents, Alex Karev, who just accepted a full-time attending position at Seattle Grace Mercy West, gets offered a dream job at Johns Hopkins—so he tries to re-negotiate his contract. This was a great hypo for learning contract formation, validity, and defenses like Statute of Frauds.

In another episode (S8:E4), the doctors have to triage victims of a stampede from a comic con, where several nerds (and I say that supportively because I, myself identify as a nerd) are fighting over a TARDIS replica. This scenario (that lasts most of the episode) was great for me to test some of my personal property knowledge as I got ready for my Property exam.

There are lots of hypotheticals across subjects in Grey’s Anatomy—here are a few examples:

• Torts (plenty of fist fights and “apprehensions,” and of course LOTS of medical malpractice and battery)
• Criminal Law (battery, murder, fraud)
• Civil Procedure (they have a case that gets decided at summary judgment (S9:E11))
• Business Associations (after a horrific plane crash, many of the survivors form a new board of directors, which lasts several seasons, and includes decisions made by the board)

Of course, for criminal law and criminal procedure topics there are always a plethora of crime-based shows, including the many series of Law & Order and NCIS. If you’re curious, Reddit also has many of it’s own suggestions for show hypos across law school subjects.

So, as you get exam ready this fall—especially 1Ls who are always hungry for more practice problems—try to see if any of the shows or movies you’re currently watching help you to assess hypos. When you spot an issue, pause the show, write out or bullet point your rules and legal analysis, and then review it to see if you were on the right track. Bonus points if you and a friend do this together and help assess each other’s answers.

Happy Halloween & Happy Hypo-ing!

(Erica M. Lux)

Though for others, the first time they may struggle is the LSAT or in law school. In fact, as legal educators, we can hear this sentiment a lot: “This is the first time I feel like I don’t know what I am doing.” And sometimes this conversation leads to the question of whether that student is neurodivergent (though that is not to suggest that question should be asked with every struggling student). This is because first-time academic struggle upon entering law school can occasionally indicate a previously undiagnosed neurodivergence.

Why might this occur? How does academic success prior to law school sometimes manifest in law school academic challenges and late diagnosed neurodivergence?

Consider how autism has been shown to be related to gifted and talented programming:

“Many masked Autistics are sent to gifted education as children, instead of being referred to disability services. [Their] apparent high intelligence puts [them] in a double bind: [they] are expected to accomplish great things to justify [their] oddness, and because [they] possess an enviable, socially prized quality [of good grades], it’s assumed [they] need less help than other people, not more.”[1]

There are other examples of this here and here. Being autistic (or neurodivergent) and “gifted” is commonly referred to as “Twice Exceptional.” Twice exceptional students may evade proper diagnoses due to their ability to achieve academically. Of course, challenges with poorly developed diagnostic tools (as many were developed with white, affluent, male samples), lack of access to funding for diagnosis, sociocultural norms that devalue disability, and masking so as to appear neurotypical are other reasons that increases in adult (late) diagnoses of neurodivergence may impact our law students. And, because academic struggle may not have been something a twice exceptional student has previously experienced, their first perceived failures in law school may shed light on the social value deposited solely to their ability to achieve good grades above all else.

By nature of their entering credentials, law students are generally high achievers. So, it would not be surprising that some masked autistic or neurodivergent law students who were never properly diagnosed are currently enrolled in law schools across the country. There are likely even practicing lawyers who may just now be realizing their neurodiversity as they experience significant burnout tied to heavy over-masking.

So, what happens when an underdiagnosed twice exceptional student graduates college, goes to law school, and starts to struggle academically for the first time?

First, we can refer students to proper counseling, diagnostic, and disability resources for support. As much as we may perceive signs of neurodiversity, we are (most of us) neither trained nor licensed to perform such assessments.

More importantly though, as legal educators in this space, we can remind students that everyone who graduates law school and passes the bar exam is an attorney at the end of the day. We can remind students that their academic success in law school does not define them, nor does it prohibit them from having a successful legal practice and future. Grades don’t make the lawyer; the ability to understand the law, apply it to the facts, and ethically resolve issues for clients—that’s what makes the lawyer.

And we can remind our neurodivergent students that when it comes to academic and bar support, we can help them come up with strategies to build the foundational lawyering skills necessary to improve their academic success and pass the bar exam.

(Erica M. Lux)

If we only measure outcomes by who passes, we risk overlooking the meaningful, transformative work that happens along the way. The bar exam is high-stakes, but it’s also a blunt instrument. It captures a snapshot of performance on one test under high stress. It doesn’t capture the student who entered law school underprepared and learned how to think critically, write analytically, and manage stress effectively. It doesn’t reflect the student who failed once, came back, and ultimately passed. When we define success only by the pass rate, we risk undervaluing growth, resilience, and the development of lifelong learning habits that will serve graduates far beyond exam day.

Instead of focusing solely on outcomes, programs can look to process metrics, which are the behaviors and skills associated with long-term success. For example, programs might looks to engagement with resources and faculty; skill development over the course of a student’s JD program; and behavioral changes like improving time management. Qualitative data tells one story, but qualitative data captures another. Asking students how confident they feel about tackling new challenges, how connected they feel to faculty, or how they’ve learned to recover from setbacks offers a fuller picture of academic and emotional growth. These data points reveal patterns of progress.

When we look beyond the pass rate, we can also ask better institutional questions. For instance, we might ask:

•  What structural barriers affect student outcomes?
• How does our program design serve diverse learners?
• What interventions made the biggest difference in engagement?

A focus on deeper metrics turns “results” into research, helping schools refine strategies and promote equity. 

Behind every data point is a student with a story. Celebrating the graduate who passed on the first try and the one who took a longer path honors the truth that success is iterative. Persistence, reflection, and continued effort are victories in themselves.

The pass rate matters—it’s one measure of how effectively we’ve prepared students for licensure. But it’s not the only measure. As academic and bar support professionals, our work isn’t just about producing passing scores; it’s about cultivating confident, capable professionals who know how to learn, adapt, and persevere. When we measure success by growth, engagement, and resilience, we tell a more accurate story of what success in legal education truly looks like.

(Dayna Smith)

Self-regulated learning[1] is a valuable tool that many law students should learn in their first year. While some may already have this skill upon entering law school, others will learn how to self-regulate their learning as part of a first-year skills course. On the other hand, other students may struggle with this. Some students who work with academic and bar support educators, whether voluntarily or as part of a mandated program, often need assistance in developing their ability to self-regulate their learning.

As academic and bar success educators, we can help law students build this skill more purposefully in our student meetings. In practice, it requires us to resist the urge to prescribe tasks a student should complete prior to a follow-up meeting. Instead, to allow a student more actively participate in their own learning, we should simply ask: “What would you like to prepare for me next week?”

By shifting the responsibility for evaluation and planning to the student, the student learner is able to more actively engage with self-regulated learning. Students who do this can also better implement this learning strategy outside of the guided academic meeting environment. It also helps them develop a growth mindset because once they (perhaps with your help) have identified a learning challenge, they establish the mindset that it can be remedied and create the plan to do so. Doing this allows the student to take one more step closer to being an expert learner, capable of law school and bar exam success—and future practice success.

Not only does this approach support law student learning, but it also reduces the mental load you, as an academic or bar success educator, manage. Rather than having to determine what a student can and cannot accomplish yet based on where they are in course work or hoping they will complete the task they may not want to, you shift the onus off of you and back onto them. (Afterall, you have completed law school and passed the bar exam—that’s now their task.)

Plus, when a student decides what they want to bring to the next meeting, I find they are also more likely to accomplish the task. They did not get told to do something; they came up with the task and know they can do it because they told you they could. And because you did not have to come up with the task, it also provides a great opening for your next meeting: “Remind me what you planned to accomplish today and let me know how that went.”

Our students are adults learning a profession. Even as educators, we cannot always give them the answers (nor should we); the ability to find the answer and execute the solution is something they are capable of doing. And by shifting your mindset in student meetings, you’re also helping them to realize the tools that will help make them expert life-long learners.

(Erica M. Lux)

[1] Self-regulated learning is a skill that requires the learner to assess and plan, implement the plan while monitoring progress towards a goal, and evaluate the success of the plan before starting the cycle over again.  See this great article by Michael Hunter Schwartz on Self-Regulated Learning: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=959467.

Processing an unsuccessful bar exam outcome necessitates a grieving process. But unfortunately, in response to institutional and ABA standard demands, we may turn too quickly to offering repeat taker programming without creating space for the taker to process their grief.

If we don’t create the space for students to grieve then we merely serve to reinforce the increased stress, anxiety and mental health challenges in our profession.  The article, “Managing Stress, Grief, and Mental Health Challenges in the Legal Profession; Not Your Usual Law Review Article” by Deborah Rhodes begins with reference to a true story from the book Smacked.[1] The account details the death and funeral of a partner at a Silicon Valley firm. His life lost due to complications from substance abuse. While a young associate gave remarks at his funeral, many of the lawyers in attendance were on their phones, reading and tapping emails. A clear example that in the most important time for grief, lawyers are inclined, and perhaps programmed, to operate “business as usual.”

Support for an unsuccessful bar taker requires more than “business as usual” – repeater support programming, commercial provider free repeat courses, and supplemental study programs. This is our moment to work with the graduate to process the grief as part of the pathway to success. In a world where access to sustained mental health resources and counseling support is limited, we must fill this void when our graduates grappling with unsuccessful outcomes.

To institute good grief, here are some practical exercises to consider:

1. Engage the student in a perspective analysis.[2] Push the graduate to reframe their circumstances, explore their gratitude and compare their circumstance to a more challenging (and worse) life circumstance that they are not currently experiencing. This practice helps minimize the weight of the negative outcome.

2. Help the student identify an activity that they currently engage in or that they want to engage in that contributes to something more than themselves.[3] This exercise promotes well-being, brings fulfillment, and externalizes focus.

3. Identify key future deadlines in the overall “life” agenda. By mapping out the reality of the circumstance and intentionally incorporating time for grief, it can bring ease to the inherent tendency our graduates have to “study right away” after experiencing a bar exam loss. A “life” agenda generates opportunity for sustained achievement of short-term goals during the grieving process – which is more likely to yield long term success.   

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

[1] Deborah L. Rhode, Managing Stress, Grief, and Mental Health Challenges in the Legal Profession; Not Your Usual Law Review Article, 89 Fordham L. Rev. 2565, 2566 (2021) (citing EILENE ZIMMERMAN, SMACKED (2020); Eilene Zimmerman, The Lawyer, The Addict, N.Y. TIMES (July 15, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/business/lawyersaddiction-mental-health.html [https://perma.cc/N4MH-LXYR].

[2] Id. at 2573.

[3] Id.

Autistic persons can be—and are—thoughtful, smart, and empathetic. Some even work within the legal academy or in practice.[2] But being autistic or neurodivergent means learning how to navigate the challenges we face while also understanding some of our own strengths.

As a late-diagnosed neurodivergent adult, some days I still struggle to accept parts of myself when I face challenges. Other days it is so evident who I am (and have always been) that I cannot help but to clearly see how a specific strength has manifested positively at work or in life.

Understanding the strengths and challenges that our neurodivergent law students face requires us to look at the surrounding context. “Context is key . . . because in one situation, one set of traits can be highly beneficial and in another situation, those same traits can be ‘crippling.’”[3] One neurodivergent law student may be strong at performing under timed pressure, such as on exams, and may be otherwise challenged by communicating effectively with neurotypical judges and witnesses in moot court or mock trial experiences. Another neurodivergent law student may have the opposite strengths and challenges. Neither of these things, however, mean that the student will not be able to succeed in law school or even in practice. Instead, we need extra support,[4] therapy,[5] training,[6] or mentorship[7] to better manage our challenges, build new skills, and find our personal path to successful practice.[8]

Doing so sets neurodivergent law students up for success as they learn to lean into their strengths and how to better support the challenges they face. “For most, [autism] is an endless fight against schools, workplaces, and bullies. But under the right circumstances, give the right adjustment, it CAN be a superpower.”[9] As legal educators who have neurodivergent students in our halls, we need to reframe how we talk about neurodiversity broadly, and autism specifically, especially given the recent problematic framing that has been repeated in more public spheres.[10]

Reframing how we talk about neurodiversity into a spectrum of strengths and challenges is important for our neurodivergent law students in several ways. For one, it helps pivot incorrect narratives, driven by the medical model of understanding neurodiversity, that all neurodivergent adults are incapable of being productive members of society because something is “wrong” with us.[11] It also helps one to empathize more with neurodivergent persons to understand that just like a neurotypical person may have good and bad days, more- and less-productive days, we similarly struggle—just doing so with fewer spoons[12] to get us through the day. Finally, it helps us to recognize that neurodivergent people are everywhere around us.

No single one of us is more or less valuable[13] because of what contributions we can or cannot offer to a society that was not built with us in mind. We each have strengths and challenges that we face based on how our neurodivergence presents, but that doesn’t necessarily make us a superhero—it makes us a person equally owed respect and consideration.

(Erica Lux)

[1] Jen Christensen, Brenda Goodman, & Meg Tirrell, Trump Links Autism to Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy, Despite Decades of Evidence It’s Safe, CNN (Sept. 23, 2025), https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/health/trump-autism-announcement-cause-tylenol; but see Ashley Bell, What Causes Autism? Is Autism Genetic or Environmental?, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine (April 10, 2024),https://medschool.ucla.edu/news-article/is-autism-genetic (stating that up to 1,000 genes and inherited genetic mutations mostly impact autism susceptibility, while prenatal exposure to certain environmental elements are relatively rare in indicating autism). Increases in rates of autism are due to a number of factors, including “awareness, testing, and diagnoses [that] have evolved to capture patients that were previously unrecognized or diagnosed with something different—not so much because instances of autism have actually increased.” Bell, supra note 1.

[2] See, e.g., Haley Moss, Who I Am?, Haley Moss, https://haleymoss.com/about/ (last visited Oct. 1, 2025); Riley Roliff, Queer, Autistic, Empowering: An Ohio Law Professor Busts Norms & Transforms the Classroom, The Buckeye Flame (June 9, 2023), https://thebuckeyeflame.com/2023/06/09/queer-autistic-empowering-csu-law-professor/; Joel Brown, A Very Different Path to Excellence, BU Today (May 16, 2017), https://www.bu.edu/articles/2017/gary-lawson-metcalf-award-for-excellence-in-teaching/; Ian Karbal, Pennsylvania’s Autistic Lawmakers Condemn Trump-Kennedy Approach to the Disorder, Penn. Capital-Star (Sept. 24, 2025),https://penncapital-star.com/health/pennsylvanias-autistic-lawmakers-condemn-trump-kennedy-approach-to-the-disorder/; Peter O’Neil, My So-Called ‘Disorder’ Made Me a Better Attorney, Seattle Times (May 12, 2023), https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/my-so-called-disorder-made-me-a-better-attorney/. I am also a neurodivergent attorney and legal educator.

[3] Jenara Nerenberg, Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You 72 (2020) (quoting Harvard neurologist Joel Salinas as to whether being neurodivergent is a gift, curse, or none of the above).

[4] See e.g., Katherine Silver Kelly, Be Curious Not Judgmental: Neurodiversity in Legal Education, 78(2) Ark. L. Rev.  (2025).

[5] See e.g., Barbara L. Kornblau & Scott Michael Robertson, Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Occupational Therapy with Neurodivergent People, 75(3) Am. J. of Occupational Therapy (2021).

[6] See e.g., Sarah Schlossberg, ADHD and Me: Strategies for Lawyers with Executive Functioning Challenges, 68 Prac. Law. 3 (April 2022).

[7] See e.g., Bill Wong et al., The Importance of Neurodivergent Mentorship for the Development of Professional Identity, 6(1) Neuroscience Rsch. Notes 167 (2023).

[8] See e.g., Stephanie Francis Ward, For Lawyers with Autism, the Work Often Pairs Up with Things They Do Well, ABA J. (Apr. 22, 2019, 6:30 AM CDT),https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/for-lawyers-with-autism-the-work-often-pairs-up-with-things-they-do-well.

[9] Maija Kappler, Greta Thunberg Opens Up About Her Asperger’s Syndrome, HuffPost (Sept. 19, 2019), https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/greta-thunberg-aspergers_ca_5d6c2d31e4b09bbc9ef0e7db (quoting activist Greta Thunberg).

[10] Bethany Braun-Silva, RFK Jr.’s Comments on Autism Draw Reactions from Parents & Experts, ABCNews (Apr. 17, 2025), https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/parents-experts-react-rfk-jrs-autism-claims/story?id=120911306 (pushing back on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s problematic comments that autism “destroys families” and autistic children will never be productive or have meaningful relationships); Karbal, supra note 2.

[11] Haley Moss, Great Minds Think Differently: Neurodiversity for Lawyers & Other Professionals 9–13 (2021).

[12] Megan Anna Neff, Spoon Theory for Autism & ADHD: The Neurodivergent Spoon Drawer, Neurodivergent Insights (July 13, 2022), https://neurodivergentinsights.com/the-neurodivergent-spoon-drawer-spoon-theory-for-adhders-and-autists/.

[13] Being a productive member of society is not what gives someone value; being a human being, a person, is what gives someone value.

Job Description

The Associate Director participates in the development and implementation of a comprehensive program that partners with students and alumni from admission through bar passage. The Associate Director is primarily responsible for bar preparation counseling, planning, and presenting skills workshops, and coaching alumni who are studying for the bar exam in Uniform Bar Examination and NextGen Uniform Bar Exam jurisdictions.

Education and Experience

• JD degree from an ABA accredited law school, required.
• Member of bar in good standing in any U.S. jurisdiction, required within 6 months of hire.
• 3+ years’ experience in legal academic support and bar preparation, preferred.
• Teaching or experience with student advising as related to academic issues, preferred.
• High level of organization, flexibility, sound judgment, and interpersonal skills, required.
• Strong written and verbal communications skills required.
• Large group and small group presentation ability, required.
• Legal practice experience, preferred.
• Ability to maintain confidentiality pursuant to FERPA and other regulations, required.
• Ability to conduct basic statistical analysis, preferred.
• Experience with SUCOL Academic Success program, preferred.
• Experience with the SUCOL Bar Preparation Program, preferred.

Skills and Knowledge

• Sound judgment and discretion sufficient to build relationships with students, alumni, and colleagues that foster trust and cooperation.
• Ability to develop rapport with students in an individual counseling setting. Ability to complete tasks in an expeditious and courteous manner.
• Ability to collaborate to build highly effective bar exam outcomes, while also promoting harmony within the office.
• Sufficiently strong minded to impart unambiguous directions to students who need motivation, both in law school and on the bar exam.
• Maintains a collaborative work environment and works well with others.
• Must establish and maintain positive working relationships within department and within the College of Law.
• Works to build an environment that promotes and facilitates the success of Diversity and Inclusive Excellence.
• Must be a dependable, responsible contributor committed to excellence and success.
• Flexibility to work outside the normal assigned schedule when requested.

Responsibilities

Bar Exam Counseling and Advising:

• Provides academic advising on course selection and planning.
• Guides students on the path to licensure from bar exam application through preparation.
• Coaches at-risk students identified by COL metrics.
• Counsels on study techniques, exam prep, and course choices.
• Reviews student work to improve bar writing and preparation strategies.
• Meets with graduating students to create individualized bar exam plans.
• Develops and delivers bar preparation workshops covering long-range planning and exam skills.
• Answers student questions on bar exam applications across U.S. jurisdictions.
• Collaborates with Kaplan Bar Review to implement the institutional agreement and deliver comprehensive services.
• Assists alumni with study plans, coaching them through meetings, essay reviews, and performance feedback.

Bar Exam Success Programming:

• Develops and presents comprehensive and supplemental bar preparation workshops tailored to support students and alumni prepare for the Uniform Bar Exam and the NextGen Bar Exam.
• Focuses workshop content on the skills and strategies needed to pass the Uniform Bar Exam or the NextGen Uniform Bar Exam while addressing any future reforms.
• Integrates programming with COL traditional and interactive distance education learning models, ensuring all students receive personalized support.
• Designs and implements comprehensive programming to support bar exam retakers particularly those who have not passed a bar exam within two years of graduation.

Data Collection:

• Collaborates to engage in bar exam data collection and analysis for purposes of internal and external reporting.
• Develops and implements formative assessment tools to evaluate the impact of first-time bar taker preparation and remedial programming efforts.

Administrative Tasks:

• Oversees and maintains the COL exam administration process.
• Assists in planning and presenting at New Student Orientation.
• Participates in campus-wide initiatives in collaboration with other student services offices at the College of Law to provide a comprehensive and meaningful academic experience for COL students.
• Other duties as assigned.

Interested candidates can access the full job description and apply for the position using this link: https://www.sujobopps.com/postings/110962

We are at the time of year when our students “need a minute”, meeting conflicts overtake our calendar, and weekly assessment feedback elongates the workday until late evenings. As William Ury explains, “at the heart of the difficulty in saying ‘no’ is the tension between exercising your power and tending to your relationship.”[2] In the context of our profession, the tension arises between tending to our professional well-being and supporting relationships within the workplace.

Ury’s book does an excellent job explaining how to execute the “Yes! No. Yes?” approach in three specific stages – preparation, delivery, and follow through.[3] With emphasis on the delivery stage, when it is time to say no, express your “yes” (your motivations for saying no), assert your “no” (consistently and persistently), and propose an alternative “yes” (which creates opportunity for mutual gains).[4]

To illustrate this tactic through a common workplace hypothetical: a student organization contacts you to create an academic workshop by next week. You are on a very busy faculty committee, teaching two courses, and providing individual weekly feedback on sixty assignments. You feel the tension between managing your limited time versus supporting students and establishing positive rapport. Delivering a flat “no” response will lead to student disappointment and harm relationships. Instead of a simple “no”, explain your motives to say “no” (you have pressing committee obligations requiring more time than you anticipated), deliver your “no” (“I’m unable to offer a workshop next week”), and propose an alternative (“Perhaps we can recruit some student success mentors to host a panel or workshop in lieu of my participation?”). This approach opens the door for opportunities while also maintaining your professional well-being.

Thus, in finishing September’s communication series, don’t forget to empower your “no.” (and read William Ury’s books – it is worth it for professional development).

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

[1] WILLIAM URY, THE POWER OF A POSITIVE NO: HOW TO SAY NO AND STILL GET TO YES 50 (Bantam Books 2007)

[2] Id. at 22

[3] Id. at 40

[4] Id.

Many law students start exam prep the month (or sometimes weeks) before final exams. This often includes a heavy focus on outlining (or creating study tools) and maybe a few practice problems, spurred from the thought “Oh crap! My final is next month!”

Instead, exam prep should be a consistent practice that law students start now—within the first several weeks of classes starting. Starting exam prep now means reducing the time pressure trying to relearn concepts from nearly ten weeks ago. Starting exam prep now means fitting in consistent time for practice problems, rather than hoping to cram in at least one practice test before the exam. Starting exam prep means reducing the anxiety tied to final exams.

What does consistent exam prep look like this early in the semester?

• Create Your Own Outline or Study Tool: Creating an outline (or what I now like to call a “study tool” because outlining can have a negative connotation for some) allows you to review what you’ve learned, synthesize & process concepts, and draw connections between them. Plus, starting a study tool early allows you more time to condense it as you better understand the law. You should absolutely create your own study tool (or outline) to take advantage of these important cognitive tasks, rather than relying on one from an upper-level student. For creating your study tool, if you are a first-year student, this process can start about four to five weeks into the semester; if you’re an upper-level law student, this process starts after the first two weeks of the semester. That time is here—so get started!

• Chunk Your Learning: When law students are in “exam mode” that month before finals, they can get so overwhelmed trying to get it all learned and memorized. However, starting earlier—now—allows you to study more purposefully and thoughtfully. And chunking learning means dividing a topic, such as Intentional Torts into its sub-parts like Battery, Assault, False Imprisonment, and so on, can make that task completion much more digestible. So, after a professor completes a major issue or sub-issue (a “unit”) in class, you should immediately review and add that to your study tool. Think of this like a grocery list. If you had a grocery list of 50 items, you might get overwhelmed trying to remember where things are and miss items; but if you put all your produce items together since that’s where your grocery store starts, and then deli items next, and so on, you’ll be much less likely to miss things and stay on track.

• Complete Practice Problems to Check Your Learning: Practice problems are scary. Perhaps not Halloween scary, but the thought of getting a question wrong, or even several questions wrong in a row, can be very scary for law students. However, science shows that completing practice problems is not only active learning that helps students to better understand their knowledge gaps,[1] but is also a tool to help reduce test anxiety.[2] For example, by doing practice questions now, you can assess what you know and what you don’t, remediate the topics you don’t know, and keep practicing and learning. However, for a student who saves practice until their outline is perfect[3] or right before the exam, that student will not be able to close their knowledge gaps and is less likely to see the success they desire. Therefore, you should use multiple choice and short answer questions in a supplement (again in “chunks”) to best test your knowledge on those discrete topics. Doing this will allow this exam prep early will allow you to get to several larger issue-spotter practice questions in the weeks before the final exam.

• Modifications Based on Professor Preferences: Law school supplements are not made for specific professors’ classes; they’re made for students across the country to understand the law and practice applying it to new sets of facts. Sure, your professor will likely emphasize some key areas of law and skip over others. They will likely also want your essay product written a specific way. So, when you use a study aid supplement your school has available, do practice questions on those topics your professor has covered and skip over those your professor has not. If while doing practice questions, you realize that the answer does not seem right or you think your professor would address it differently, approach them about it and get clarification. Again, by starting the process earlier, you are able to make the small adjustments necessary before test day and build your confidence.

• Ask for Help Early & Often: Similarly, as you work on your study tool and complete practice questions, ask for help. Remember, each exam you take at the end of the semester will test information differently and expect slightly different outputs. Your course professors and academic success professors are available (and happy) to help answer your questions now, so let them help you along the way.

So, as you get started, remember that carving out even an extra hour or two for exam prep now can mean the difference between being prepared for an exam in ten weeks and just hoping that you’re exam ready. So, choose the way that builds learning, feedback, and confidence to ace your final exams this semester!

(Erica M. Lux)

[1] See, e.g., Jennifer M. Cooper & Regan A. R. Gurung, Smarter Law Study Habits: An Empirical Analysis of Law Learning Strategies & Relationship with Law GPA, 62 St. Louis Univ. L. J. 361 (2018); Jennifer A. Gundlach & Jessica R. Santangelo, Teaching & Assessing Metacognition in Law School, 69(1) J. Legal Educ. 156 (2019).

[2] Sarah M. Bonner, Breaking the Test-Anxiety Loop: Using Self-Regulated Learning to Improve Bar Exam Performance, 91(4) The Bar Examiner (2022–2023), https://thebarexaminer.ncbex.org/article/winter-2022-2023/breaking-the-test-anxiety-loop/ (discussing how using self-regulated learning with practice tests can help reduce test anxiety in bar prep).

[3] There is no such thing as a perfect outline.

1. Starting Small with Micro-Habits
   Students often come to talk about their big goals, like studying three hours every day (usually after not studying at all for a semester). But big goals can often feel overwhelming and, as a result, are abandoned quickly. Change is more sustainable when it begins with small, easy wins. For instance, suggest adding a 10–15-minute daily review instead of a three-hour study block. Once habits take root, they naturally expand. Success at smaller goals builds momentum.
2. Use Implementation Intentions
   Vague intentions like I’ll study Torts this week don’t translate into action. Implementation intentions do. Implementation intents often follow a specific “if/when-then” plan. For instance, you might help a student draft a specific rule like: When it’s 6 pm, then I’ll review my Torts outline for 20 minutes or If I finish reading, then I’ll rewrite one rule statement. Helping students create specific, simple rules for themselves can increase follow-through.
3. Reduce Friction, Increase Cues
   Students often avoid studying because it feels hard to get started. Let’s face it – there are probably a hundred things we’d rather do than sit down and study. Behavioral science suggests we should guide students to make the desired behavior easier so there are fewer excuses not to get started. This might look like reducing friction or increasing cues. For example:
   • Reducing Friction: Keep outlines open on the desktop rather than buried in files
   • Increase Cues: Pair study time with a visual or auditory trigger, like sitting in a designated spot or paying a specific “study start” song.
   Environmental design can matter as much as willpower to following through with a study plan.
4. Harness the Power of Accountability
   We are more likely to follow through when someone else is expecting us to. Encourage students to form study groups with clear, shared goals; schedule study check-ins with peer mentors or academic support staff; or use apps or tracking sheets to share progress. Accountability turns private intentions into public commitments.
5. Emphasize Reflection and Feedback
   We all know that habits aren’t static. They require adjustment! Encourage students to pause weekly and ask what worked well, what didn’t, and what small adjustment(s) could improve next week. By framing reflection as part of routine, students learn that setbacks aren’t failures but feedback.

Helping students build productive study routines isn’t about handing them the perfect schedule. Instead, it’s about helping them work with human psychology. When routines are small, specific, supported by cues, reinforced with accountability, and open to feedback, students stop fighting procrastination and start building sustainable habits for law school, the bar exam, and beyond.

(Dayna Smith)

Every year, Academic and Bar Success Departments must engage in conversations with other faculty and campus administration to request resources. This may look like requesting faculty participation in a workshop, collaboration on an academic success initiative, or asking for financial investments into academic and bar programming.

Given faculty’s tight scheduling commitments and institutional financial constraints, we may hear the word “no” in response to our requests. Accepting “no” often means missed opportunities to further explore alternative options and can result in an increase to our own workload.

A potential solution: when making an “ask,” engage in integrative bargaining. Integrative bargaining promotes collaboration and assist parties in finding “win-win” solutions as opposed to positional bargaining which is results in “win-loss” solutions.

Successful integrative bargainers focus on the underlying positions as a means to “expand the pie” before “dividing the pie.” By engaging in this approach to problem solving, you create an environment that is more likely to yield sustained, long-lasting solutions because most, if not all parties, find a “win.”

To best achieve results in integrative bargaining, one must focus on the underlying interests versus the stated positions. Stated positions are the factually asserted “wants” and “needs.” The underlying interests are the motivations for the asserted positions. Asking open-ended questions (which I explored in a previous post) illicit information that you can then use to identify underlying interests. Once you identify the other party’s underlying interests, you can then craft proposals that meet those interests and thus satisfy the stated positions.

Let us examine a simple hypothetical to see how integrative bargaining can better assist your communication.

You need faculty participation in your summer bar workshop series. You approach a faculty member beloved by the students and ask for their participation. The faculty member quickly states that they do not have time during the summer to host a workshop, and politely declines your request.

Positional bargaining results in you accepting the no and moving on to another faculty member. However, integrative bargaining uses active listening to identify the faculty’s underlying motivation to say “no” (in this case, time limitations) to propose a few alternative solutions. These alternatives solutions include a prerecorded workshop that they could complete on their own time during the spring semester, a handwritten postcard that you can share with the students on their behalf, or a short-prerecorded video reminding the students of three key concepts to refresh during bar study.

These alternative solutions better support your underlying motivations (student support and building a positive bar culture) for your stated position (faculty involvement). The alternative solutions also support the faculty’s underlying motivation (scheduling constraints) for their stated position (“no”.) The mentioned alternatives “expand the pie,” provide opportunity to further discussion, and an increase the likelihood of generating a better solution rather than accepting “no” for an answer.

Thus, integrative bargaining is another key communication strategy to add to your ASP/Bar toolbox.

In summary, the next time you make an ask, be an integrative bargainer and do the following:

1. Identify, prepare and list your underlying motivations for your ask.

2. When presenting the requests, ask open-ended, probative questions and actively listen for your counter’s expression of underlying interests.

3. Translate you and your counterparts underlying interests into creative solution proposals. (“expand the pie”)

4. Once creative solutions are on the table, then determine which solution(s) might work best. (“divide the pie”).

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

The University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law invites applications for an Assistant Director position in the law school’s Academic Success Program (ASP). ASP supports all law students at UNH Franklin Pierce from orientation through the bar exam. Working alongside the Director of ASP, the Assistant Director will be primarily focused on working directly with law students in their first and second years to help them develop core academic skills to be successful in class and on exams, and eventually on the bar exam. This includes specific interventions to support students at academic risk, including students on academic probation under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Academic Standing and Success.

This role has the opportunity for a hybrid work schedule with a minimum of three days on campus each week.

Duties/Responsibilities

• Support law students through individualized academic coaching and tutoring, with a primary focus on development of study and exam skills.
• Working with the director of ASP, design and deliver workshops on academic skills, both in person and online, targeted to specific groups of law students
• (for example, residential lLs, hybrid lLs).
• Working with the director of ASP, design and implement pre-lL programming to help incoming students think about the skills and work ethic they will need to be successful in law school, culminating in a full day of academic success programming at orientation.
• Collaborate with faculty committees, including the Committee on Academic Standing and Success and the Student Success Committee.
• Support a staff of adjunct ASP professors, including assigning students to meet with each professor, and regular check-ins to discuss student progress and professor needs.
• Explore options for and eventually design a skills-focused class to be offered to lLs and/or 2Ls.
• Working with the director of ASP, manage the law school’s Preliminary Bar Exam, which is a graduation requirement for all JD students. This includes working on the adjustment of the Preliminary Bar Exam to reflect new question styles introduced by the NextGen Bar Exam.
• Help manage the law school’s relationship with outside vendors in the academic success and bar exam space.
• Depending on workload and department, work with the director, 3Ls, and recent graduates on bar exam prep support.
• Other related duties as assigned.

Minimum Acceptable Education & Experience:

• Hold a juris doctor (JD) degree from an ABA-accredited school
• Admission to the bar in at least one state/jurisdiction in the US
• 2+ years of legal work experience
• Must be able to work independently and effectively interact with a wide array of parties at all levels (students, faculty, administration/staff)
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Proven dedication to student learning

Required Licenses & Certifications:

• Hold a juris doctor (JD) degree from an ABA-accredited school
• Admission to the bar in at least one state/jurisdiction in the US

Preferred Qualifications:

• Law school teaching or student mentoring experience
• Experience teaching via online learning management systems
• 5+ years of legal work experience

Applicant instructions:

Applicants should be prepared to upload the following documents when applying online within the Resume/Cover Letter section of your application:

• Resume/CV
• Cover Letter
• Contact Information for 3 Professional References

Part-Time/Hybrid Law Program

Required Qualifications

*Juris Doctor Degree from an ABA-accredited law school; *a demonstrated ability to devise, coordinate, and implement innovative programming; *bar membership in any U.S. jurisdiction (can be inactive).

Preferred Qualifications

*personal record of strong academic achievement; *demonstrated commitment to working with students, inside and outside the classroom, to improve their academic and bar exam performance;

*experience in data collection, data management, and basic statistics.

Job Duties

Work collaboratively with the Directors of Academic and Bar Success, the faculty, and other departments to promote the academic success of LMU Law students and graduates from pre-matriculation to bar passage;

teach academic success courses for first-year and upper-level students focusing on the development of academic skills, including, but not limited to, class preparation, time management, case briefing, rule synthesis, outlining, systematic problem-solving skills, and exam writing;

teach bar success courses, which focus on both the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) subjects and the written portion of the bar exams;

teach other bar exam-related courses, workshops, and programming developed in response to the NextGen bar exam;

teach other courses as assigned;

meet with and counsel students on their academic progress, including providing one-on-one tutoring;

provide tailored advising, coaching, instruction, and referrals to address barriers and develop essential skills for law school and bar success, as requested;

assist in the development and oversight of the execution of individualized remediation plans;

assist in the coordination and oversight of the Law School s tutoring program for first-year students led by upper-level students;

develop and help teach sessions in the law school s pre-matriculation and orientation programs, in coordination with appropriate law school departments;

develop and teach group instructional sessions on the skills and information needed for success in law school;

promote the mission of Lincoln Memorial University to all faculty, staff, students and to the community at large;

promote effective working relationships among faculty, staff and students;

provide course and classroom conduct as outlined in the Faculty/Staff Policy Manual and the Law School Supplement;

comply with the university Faculty/Staff Policy Manual and the Law School Supplement;

comply with announced requirements;

engage in professional development;

provide committee service;

attend department, school and university faculty meetings;

participate in community and public service opportunities;

attend commencement activities;

participate in annual faculty evaluation;

complete required institutional and program accreditation reports and other reports necessary for the operation and advancement of the University; and

perform other duties as assigned.

Job Close Date: 11/19/2025

“Managers get paid to eat the tension.”

A rough quote to be sure as a result of my own aged memory, but I will never forget when my first law school boss, John Delony, told me this. I’m sure this was in the context of a conversation about something that had not gone quite so well at an event and he was giving me constructive guidance he’d received from those above him. However, this phrase stuck with me, especially a couple of years ago when I started managing full-time employees for the first time in my career. And as I have continued to grow and manage new people, I always keep this thought at the back of my mind when I need to pass along feedback from above to my employee.

As a manager, it is your responsibility to take care of the workers you manage. We all have our own management styles. However, when things go wrong—and they inevitably will—and you hear from those above that corrective action is needed, it is important to remember your responsibility to look after your employees rather than defaulting to scold or punish them.

Even if you get yelled at, even if tempers or tensions rise in the meeting where you learn of the challenge, you eat that tension. Let the pressure end with you, instead of passing the same frustrating conversation onto your employee. For some, this may mean taking a beat before you meet with your employee to convey the message. For others, this may mean planning how you intend to have the conversation constructively if it is more urgent. This way, when you meet with your employee, you can have a clearer head, a softer tone as you offer guidance for moving forward, and not break the trust that you developed.

Effective management, especially with full-time employees—but also with part-time student workers—requires that you establish a two-way road of trust and development. If every time you take the tension from a higher-up back to your employee, you can erode that relationship even within just one instance. Instead, to build deeper respect you can (and should) accept some of the fault as your own, whether the error was a result of something you missed in training or if it was perhaps a careless mistake on their part. Doing so can also help the employee to realize that performing their position reflects on you and the whole team, just as much as them individually. And this can often encourage them to do better next time. Instead, if the opposite approach is taken, you can drive a wedge between you, creating a place where they do not feel integral to the team.  

Of course, there is a point where multiple instances of the same thing can result in a firmer approach. However, I firmly believe that first times challenges arise—that is on me. It is my job to eat the tension, just as my bosses before me did, and to help my employee learn and grow. So, as you build your own management skills and philosophy, remember, you get paid to eat the tension.

(Erica M. Lux)

For academic support educators, the question is clear: how do we leverage AI’s potential to enhance learning without letting it replace the deeper thinking skills students must develop? 

First, encourage students to treat AI as a supplement, not a substitute. AI can generate outlines, summarize cases, and explain doctrinal concepts. But students still need to practice legal reasoning! Just like with any type of supplement, the risk with AI is that it’s bypassing the student’s learning process. As educators, we must frame AI just like any other supplement – as a study partner rather than a shortcut. AI can be useful for brainstorming, organizing ideas, or testing understanding, but it’s not a substitute for doing the hard work of studying the law.

Second, we must model critical use of AI. Rather than just prohibiting it entirely, we must embrace the times and show students how to use AI critically. For example, in class you might ask AI to explain a concept then compare its response to class notes and case law. You can then highlight its limits, pointing out where it oversimplifies, fabricates sources, or misses nuances. This modeling helps students build the habit of treating AI output as a starting point, rather than a final product.

Finally, when guiding students on using AI, keep equity and ethics in view. AI use raises important questions about fairness and access. Not all students have equal access to paid AI tools. Some may over-rely on them without understanding the risks of bias or inaccuracy. Also, we must prepare students for the ethical use of technology in practice. Responsible integration means discussing issues of academic honesty, the risk of AI “hallucinations,” and the appropriate boundaries when using AI in the professional setting. By addressing these head-on, we help students develop not just academic skills, but professional judgment.

AI isn’t going away. Our role as academic support educators is to help students navigate it, leveraging its strengths, mitigating its weaknesses, and always keeping human judgment and deep learning at the center. If we teach students how to use AI responsibly now, we’re preparing them not just for exams, but for the realities of a legal profession already being reshaped by technology.

(Dayna Smith)

It is easy to vent about our workload, ample student meetings, or perhaps disappointment about an institutional decision. It is much harder to stay positive, remain open and let colleagues see the real you; a genuine, devoted, caring and diligent campus member.

Even more so, it is ten times harder for new law students to confidently walk through your office door three weeks into law school reality. Thus, communication tactic #2 is a refresher on the use of probative, open ended questions to break the ice with your students and fellow colleagues. 

I recently reviewed several professional development pieces regarding conversation starters. I found myself aghast at the amount of closed ended questions on these lists. For example, "Have you been here before?" "Will you come back to this conference again next year?" Or "Do you have plans while you're in town?"

I don't know about you, but if someone I didn't know walked up to me and this was their opener, it would be a short yes/no conversation. 

Reading these pieces made me think more about the importance of using probative questions as conversation starters in our work.

Probative open-ended questions illicit more information than we would receive when we ask narrowly tailored, yes/no questions. The question style begins with a "who, what, when, where, or why" phrase which permits the listener to give a narrative response. Our advocacy skills know this information to be true, but our consistent execution of probative questions may need some sharpening given the daily hustle and shuffle between meetings. 

For a new student meeting, instead of opening with a statement like "Tell me about yourself" (which can put someone in a defensive, closed position) try "What can I tell you to help you on your journey?" This opens up the channels for communication and may establish trust.

When speaking with a colleague, instead of pleasantries and the usual "How is it going?" (which often results in a mediocre response) try pleasantries and a unique question like "What fun or interesting article have you read lately?" (And be ready with an article of your own – maybe even a shout out to our blog too!) 

People will get to know the real (amazing ASP/Bar) you when you make a conscious effort to get to know them.  Here is a short list to get you started with new students:

"What can I tell you about law school that might help you?"

"What is one 'win' that you achieved or hope to achieve this week?"

"What would you like to know about me?"

"What is something that you want to share about your experience with me?"

"Where are you on your journey through law school?"

… and of course, humor often works well but I'll leave that advice to editor, Liz Stillman ;) 

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

The University of Dayton School of Law invites applications for one Assistant Professor of Lawyering Skills. This is a non-tenure track position with an initial appointment of one year and the possibility of renewal for long-term (three or five-year) appointments after three years of satisfactory service.

The faculty member would join a team of experienced full-time faculty members who make up the School of Law’s nationally recognized Legal Profession Program. The focus of the Legal Profession Program at the University of Dayton School of Law is to help students develop essential lawyering skills. The Program is a broad two-semester six-credit-hour sequence during a student’s first year at the School of Law. These courses, called Legal Profession I and Legal Profession II, are devoted to building the legal research, analysis, and writing skills used in today's law practice. The courses also emphasize the development of cultural humility and competency, professionalism, and ethics. Classes meet in small groups led by experienced full-time faculty who are at the forefront of trends in legal writing and research. Responsibilities of the Assistant Professor of Lawyering Skills will include:

● Teaching Legal Profession I and II, and other legal research and writing courses related to legal reasoning and critical reading;
● Providing service to the School of Law and the University, and
● Participating in the larger community for legal research and writing professionals through regular attendance or presentations at conferences and other relevant endeavors to support the faculty member’s professional development.

UD is one of the nation’s largest Catholic universities, and the largest private university in Ohio. Embedded in the dynamic city of Dayton, OH, and grounded in its Catholic, Marianist tradition, UD provides education to develop the whole student and is committed to experiential learning.

Minimum Qualifications

• A J.D. degree from an ABA-accredited law school;

• Articulable commitment to the field of legal research and writing, including implementing the best models and practices available to teach legal research and writing and utilizing recent developments in pedagogy in law schools in the United States;

• Prior legal practice experience in the United States; and

• Excellent written communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

While not everyone may meet all preferred qualifications, the ideal candidate will bring many of the following:

• Recent successful experience in legal research and writing teaching, including implementing best models and practices available to teach legal research and writing and utilizing recent developments in pedagogy in law schools in the United States;

• Successful experience in any or all of the following:

  • participating and teaching in online education;

  • working independently and collaboratively;

  • effectively engaging, teaching, and mentoring students of socially and culturally diverse backgrounds

• Demonstrable commitment to socially and culturally diverse communities;

• Expressed willingness to engage with Catholic and Marianist educational values including educating the whole person and a commitment of service to the community, university and profession

• Law school achievements and accomplishments, such as high academic achievement, law review, moot court, and/or mock trial;

• Effective presentation skills;

• Effective interpersonal communication skills;

• Effective oral communication skills; and

• Effective classroom management skills 

Required Documents

• Cover Letter that addresses all of the minimum and any preferred qualifications met
• Curriculum Vitae
• A document describing your commitment to legal research and writing, including implementing the best models and practices available to teach legal research and writing and utilizing recent developments in pedagogy in law schools in the United States.

Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.  The University does not provide work visa sponsorship for this position

Posting closes November 1, 2025 at 11:55 PM EST

Like many of you, I’ve felt great pride watching our graduates announce new professional roles on LinkedIn or other social media accounts. Their achievements are extraordinary and absolutely worth celebrating. Securing that first job after law school is a tremendous milestone, and is something grads should share with family, friends, and professional networks.

But alongside the celebrations comes an important reminder we can help them navigate – how graduates describe their roles publicly, especially online, matters.

A graduate may have accepted a position as an associate attorney, but until they are formally admitted to practice law, they are not yet an attorney. The distinction feels technical, and even nit-picky, but it carries real professional consequences. Announcements of these accomplishments should be phrased in a way that avoids misrepresentation.

Character and Fitness committees in several jurisdictions have flagged applicants for presenting themselves prematurely as “attorneys” or “associate attorneys.” Even an innocent LinkedIn update can create complications, delays, or in some cases sanctions (for example, California has sanctioned individuals for prematurely using “attorney,” “lawyer,” or “Esq.”).

Words carry weight in the legal profession. Accuracy and transparency are not just ideals, they are ethical requirements. The way a grad phrases their job title while awaiting bar results reflects on their integrity, judgment, and professionalism.

Fortunately, the solution is simple. Graduates can (and should) highlight their success while being accurate and transparent. For example, phrasing like “Associate (bar admission pending)” or another approved variation is both celebratory and compliant.

Here are examples of phrasing some jurisdictions note as acceptable:

California, D.C., Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington – “awaiting swearing-in,” “bar candidate,” “JD,” “Juris Doctor,” “pending admission.”

Massachusetts and New York – “awaiting admission,” “pending admission,” “law school graduate,” “JD,” or “Juris Doctor.”

Tennessee and Texas – “awaiting admission,” “pending swearing-in,” “law school graduate,” “JD,” “Juris Doctor,” or “bar candidate.”

These phrases celebrate achievement, maintain transparency, and protect graduates’ professional reputations while they await admission.

A quick caveat about the phrases – graduates should always confirm directly with their jurisdiction’s admissions office. That is the #1 way to ensure compliance with their jurisdictions’ rules!

Here are some key take-aways to share with your grads:

1. Use accurate, clear language to describe your status while awaiting admission.
2. Update online profiles carefully, avoiding any implication you are already licensed if you are not.
3. Check directly with your jurisdiction’s admissions office for the most reliable guidance.
4. Seek advice when unsure—from career services, bar support offices, or admissions staff.
5. Be patient as you prepare for your swearing-in. It’s a milestone worth celebrating, and doing so with professionalism will enhance your reputation as you begin your career.

(Guest blogger: Michele Berger, Visiting Assistant Professor of Academic Success and Bar Support, Albany Law School)

Starting a new school year, so many students are eager to learn and try everything to make themselves a successful law student. However, for some students, significant adjustments to the learning processes they developed in their previous education settings can disrupt legal learning to their detriment. This can be true for some neurodivergent law students.

The world is made with neurotypical people in mind—much like it is for able-bodied persons. As a response to this, neurodivergent individuals (i.e., those whose brains work differently because of conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (autism), or those with anxiety)[1] often develop conscious and unconscious processes to adapt themselves to the world.

Bringing it back to legal education, neurodivergent law students likely developed learning processes in undergrad that helped make them successful. However, upon entering law school and hearing how to “best read and brief cases” or how to “outline well,” neurodivergent law students may think they need to completely change their process, but that is an incorrect assumption. Learning as a neurodivergent law student requires a certain amount of adaptation to traditional legal pedagogical tools while also remaining true to the previously developed processes that led to their success.[2]

For example, as an (underdiagnosed) neurodivergent undergraduate student, I created “study guides” for each of my undergraduate exams. These covered the necessary vocabulary, the information discussed in class or in slides, and the connections that tied these together. These turned into case-heavy outlines my first year of law school, and I learned to adapt over the next year to focus more on the law rather than the details of cases--mostly through trial and error on exams.

This story is not unique to me. I have found that other neurodivergent students I work with in academic and bar success have also developed their own learning processes. Some prefer long paragraphs that helps them to map out the language before having to write it out on an exam, so we adapt outlining to process the law and case examples in this way. Other students have preferred more concise or visual formats like PowerPoints and charts, so we adapt their learning strategies to match the processes they used previously. This has come up most often in learning to outline, which is of course how a student processes the law to better understand it for test day.

The processes neurodivergent law students have developed may already be strong and support their learning needs, but the content may need additional support. For example, they may need to learn to switch from details to the big pictures of the law (e.g., pivot from case details to key rule takeaways) or to build in more connections between concepts. For other neurodivergent law students who try to completely convert to “tried and true” law school methods, they may face challenges with understanding how to use the new tool when it is not how they prefer to learn. So, instead of constraining those students to change their study process to match legal learning methods, work with them to adapt their previous processes to match their new learning goals.

Below are two ways you can support neurodivergent law students as they adjust to learning the law:

1. If you work in the classroom, before you start teaching “how to” perform a specific study task, poll the students: “What worked well for you in undergrad?” Create a discussion around the topic and allow students to share the positive ways they previously learned. Then as you teach new methods specific to law school, ask students for adaptations to their previous learning processes that will now support their legal education goals. This will support not only your neurodivergent law students, but also likely some of your neurotypical law students.

2. If you work individually with a student who discloses to you that they are neurodivergent, ask them to show you how they are trying to process the law (e.g., a case brief, their notes, their outline). As they do, probe them with questions about how this is similar or different to what they did as an undergraduate student. If they are veering significantly from what they used to do  (and facing challenge as a result), ask them if there is a reason, and if they are changing just because that’s how it was taught at Orientation or in a skills course. Then, work with them to merge the processes. Some neurodivergent law students may not have had to study much (or at all) in undergrad, so this is also a good way to determine how to best support their learning as they try true studying for the first time.

As more adults discover that they are neurodivergent, legal educators can continue to familiarize themselves with neurodiversity and better support students struggling to adapt their processes to legal education. Neurodivergent students know what helps them to be successful because they understand themselves more than you (or even they) may know.

(Erica M. Lux)

[1] Neurodivergent, Cleveland Clinic, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23154-neurodivergent (last visited Sept. 3, 2025).

[2] Hailey Hillsman, Succeed in Law School as a Neurodivergent Student, Thomson Reuters Law School Survival Guide, https://lawschool.thomsonreuters.com/survival-guide/neurodiversity-resources/ (last visited Sept. 3, 2025) (discussing how neurodivergent law students can try new study methods but should also trust their study methods because they have been in school long enough to know what works for them).

The fall semester brings with it a myriad of conversations during meetings, classroom lectures, and introductions to new faces. In today’s era, meeting someone new, let alone speaking to them, is “as they say” – “Cringe!”

Here is a tip for your toolbox, “say less.” But how? We are constantly called upon to answer questions from administrators, faculty, staff and students regarding our expertise.

How can one advocate for additional resources and strengthen institutional alliances without saying more? Extroverts feel the need to fill the silence and often provide immediate response.  Introverts feel their internal advocate pushed and pulled to speak up, speak out, pitch in and provide the answers despite their personal discomfort.

But we sometimes forget that our best advocacy tool is the ability to listen, learn, and reflect. Yes – in fact, “say less.”

“Saying less” doesn’t mean saying nothing. It means choosing reservation in your communication. It means intentionally asking open-ended questions and actively listening to the responses. It means sitting with information, even when the speaker frustrates or disappoints you. This approach buys you time to reflect, strategize, and select your next steps and often yields stronger results.

You do not need to be the fastest person in this race, you simply need to improve your own pace.  So welcome back to the marathon and whether you be in a lecture, in a meeting, or talking to yourself (we all do it)… “say less.”  

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)

This morning, I was having a meeting with a student who is on academic warning and probation. At our school, academic warning is good academic standing but with a GPA that merits some intervention ahead of the bar exam.  However, academic probation is not good academic standing and is a status only our academic standing committee can confer. Our committee will usually place a student on both since warning triggers a series of required bar topic classes in addition to the probation criteria.

This student had registered for 13 credits this fall and an internship. However, due to the academic warning label, had to add our required 2 credit course, bringing her to 15 credits and a job. They asked me if was too much-and I agreed that it was. We agreed that dropping the internship would rob them of both a good credential and experience that isn’t formatted or assessed like law school (always a bonus for folks on the academic tightrope). The issue came down to dropping either professional responsibility or entertainment law.

Entertainment law is a small class taught only in the fall by one valued adjunct. I was surprised that a first semester 2L even got into the class as it is usually full after a few hours of registration. Conversely, prof. resp. is taught in multiple sections every semester (and the summer) by a variety of amazing folks here. Prof. resp. is required, but entertainment law is fun.

And students who are placed in these categories of academic distress feel like they shouldn’t have fun. They made promises to the academic standing committee about future success and responsibility and therefore seem to feel that every class they take has to be one that is required. The asked for mercy and feel that since it was meted out, they must never do anything other than stay on a prescribed path. I get that. I think I would do the same--put my head down, done what was asked, and just grinded through the rest of law school. I would have felt that I didn’t deserve fun.

But I would have been wrong. Law school may be the last chance a student will have to learn some seemingly superfluous content from an expert in that field. Education for the sake of learning rather than career is a rare commodity after law school. Since the profession of law does require (in most jurisdictions) some lifelong learning about your area of practice, why not take some time to reignite a love of learning while still in law school? I don’t regret taking classes in law school that weren’t on the bar, or relevant to my practice or career. I loved my law school bioethics class. It was fascinating even if it wasn’t something I even thought to pursue before, during, or after taking the course.  

So, I asked my student the question. Ultimately, they would have to be comfortable with the choice they made in a place that I can imagine is not comfortable these days. I asked them if they ate the burger or the fries first and why. I told them that I was a burger first kind of person, and to me fries are the prize. But I told also them that the option to eat the fries first may not be on the table as they move forward in their careers, so why not embrace it now?

I did not ask for their final answer-and we didn’t need to because there is a little time left in our add/drop period. But I left them with a framework for thinking about the options: frequency of course offering, quality faculty, scheduled MPRE seatings, and the joy of having a class where doing the reading never seems like work.

Students in academic distress deserve to have their fries and eat them too.

(Liz Stillman)

Now, as a legal educator many of those tasks are replaced with Orientation workshops, teaching new courses, and generally being present and visible at various happenings around campus to ensure students feel supported and remember the resources our academic success teams offer—while also scheduling all that around individual student meetings. Plus, this busy period comes right after the bar prep season—arguably one of our more stressful and demanding times of year as academic and bar success professionals.

As we prioritize our students over the summer and at the start of the academic year, many of us can forget to take care of ourselves and nourish our professional goals. So how can we equally prioritize our wellness and professional goals during the chaotic “BTS” season? Here are three tips for new and returning academic & bar success professionals:

• Schedule Your Time Before You Open Up Your Calendar. To ensure that we get time to recover between meetings or that we are able to focus on administrative, scholarly, and/or teaching priorities, carve that time out of your calendar first. We are often tempted to first put our obligations onto our calendar, rather than thinking about what we need to thrive. Just as I teach my students to add in their “joy” before they add in all their study times to their calendar, I do the same for myself—and now I encourage you to do the same. Schedule your joy or professional priorities, then open up your calendar for the many other tasks you have. 
• Categorize Time Depending on Tasks You Need to Complete. Some of us find it difficult to transition from writing, to teaching, to admin, back to teaching, to admin (rinse and repeat). Instead, I recommend blocking or categorizing time on your calendar so that you know “Tuesdays are for Administrative Tasks” or “Mornings are for Writing.” This will allow you to better focus on the tasks you need to complete, rather than constantly switching gears and losing momentum through the day. Cognitive flexibility is an important higher-order processing skill, but you don’t have to do mental gymnastics.
• Create Boundaries to Prevent Burnout. Many of us likely take work home with us and that can be okay—to an extent. You are not a superhero, and no one expects you to do everything. So, create some boundaries around when you feel comfortable working from home and when you should just cut it out. I myself like to work from home for 2-3 nights during the week, only for a couple of extra hours. I find that once I am home, have had dinner, and spend some time with my fur babies, I can then work on my scholarship, another blog post, or grading. But I do not let this happen every night, nor over the weekends, which are dedicated “me time.” So, identify where you feel comfortable spending those few extra minutes or where you need to rest and recharge, and put them into your calendar. You may have to be flexible from week to week, depending on the week’s commitments but regrouping at the start of each week and setting your boundaries can help you meet the moments when you need to be on and when you can remain firm in staying ‘off.’

Whether you are new to academic & bar success or if you are a seasoned pro needing some reminders, use these tips to take care of you, your personal goals, and professional dreams while working hard for others at the start of this new academic year. Happy BTS!

(Erica M. Lux)

[1] K-pop group BTS is quite popular, though you may have recently heard about the Netflix animated film “K-Pop Demon Hunters” that has taken over charts and screens (which is partially inspired by BTS).

As we all know, different students process information differently. A single workshop – no matter how good it is – will not serve everyone. Instead, try adopting a more comprehensive approach. For example, you might:

• Offer live workshops for students who learn best through discussion and real-time Q&A.
• Record and post short videos for students who prefer to pause, rewind, and review at their own pace.
• Provide written guides or checklists for those who need concrete, step-by-step instructions.
• Create interactive quizzes or self-check tools for students who learn best by doing.

Importantly, this isn’t about creating more work for educators. Instead, it’s about designing core materials that can live in multiple formats. While building this out will be more time-intensive than delivering one workshop, a diverse collection of resources will reach more students over time.

Anchor Online Resources to Human Connection

Online resources shine when they complement personal interaction. For instance, you might pair a self-guided outlining module with an invitation to meet for a short follow up appointment. Or you could encourage faculty to point students toward academic support videos or guides as reinforcement for necessary skills within their subject. When students see online resources as part of a broader relationship, they’re more likely to use them meaningfully.

Build for Accessibility and Flexibility

Hybrid support should increase access, not create new barriers. This means being thoughtful about the accessibility of resources. For instance, videos should be captioned and under 10 minutes. Try to make the resources mobile-friendly so students can engage between classes or during commutes. And, perhaps most importantly, post resources in a predictable, easy-to-find location (not five clicks deep in the LMS). 

Flexibility is key: a student should be able to choose the format that works for them without losing the substance.

Create Feedback Loops to Evolve

The best hybrid models grow through iteration. Ask students:

• What format do you use most?
• What feels overwhelming or hard to find?
• What additional resources would have helped you this semester?

Quick polls, informal check-ins, or even an end-of-semester survey can guide small adjustments that make a big difference.

Hybrid support isn’t about doubling your workload or reinventing every wheel. It’s about layering accessibility and flexibility into what you already do so that the same core message reaches students in different ways. When we create hybrid support models with intention, we show students that there isn’t just one “right” way to learn – and that might be the most empowering lesson of all.

(Dayna Smith)

If you teach a second-year academic skills course, or want to point your faculty colleagues to a resource that is built around NextGen foundational skills, this book is for you! Client-Centered Legal Analysis is authored by two accomplished academic support program directors: Joni Wiredu (Howard University School of Law) and Steven Foster (Oklahoma City University School of Law).

(Guest blogger: Marsha Griggs, Associate Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law)

During my time as a law student, I became familiar with the "everyone vs. me" culture that often permeates legal education. But what impacted me more deeply, and what I rarely heard others talk about, was the “me vs. me” mentality. So, let’s talk about it.

The "Me vs. Me" Mindset
This internal struggle is real for so many of our students. It's the voice inside that questions, criticizes, compares, and doubts, often more harshly than any external competition. It's rooted in perfectionism, pride, fear of failure, or all of the above. And it can cloud a student's judgment, undermine their confidence, and ultimately threaten their success.

Our role is to help students recognize when they are getting in their own way. Even when they can’t quite articulate the problem themselves, we can be a steady support system that helps them navigate through the fog.

So, How Do We Help?

• Create a Judgment-Free Zone. Our first responsibility is to hold space. A space where students can be honest, maybe for the first time, about how they’ve sabotaged their own success. Here, self-awareness becomes a superpower, not a source of shame. When students begin to unpack their habits, fears, and thought patterns, we listen without trying to immediately fix or reframe.
• Resist the Urge to Reassure, Right Away. It's tempting to respond with praise or affirmations: “You’re amazing!” or “You’ve got this!” While encouragement has its place, what students often need most is the time and space to see themselves clearly, both the struggle and the strength. Real growth happens when they begin to shift their own mindset, not just hear ours.
• Provide Tools and Accountability. Once awareness is on the table, we do what we always do: we support. We offer tangible strategies for class prep, exam readiness, and time management. We share tips for balancing academic demands with personal well-being. And we check in. Not just to track progress, but to make sure they’re not slipping back into old patterns of shrinking, hiding, or overworking to the point of burnout.
• Remind Them of Their Value. We remind our students that they were chosen, out of many, for a reason. Law school isn’t just a place they were accepted into; it’s a space that saw their potential and believed in their future. But they have to keep believing in themselves, too.
• Celebrate the Process, Not Just the Outcome. We help them set goals that aren’t just grade-driven, but growth-driven. We celebrate all wins, no matter how small. Each step forward is progress. Each self-aware moment is a victory. Each time they show up for themselves is a reason to cheer.

For the student battling the “me vs. me” mindset, academic success isn’t just about study strategies or GPA, it’s about learning to be on their own team. And for us, it’s about showing up with empathy, consistency, and tools that empower them to rewrite their inner narrative.

We’ve got this. And more importantly, they do too.

(Guest blogger: Kiana K. Wilson, Assistant Director of Law School Academic Support, University of Alabama School of Law)

Take a moment. Breathe. Look around. You made it.

In the whirlwind of outlines, cold calls, case briefs, and coffee-fueled study sessions, it’s easy to forget just how far you’ve come since your very first day of law school. But let’s pause for a second and give credit where it’s due: You’re doing something hard, and you’re doing it well.

Remember that first day? You may have walked into orientation wide-eyed, not quite knowing what “consideration” meant in contract law or why people kept saying “it depends.” Maybe you were nervous, maybe excited, maybe both. And now? You throw around terms like “mens rea” and “estoppel” like it’s no big deal. That’s growth. That’s progress.

Law school demands a lot. It asks you to think differently, write differently, be different. It challenges your confidence and your endurance. But here you are, showing up, learning, evolving. You’ve wrestled with tough concepts, pushed through imposter syndrome, and probably surprised yourself more than once.

Sure, there are days it felt overwhelming. Maybe even days you wondered if you were cut out for this. (Spoiler alert: You are.) The truth is, every 2L and 3L you see has stood right where you are. And they’ve made it through, just like you will.

So don’t wait for the “perfect” grade or the final exam to celebrate. Reflect now. Be proud now. Law school isn’t just about the destination. It’s about who you’re becoming along the way: a sharper thinker, a better writer, a stronger advocate.

And trust me, that first year? It’s a beast. But you’re taming it, one class, one case, one moment at a time.

You’ve come so far. Be proud of that.

It’s the final push of your 1L year. Keep going. You’ve got this.

(Dayna Smith)