Love AI or hate it – you can’t just avoid it. AI tools like ChatGPT are reshaping legal education. Some students are using AI to ghostwrite their course papers. Some faculty are using it to enhance students’ learning. Whether you want to embrace this technology or are deeply skeptical about it, you can’t afford to … Continue reading What Are You Gonna Do About AI in Your Courses Next Semester?
A New York Times article, Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?, grabbed my attention because it identifies many of my frustrations in using AI to help me write. It also supports an argument in my article, Solving Professors’ Dilemmas about Prohibiting or Promoting Student AI Use, that faculty – not to mention lawyers’ supervisors … Continue reading What the New York Times Gets Right (and Wrong) About AI Writing
A recent New York Times article described how OpenAI updated ChatGPT to be more emotionally responsive – and ended up creating a tool that some users interpreted as a soulmate, life coach, or cosmic truth-teller. In extreme cases, it reportedly encouraged delusional thinking and even gave instructions related to suicide. Those cases are tragic and … Continue reading Resisting Sycophancy
That’s the question that Nancy B. Rapoport and Joseph R. Tiano, Jr., discussed in Fighting the Hypothetical: Why Law Firms Should Rethink the Billable Hour in the Generative AI Era. This article provides a deep analysis, summarized in the abstract (with added blank lines to enhance readability): As the legal profession continues to grasp the … Continue reading How Will AI Affect Legal Practice and Education?
At the recent AALS ADR Section WIP Conference, I led a focus group to explore how faculty are using – and thinking about using – AI in their courses. The participants shared a range of thoughtful insights, revealing both enthusiasm and caution. Their responses offered a snapshot of what experimentation with AI looks like now, … Continue reading Teaching with AI: Faculty Reflections and a Preview of Professors’ Dilemma
Hal Abramson’s article, Time-Pressured Negotiations, deals with a very real phenomenon in real life. It considers how to negotiate when you do not have the time to use your best negotiation practices. He writes that no other article has considered what to do when in a time-pressured negotiation other than to advise you not to … Continue reading Hal Abramson on Time-Pressured Negotiations
Don’t you just hate it when you suspect a student submitted a paper written by AI and you can’t tell for sure? You’re not alone – a recent survey finds that many faculty share your concern. These concerns – and potential solutions – are the focus of two short articles worth checking out: Faculty Use … Continue reading Ghostwriter or Coach? New Articles Offer Practical Help with AI in Student Writing
The quality of AI outputs depends on users’ skill in inputting good prompts. That’s the premise of my new article: The Art of AI Prompting in Law and Dispute Resolution Practice. It provides practical guidance about how to use AI tools responsibly, ethically, and effectively. It describes core skills including: Choosing the right AI tool … Continue reading The Art of the Prompt for Lawyers, Mediators, and Arbitrators
Law faculty often hesitate to revise their syllabi. If it worked last year, why change it now? But legal practice and education are changing fast – and if our courses don’t evolve with them, students may miss out. That’s the message behind two short new articles – to make useful course changes feel possible, manageable, … Continue reading Two Practical Articles to Help You Improve Your Courses (Without Starting from Scratch)
We’ve all used the terms “facilitative” and “evaluative” to describe mediation as if everyone knows what they mean. Earlier this year, I surveyed experts about how they understand these terms – and how they think others understand them. Spoiler alert: This study found that people are hopelessly confused about these terms, including experts in our … Continue reading Seriously, You’re Really Still Saying “Facilitative” and “Evaluative” Mediation in 2025?
