Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Kuehn, Robert R.

Joy, Peter A.

Measuring the Impacts of Experiential Legal Education

Bloom, Elizabeth M.

Book Review: Natasha N. Varyani, Owning Our Values: Understanding Systemic Racism Through the Lens of Property Law (And Skills to Do Something About It)

Ratner, Morris A.

Goggin, Stephen N.

Moscato, Stefano

Greer, Margaret

McGriff, Elizabeth

English

Determinants of Success on the Bar Exam: One Law School\u27s Experience 2010 - 2023

Mohan, Arti

Implementation Insights: Learning from Integrating Restorative Justice in the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad, India

Franklin, Kris

LaPiana, Bill

Mikkor, Alison

Parrish, Austen

Journal of Legal Education, Volume 73, Number 2
From the Editors
This issue marks the first Journal issue published under the direction of 
new host schools, New York Law School and the University of California, 
Irvine School of Law. Our first issue together, it includes articles in each of 
the three areas that have long been the Journal’s focus as the journal of record 
for legal education—pedagogical innovation, the design of legal education 
and curricula, and the connections between legal education, law practice, 
and licensure. We are excited about publishing the thoughtful articles in this 
volume and encouraging scholarship in these ever more important subjects in 
the future.
This issue begins with articles on classroom innovation and teaching 
pedagogy, drawn from the context of legal writing and research courses, but 
with implications for legal education more broadly. In the first piece, Impact 
Beyond the Classroom: Teaching for Transfer, Megan McAlpin explores methods of 
teaching that are necessary for learning transfer, i.e., when learning in the 
classroom affects how a person learns or performs in another course or context, 
and describes practical approaches to “teach for transfer.” She urges us to pay 
more attention to effective teaching strategies that promote transfer to ensure 
that our teaching, and our students’ learning, continues beyond one course 
or class. Next, Ezra Ross explores different ways of viewing an attorney’s 
role in Amorality in the Lawyering Skills Classroom. Professor Ross traces how an 
“undercurrent of amorality [is] often etched into” the first-year lawyering skills 
course. He urges faculty to have first-year students more explicitly grapple 
with conflicting models of the attorney’s role and be more aware of the limits 
and drawbacks of using only a client-centered approach. Finally, in A Research 
Process for the Entire World? Challenges in Foreign, Comparative, and International Law 
Instruction, Janet Kearney describes instructional strategies in legal research 
instruction. She explores how existing discussions of scaffolding can be used 
in the context of a Foreign, Comparative, and International Law research 
course to improve student retention and help with cognitive overload.
The issue then shifts gears to two articles exploring curricular design. 
Jonathan Choi and Daniel Schwarz describe the impact of an experiment to 
test the impact of using artificial intelligence (GPT-4) on legal reasoning. In 
AI Assistance in Legal Analysis: An Empirical Study, Choi and Schwarz “explore how 
access to AI impacts human performance in professional work and educational 
settings generally and in legal contexts in particular.” They conclude with 
suggestions as to whether AI assistance is useful in complex legal reasoning 
tasks like essay-writing, and the implications for the future of lawyering. 
Finally, in Grade Insurance, James Fallows Tierney discusses an alternative 
method of assessment, designed to relieve the pressure of a traditional end-
Journal of Legal Education
of-term exams. Drawing on learning theory focused on how adult students 
learn, Tierney suggests that “specifications grading” might lead to increased 
student motivation and ultimately deeper understanding and describes a way 
to implement specifications grading in the law school classroom.
This issue concludes with three studies focused the bar exam and bar exam 
pass rates that provide insight into student success and licensing. In Breaking 
Down Bar Passage, Danielle Graham, Christopher Swoboda, and Amy Farley 
describe the results of a study that seeks to better understand law student 
success on the various components of the bar exam. The results of the study, 
according to the authors, provide further support that “legal education 
matters” and that “what students accomplish after matriculating through law 
school is much more indicative of their future bar success than their incoming 
credentials or demographic characteristics.” Next is Paolo Cecchi Dimeglio’s 
article An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Student-Faculty Demographics on Law School 
Graduate Attrition, Attrition Rates, J.D.s Awarded, and Bar Passage. In her article, 
Dimeglio delves into the question of whether the “interplay between student 
and faculty demographics impact law students’ sense of belonging” and, in 
turn, rates of attrition, graduation rates, and bar exam success. Her study 
suggests that a faculty’s gender and racial diversity can impact attrition and 
bar pass rates. The issue’s final article is by Morris Ratner, Stephen Goggin, 
Stefano Moscato, Margaret Greer, and Elizabeth McGriff. In Determinants of 
Success on the Bar Exam: One Law School’s Experience 2010-2023, the authors describe 
the experience at the UC Law San Francisco and explore which of the law 
school’s academic reforms and interventions made a difference in improving 
the law school’s overall bar pass rate. 
Kris Franklin
Bill LaPiana
Alison Mikkor
Austen Parrish


From the Editors

Young, Dawn

Visible Learning: Adapting Primary and Secondary Pedagogical Approaches to Legal Education

Polavarapu, Aparna

Restorative Justice and Building Communities of Radical Belonging in the Law School Classroom

Pointer, Lindsey

Ojibway, Alanna

899
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 73, Number 4 (2025)
Restorative Justice in Legal Education
Lindsey Pointer, Aparna Polavarapu & Alanna Ojibway
Restorative justice, a philosophy and collection of practices centered on 
understanding needs, repairing harm, and ensuring that the voices of all 
those impacted by an incident of harm are heard, is gaining prominence in 
conversations relating to law, violence, and criminalization. As the punitive 
measures of state legal systems face scrutiny for their ineffectiveness in 
improving community safety as well as their inequitable outcomes, restorative 
justice is increasingly seen as a compelling alternative. The core principles of 
restorative justice emphasize accountability, supporting the needs of affected 
individuals and communities, and the active involvement of all those who 
have a stake in the resolution of the harm. Recognizing the transformative 
potential of this approach, some law faculty inside and outside the United 
States have begun to integrate restorative justice education into their courses 
and other offerings. 
While the teaching of restorative justice in law schools across the United 
States is growing, to date there is minimal literature on the topic. Several 
key themes emerge from this existing literature. One is the identified need 
for an experiential component to restorative justice education, whether that 
is in the classroom or via clinical or other community work opportunities.1 
Another key theme is that restorative justice is emphasized as supporting 
broadly applicable lawyering skills.2 For example, Janine Geske highlights 
how, through restorative justice education, law students learn restorative skills 
to support effective interpersonal communication, which itself is essential 
to client counseling and working toward settlements.3 Rachel King notes 
that restorative justice education helps law students to better understand 
the perspectives and needs of those harmed by crime (victims) and those 
1 Leah Wilborn Neese Restorative Justice in Law Schools: Exploring Ways to Shift Culture and 
Curriculum (National Center on Restorative Justice, 2025), https://ncorj.org/wp-content/
uploads/2025/04/Restorative-Justice-in-Law-Schools_-Exploring-Ways-to-Shift-Culture-
and-Curriculum-.docx.pdf.
2 Janine Geske, Why Do I Teach Restorative Justice to Law Students, 89 Marq. L. rev. 327, 328, 
332 (2005); Rachel King, Restorative Justice: How Law Schools Can Help Heal Their Communities, 
34 FordhaM Urb. L. J. 1285, 1299–1300 (2007); Natasha S. Vedananda, Learning to Heal: 
Integrating Restorative Justice into Legal Education, 64 N .Y. L. Sch. L. rev. 95, 112 (2020).
3 Geske, supra note 2, at 330.
900 Journal of Legal Education
responsible for the incident of harm (offenders).4 Much of the scholarship 
contemplates restorative justice from the context of criminal systems. 
Restorative justice education has also been identified as an important driver 
of creativity for those entering the legal profession. From an international 
perspective, Grazia Mannozzi notes that restorative justice provides language 
and structure to understand and address a multitude of needs such as 
“listening, validation . . . , recognition, and symbolic gestures of reparation.”5 
Restorative justice education therefore prepares future legal professionals to 
be sensitive to these needs and to look beyond the limited options available 
in conventional criminal systems. As Ian Marder notes, this sort of education 
prepares students to be dreamers with “the tools and the information with 
which to turn those dreams into reality.”6 
This special issue of the Journal of Legal Education, initiated by the National 
Center on Restorative Justice (NCORJ) at Vermont Law and Graduate 
School, builds on the limited existing literature, expanding upon the themes 
highlighted above and introducing new themes. 
In keeping with the community-oriented spirit of restorative justice, the early 
origins of this issue lie with an informal community of law faculty committed 
to restorative justice education. This community was brought together by 
Aparna Polavarapu, via her Restorative Justice Initiative at the University of 
South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, and meets regularly over Zoom 
to connect; to share ideas, resources, and their scholarship; and to learn from 
one another. In conversation with the NCORJ team, this group of law faculty 
identified a pressing need for more scholarship on the teaching of restorative 
justice in law schools, as well as a desire for time to connect more deeply with 
each other and to learn from the work that each person was doing to bring 
restorative justice education to their law school. In response to these identified 
needs, NCORJ developed its 2024 Symposium on Restorative Justice 
Education in Law Schools, which in turn led to the production of the articles 
herein. We owe great thanks to the editors of the Journal of Legal Education, who 
recognized the importance of this conversation and agreed to devote an issue 
of the journal to the topic.
Though the articles in this issue all coalesce around the theme of restorative 
justice, there is no single, commonly accepted definition of restorative justice,7 
4 King, supra note 2, at 1298.
5 Grazia Mannozzi, Legal Education in Restorative Justice at the University Level, 7 Int’L J. restoratIve 
JUst. 140, 146 (2024).
6 Ian Marder, Teaching for the Future: Restorative Legal Professionals Require a Restorative Education, 7 
Int’L J. restoratIve JUst. 159, 161 (2024).
7 Aparna Polavarapu, Myth-Busting Restorative Justice: Uncovering the Past and Finding Lessons in 
Community, 13 U.C. IrvIne L. rev. 949 (2023); John Braithwaite and Heather Strang, 
Introduction: Restorative Justice and Civil Society, in restoratIve JUstICe and CIvIL soCIety, 1 
(John Braithwaite and Heather Strang eds., 2001); Gerry Johnstone and Daniel Van Ness, 
The Meaning of Restorative Justice, in handbook oF restoratIve JUstICe, 5 (Gerry Johnstone and 
901Restorative Justice in Legal Education
and each of the authors included in this issue has their own orientation and 
understanding of the work. However, across definitions, there are several 
common core principles. The following is a brief summary of NCORJ’s 
description of restorative justice, which highlights these core principles:
Restorative justice is both a set of practices and a broad philosophy 
with applicability across contexts. Restorative justice has several core 
philosophical features, including a focus on identifying needs and 
repairing harm, active accountability, centering relationships and 
community, and voluntary participation. Contemporary restorative 
justice practice and philosophy have roots and resonances with 
various Indigenous, religious, and other cultural traditions from 
around the world.8
More broadly, restorative approaches describe not only those practices that 
seek to repair harm (restorative justice), but also those practices, animated 
by the same ethic and utilizing the same or similar processes, that serve 
other purposes, such as community-building, visioning or value-setting, and 
processing difficult experiences. Another source of diversity is in the form of 
implementation. Some common restorative justice processes include circles, 
conferences, victim-offender dialogues, and panels.9
Some of the authors also engage with transformative justice themes in 
their articles. Much like restorative justice, transformative justice is not easily 
described with pithy language. Still, there are some key principles: 
At its most basic, [transformative justice] seeks to respond to violence 
without creating more violence and/or engaging in harm reduction 
to lessen the violence . . . . Transformative justice responses and 
interventions 1) do not rely on the state (e.g. police, prisons, the 
criminal legal system, I.C.E., foster care system (though some TJ 
responses do rely on or incorporate social services like counseling) 
[sic]; 2) do not reinforce or perpetuate violence such as oppressive 
norms or vigilantism; and most importantly, 3) actively cultivate the 
things we know prevent violence such as healing, accountability, 
resilience, and safety for all involved.10
Transformative justice thus includes more than community accountability 
mechanisms; it also includes practices designed to address structural harms, 
Daniel Van Ness eds., 2007).
8 What is Restorative Justice?, nat’L Ctr. on restoratIve JUst., https://ncorj.org/what-is-
restorative-justice/ (last visited July 9, 2024). 
9 What is Restorative Justice?, restoratIve JUst. CoLo., https://rjcolorado.org/
restorative-justice-defined/practices-and-models/.
10 Mia Mingus, Transformative Justice: a Brief Description, LeavIng evIdenCe (January 
9, 2019 6:13 PM), https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2019/01/09/
transformative-justice-a-brief-description/.
902 Journal of Legal Education
such as lack of access to food or health care, with dignity. Some restorative 
justice practitioners experience tremendous overlap with transformative 
justice in their work, while others do not.
Our authors include faculty, restorative justice practitioners, and those who are 
both. In addition, while several are criminal law scholars, others bring to bear their 
expertise in ADR, international human rights, public health, or social work. The 
different perspectives, philosophies, and approaches contained in this issue come 
together to offer a rich resource for readers seeking to learn more about the role of 
restorative justice in legal education.
The first three articles in this issue explore the characteristics of restorative 
justice pedagogy. Amy J. Cohen and Daniel Del Gobbo’s article, Pedagogies 
in the Meantime: Reflections on ADR and Restorative Justice in U.S. and Canadian Legal 
Education, uses the growth of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in legal 
education as a counterpoint to illustrate how restorative justice educators in 
law schools encourage more pluralistic thinking among law students. Cohen 
and Del Gobbo trace the evolution of ADR from a set of questions about how 
alternative legalities could chip away and sometimes change state authority 
into a practice that works within a unified state system—a perspective, they in 
turn argue, that facilitated ADR’s mainstreaming as a field in legal education. 
Drawing from interviews with restorative justice educators in U.S. and 
Canadian law schools, Cohen and Del Gobbo illustrate how these educators 
are reviving diverse perspectives on law and justice, using two approaches 
that they label “comparison” and “prefiguration” that stand to change what 
it means for a field to “mainstream.” In Restoring the Promise of Legal Education, 
Olwyn Conway and Inga Laurent emphasize the transformative potential of 
restorative pedagogy, advocating for its use in addition to traditional forms 
of law teaching, which they argue purport to teach students to “think like a 
lawyer” while leaving students feeling disempowered and alienated. Conway 
and Laurent highlight core tenants of restorative pedagogy and offer specific 
methods for integrating this form of teaching throughout the law school 
curriculum. By embracing a form of teaching that centers on community, 
trust, collaborative problem solving, and personal wellbeing, they argue 
that students are empowered to think and learn like the lawyers they would 
become. Aparna Polavarapu, in Restorative Justice and Building Communities of 
Radical Belonging in the Law School Classroom, describes her process of cultivating 
a community of “radical belonging” in her restorative justice seminar, where 
restorative approaches are central to the mode of engagement and open, 
often vulnerable conversations are the norm. Polavarapu discusses how these 
approaches have allowed her to support difficult but significant dialogues 
about highly charged current events and their corresponding legal questions, 
citing the recent examples of the police killing of Tyre Nichols and Israel’s 
current war on Gaza. Describing how her pedagogy enhances the depth and 
nuance of classroom conversations about law even in her non-restorative 
justice courses, Polavarapu illustrates how aspects of this approach can be 
implemented in everyday law school education.
903Restorative Justice in Legal Education
The next three articles offer details about how to teach restorative justice 
to law students, whether as the subject of a focused seminar, as a clinical 
offering, or as a topic woven into another course. Adriaan Lanni, in Seeing is 
Believing: Restorative Justice at Harvard Law School, details the various restorative 
justice offerings that have been developed, and sometimes discarded, to 
respond to student demand at Harvard Law School. Offering specific 
examples of resources, speakers, and modes of teaching that she has found 
successful, Lanni also shares some of the challenges experienced along the 
way. Shana Toor, in The Restorative Justice Project, describes the program structure 
of the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Restorative Justice Project, 
an academic-year clinic that works with partners in the Wisconsin criminal 
system and in which students facilitate post-adjudication restorative justice 
dialogues. Toor explains how a restorative justice dialogue process is initiated 
by harmed parties, how law students are trained and supported through the 
dialogue preparation and facilitation process, and the positive impacts that this 
experiential learning has on students. In Incorporating Restorative Justice into Black-
Letter Criminal Law, Shirin Bakhshay reminds readers that restorative justice 
is not a topic to be relegated only to niche law school seminars or clinics. As 
she argues, not only is restorative justice increasingly likely to be encountered 
by those practicing criminal law, but learning about restorative justice also 
supports robust and critical analysis of the criminal system. Her article offers 
examples of how she weaves restorative justice into her criminal law course 
as she covers punishment theory, conceptions of criminal harm, and criminal 
legal system outcomes.  
 In some law schools, restorative justice has been elevated beyond the 
confines of a classroom. Arti Mohan’s article introduces a case study of 
implementing restorative justice at the National Academy of Legal Studies 
and Research (NALSAR) Hyderabad in India. Mohan shares the progress 
that was made and the challenges that were faced, particularly in student 
facilitation of complex cases, before distilling the learnings for other law 
schools. The next two articles share insights from established and growing 
initiatives at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. 
Deborah Thompson Eisenberg and Toby Treem Guerin’s article, “Will 
the Circle Be Unbroken”: The Role of Law School Centers in Advancing Restorative Justice 
Theory, Practice, and Education, discusses how restorative justice academic centers 
connect restorative justice education, scholarship, and practice, allowing 
each aspect to enhance the others. Eisenberg and Guerin detail initiatives of 
the Center for Dispute Resolution (C-DRUM) and how it has served as a 
capacity-builder, advancing restorative approaches in schools; as an incubator 
for innovation, trialing new restorative approaches; as a strategic convener, 
connecting academics, restorative justice practitioners, policymakers, and the 
legal community; and as an educator, offering coursework and experiential 
learning opportunities to students. Quince Hopkins, Laurie Graham, and 
April Cavaletto, in Magic or Morass?: A Multi-disciplinary Approach to Restorative 
Practices for Sexual Harm Prevention and Program Evaluation, offer key takeaways 
904 Journal of Legal Education
based on their experiences with the development, implementation, and 
evaluation of ERIN Talk, an interdisciplinary program delivering a sexual 
violence prevention curriculum to middle school youth, as part of the law 
school’s Levitas Initiative for Sexual Violence Prevention. The authors 
describe the benefits and challenges of both working on an interdisciplinary 
team and incorporating empirical evaluations into their work. Of note to the 
editors of this issue is that ERIN Talk’s interdisciplinary team—with members 
trained in law, public health, and social work, and supported by consultants 
with expertise in racial equity and LGBTQIA+ inclusion—is reflective of the 
diversity and interdisciplinarity of the restorative justice field.
Our final set of articles take us on various restorative justice journeys. 
While many of the articles in this issue describe the impacts on students, in 
Like Holding Up a Mirror: How I Learned to Teach Restorative Justice, Susan Abraham 
shares a view from the other side, describing her own journey as a teacher 
of restorative justice. Abraham describes how the experience of teaching this 
course required her to engage in her own parallel learning and to change the 
way she thought about her pedagogy even as her students were exploring new 
ways to think about the legal system. In Redemption Song: Listening for Justice at an 
HBCU Law School, co-authors Scott Holmes, a faculty member at North Carolina 
Central University, and Joy Clark, a former student, share through personal 
perspectives the way that people, place, and history all play an instrumental 
role in the way restorative justice is taught and received within this HBCU law 
school. Their journey begins with the history of Durham, takes us through the 
experiences of student and teacher with restorative justice in the law school, 
and concludes with the student, now alumna, discussing her experiences in 
the community as a restorative justice practitioner. Mary Louise Frampton, in 
Reflections on Teaching Restorative Justice as a Racial Justice Tool, captures the evolution 
of her own teaching journey and the ways that restorative justice has continued 
to be a powerful tool for teaching and equipping students to confront racial 
injustice. Given the newness of restorative justice as a law school course, 
Frampton offers a rare historical perspective, detailing how she introduced 
and taught restorative justice in its various iterations beginning in 2004, and 
offering some reflections for those carrying the work forward.
Encounters with restorative justice are becoming increasingly inevitable 
for those in the legal field. Our graduates, especially those who intend to 
be drivers of meaningful change in criminal systems and beyond, need to 
be equipped with knowledge and understanding of restorative justice. Yet, 
in the conversations leading to the development of this themed issue, many 
law faculty who teach restorative justice expressed feeling like “lone wolves” 
in their institutions, with little recognition or appreciation for the impact of 
the work they are doing. It is our hope that these articles will demystify how 
restorative justice fits into law school curricular and institutional offerings. 
This issue would not be possible without the editors of the Journal of Legal 
Education, who saw value in this discussion. Thank you to Austen Parrish and 
905Restorative Justice in Legal Education
Swethaa Ballakrishnen for their receptiveness to this themed issue and their 
support throughout the process.


Restorative Justice in Legal Education

Frampton, Mary Louise

Reflections on Teaching Restorative Justice as a Racial Justice Tool

Kearney, Janet

A Research Process for the Entire World? Challenges in Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Instruction

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