The American Bar Association now requires law schools to provide “education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism.”[1] But how can a law professor navigate these challenges in the current cultural climate fraught with polarizing divisiveness?

1. Introduction

On April 19, 2024, Taylor Swift dropped her newest album, The Tortured Poets Department (and The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology).[1]  The lyrical savant takes listeners through a journey of happiness, heartbreak, affairs, post-mortem examinations, alien abductions, zombies, Super Bowls, and, of course, Florida.  Although law students everywhere likely listened to the album while studying for (o

I hate page limits. I also hate overlong legal writing, but I don’t think page limits are the best solution for that problem. Overlong legal writing happens for three main reasons: wordiness, writing about irrelevant issues, and providing too much rule explanation or rule application on relevant issues. Much has been written on the first of these,[1] and we all work with our students on avoiding the second by teaching them how to identify relevant issues.

Most students are unpleasantly surprised by their first set of law school grades. After working diligently and expecting whatever worked well in undergraduate classes to work in law school classes, many well-intentioned students are disappointed that they did not get an A on their first legal writing assignment. I was. I came to law school expecting to receive glowing praise on my writing assignments. After all, I had a lot of undergraduate academic writing experience.

It is no secret that law students face high levels of stress that can manifest in challenging mental and physical outcomes.[1] The rigors of undergraduate study do not necessarily prepare students for the challenges they will face in law school.

Pop culture can teach us a lot about the law: almost everyone knows the Miranda warnings and can recite them by heart, thanks to Law and Order and other crime dramas,[1] the concept of a “conservatorship” is familiar to many because of Brittany Spears,[2] and the notorious RBG has become a household name, recognizable in a crown and jabot, partly due to Kate McKinnon’s portrayal on SNL.

Many of us have counseled students experiencing imposter syndrome in law school, especially if we primarily teach 1Ls. Although students from all backgrounds experience imposter syndrome, it is especially concerning among first-generation college/law students and minorities, both of whom are more likely to experience imposter syndrome.[1] 

I am both a legal writing professor and a language student—I am learning to speak German. In German, some nouns are feminine, some are masculine, and some are neuter. Why? For seemingly no reason at all. This non-explanation is hard for me to accept. First-year law students, too, are learning a new language. In the same way I felt frustration with German gendering, my students felt skepticism, frustration, and doubt in the face of the new norms and expectations I asked them to follow in our first-year legal writing course.

Motions. Briefs. Oral arguments. For students interested in a transactional career, a typical legal writing semester focused on persuasion sometimes feels like it is centered on inconsequential litigation-style assignments. What many students do not realize, however, is that many skills learned in a persuasive semester, including through the context of litigation-style assignments, are transferrable to transactional contexts and help students prepare for careers in transactional practices.

As early as two weeks into the fall semester, I already hear it. With a knowing look, some of my students announce that “1L is the time to grind it out,” while others proudly declare, “My well-being is really important to me, so I am OK with getting all Bs.”