Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Dinerstein, Robert

Paul, Jeremy R.

Rolland, Sonia E.

Rosser, Ezra

From the Editors

385
Journal of Legal Education, Volume 71, Number 3 (Spring 2022)
 From the Editors
This issue features a wide-ranging collection of articles and book reviews 
addressing timely and timeless issues in legal education. From pedagogy to 
artificial intelligence, from podcasts to genres of legal scholarship, our authors 
cover a broad spectrum of topics central to the legal academy. We trust there 
will be something in these pages to interest almost everyone. 
The issue opens with a test of whether AI-generated exam responses can 
pass law school finals. The answer, according to four University of Minnesota 
Law School professors, Jonathan H. Choi, Kristin E. Hickman, Amy B. 
Monahan, and Daniel Schwarcz, is a qualified “yes.” The AI-generated exam 
answers generally scored on the low end of the curve, but were still in the 
passing range. The article highlights both the level of AI-generated responses 
and the importance of well-drafted prompts when requesting quality AI-
generated answers. Next, Bridgette Carr, Vivek Sankaran, and Taylor J. 
Wilson present a novel curricular response to the mental health crisis in the 
legal profession. They describe the structure and content of the University of 
Michigan’s “Designing a Fulfilling Life in the Law” course. The class requires 
students to engage in a deliberative process of charting a fulfilling professional 
and personal path and to develop an array of skills critical to well-being. 
The next three articles focus on pedagogy. Marni Goldstein Caputo 
and Kathleen Luz celebrate the power of podcasts to connect law students 
with the lawyer experience. As they show, alternative media, including 
podcasts, can help students relate to the material in a way that emphasizes 
the human element in lawyering. In their appropriately titled article, The Case 
Against Commercial Casebooks, W. David Ball and Michelle Oberman argue 
that professors should abandon commercial casebooks in favor of open-
access alternatives. Highlighting the need to lower student costs, the authors 
explain how even seasoned professors can make the transition to open-source 
material. Paul Figueroa directs our attention to the importance of schema in 
the formation of long-term memories. His article uses an illustrated lesson on 
the parol evidence rule to show how analogies and visuals can help students 
understand complex topics. 
Archetypal Legal Scholarship: A Field Guide, 2nd ed., updates a classic work. 
Martha Minow and Susannah Barton Tobin sort legal scholarship into nine 
categories and provide citations to representative works in each category. The 
article ends with advice for those just getting started writing legal scholarship. 
The penultimate article, by April Land and Aliza Organick, focuses on how 
law schools can better prepare students for (clinical) practice. The article 
ties the educational concepts of backward design, transfer of learning, and 
386 Journal of Legal Education
curricular mapping to efforts made at the University of New Mexico School of 
Law to better integrate non-clinical teaching with clinical practice. Finally, the 
contribution by John Kirlin, Jeffrey Michael, and Francis J. Mootz III looks 
in detail at the process and challenges involved in the launch of two master’s 
degree programs by University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. At 
a time when many law schools are either starting or contemplating such non-
J.D. programs for both pedagogical and financial reasons, lessons from this 
article extend well beyond the McGeorge experience. 
Following our usual practice, we close with three book reviews. Marsha 
Griggs and Andrea A. Curcio review Joan Howarth’s book, Shaping the Bar: The 
Future of Attorney Licensing, delving into issues of fairness, bias, and competency 
concerns related to how lawyers are admitted to the bar. Law professors curious 
about law school discipline norms and historical practices will learn a great 
deal from the detailed review by Robert E. Rains of Robert M. Jarvis’s book, 
The Expelled Law Student—A Case Law Survey. Rounding out this issue of the Journal 
is Lawrence Krieger’s extensive review and essay inspired by Shailini Jandial 
George’s book, The Law Student’s Guide to Doing Well and Being Well. 
This issue contains a bit of the old and a bit of the new. Some issues in legal 
academia are always with us: what is good scholarship and how can we better 
reach our students. Other topics—such as the possibility that students could 
use AI to pass their exams—feel almost futuristic. Yet we hope you will agree 
that, collectively, this collection of articles and book reviews contributes to our 
understanding of legal education. We welcome your continued engagement. 
Robert Dinerstein 
Ezra Rosser 
Jeremy Paul 
Sonia E. Rolland


English

Kirlin, John

Michael, Jeffrey

Mootz III, Francis J.

Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education: The McGeorge School of Law Case Study

Ginsburg, Tom

Academic Freedom and Democratic Backsliding

Joy, Peter A.

Book Review of The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth & Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor’s Fight for Fairness

Rosado Marzán, César F.

Book Review of An Equal Place: Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles

McConnaughay, Philip J.

The Evolving Mission of Peking University’s School of Transnational Law

Kuh, George D., Ph.D.

O’Day, Patrick T., J.D

Whence Did Thee Come, LSSSE?

Quintanilla, Victor D.

Erman, Sam

Mindsets in Legal Education

Bodamer, Elizabeth, J.D., Ph.D

Do I Belong Here? Examining Perceived Experiences of Bias, Stereotype Concerns, and Sense of Belonging in U.S. Law Schools

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From the Editors

From the Editors

Public Administration and Policy Degree Programs in Legal Education: The McGeorge School of Law Case Study

Academic Freedom and Democratic Backsliding

Book Review of The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth & Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor’s Fight for Fairness

Book Review of An Equal Place: Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles

The Evolving Mission of Peking University’s School of Transnational Law

Whence Did Thee Come, LSSSE?

Mindsets in Legal Education

Do I Belong Here? Examining Perceived Experiences of Bias, Stereotype Concerns, and Sense of Belonging in U.S. Law Schools

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