But after a while - an hour, maybe a few days or weeks - something happens. The student looks within (or within the law books) and realizes - they may have an answer.

The few times in my life when I’ve heard a voice that seems to be from God, it has always come in a whisper - faint but clear, and clearly not my own thought.

So perhaps law teaching is not jut becoming a harder profession to enter - perhaps it’s also becoming less uniquely attractive, as other forms of intellectually stimulating legal work offer just as much (or more) workplace flexibility.

According to University Relations, the “Preliminary Recommendations” are to eliminate 32 majors and 169 faculty positions across the university.

I’m exploring Victorianism as a formative moral code that influenced the early life of congressmen and State Department officials who built the existing immigration policy structure.

What excited me the most was to see that there are already 50 publicly funded programs at the state or local level. In those jurisdictions, all people have a right to have counsel appointed for them in immigration court!

This conversation among famous people ended up, ironically, being a very honest reckoning with the limits of public impact and a celebration of the intimate.

For legal advocates, cultural competency is critically important, because our students will, in an important way, serve as the “voice” of our clients before the immigration agencies and courts. Interrogating how we relate to our clients, and what kind of narrators we will be of their stories, is one of the biggest responsibilities -and most valuable opportunities - we have.

Studying law in another country can also add depth and dimension to a subject to study it where you can see it happening all around you. In addition to studying international law in Geneva, imagine studying migration in Mexico, sustainable development in Uganda, and climate change and biodiversity in the Brazilian Amazon. WVU Law courses have offered all of those experiences.

The pressure of having to ‘go public’ every day brings its own edge. And on that edge, you (occasionally) find things that you never knew existed.

My goal in this blog is to share what I’m seeing with everyone - not just a few people in my classroom or on my hallway or at my academic conference. I don’t have it all figured out, but of one thing I’m convinced: For universities to remain relevant while so much information and education happens in virtual communities, we need to be transparent.

This year, we’re required to add one more policy:

(5) a statement prohibiting the use of generative AI, unless authorized for specific educational purposes by the instructor.

in these days of disruption, with our 24-hour news cycle and ubiquitous social media, I’m reminded that Baker was willing to shoulder the burden of the limelight when he knew the task demanded it.

Of all people ordered removed, 78.5% were unrepresented.

Of all persons who were granted affirmative relief, 90.8% had a lawyer.

For my money, the most valuable book you can read to empower and enhance your law career is I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi.

The book I chose turned out to be The Firm of Girdlestone by Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. The book had no publication date and no jacket blurb, so I dove in, deliberately not checking the Google for contemporary orientation.

Two years ago, I published a work for hire with a leading legal publisher. Today, I received a letter from the publisher I wrote for, informing me that any content prepared for and owned by them could not be uploaded to Large Language Model (LMM) like ChatGPT, or any other form of generative AI. Using this content in an LLM, they stated, would violate their copyright.

Yesterday, I wrote about how the rise of AI will change the lawyer’s job, shifting emphasis from information processing to quintessentially human attributes like emotional intelligence and predictive strategy.

These are skills that require strength in functions performed by the DMN, like being creative, predicting the future, and understanding what others are thinking.