The Faculty Lounge

Using AI to Help Flip the Law School Classroom

The following is a guest post by Rick Bales (Ohio Northern)

I have long been a fan of experiential learning, and have tried to incorporate group-based problems into my courses as much as possible. But writing good problems is hard work, and problems borrowed from elsewhere do not always fit the specific pedagogical goal I might have for each class period.

Over the last eight months or so, however, I’ve been using ChatGPT4 to help me draft custom-made problems. In nearly every class last semester, we spent the first half of class discussing the reading material, and the second half doing a group-based exercise demonstrating the material from the first half. This summer I’m teaching in China, and AI has helped me customize the exercises for my Chinese audience.

The best part: with the help of AI, I can create an exercise in under an hour, and often in substantially less time than that. I can build this into my normal prep time, whereas before, I would need a ton of extra time to essentially redesign the course.

For example, in my Employment Law course, after covering a unit on employment contracts, I wanted my students to be able to identify and correct problems in a poorly drafted employment contract. (Earlier exercises had them draft specific contract clauses; later in the semester, I will have them draft entire employment contracts.) Here’s the prompt I gave ChatGPT4:

I want to give students a copy of a badly drafted employment contract and have them identify the items in the contract that are badly drafted. The contract should contain lots of ambiguities. It should be unclear whether it is a term contract or an at-will contract. The circumstances under which the employee can be fired should be unclear. The contract should be ambiguous about what happens if the employee wants to quit. Please draft the badly drafted contract, formatted as if it were a real employment contract. Separately, please identify the specific problems with the badly drafted contract.

Within seconds, ChatpGPT4 gave me exactly what I had asked for. The problems and ambiguities were representative of what you might expect to see in an employment contracted drafted by a nonlawyer. I spent a few minutes editing it, then copied-and-pasted the problem from ChatGPT4 into Word and adjusted the formatting to fit my preferences. Creating the exercise took me less than 15 minutes from start to finish.

Here is a second, more complex example. In China this summer I am teaching an ADR course. A large proportion of my students here will leave law school to work for international law firms doing cross-border work, or for large Chinese companies doing business with non-Chinese companies. I wanted to create a negotiation problem that they could work in one class period that would give them a taste of what they might see in law practice. Here is the prompt I gave ChatGPT4:

Please create a negotiation problem for students. The problem should have four complex issues to be negotiated. For each issue, the parties’ initial demand should be outside the range of potential agreement, but the acceptable outcomes for each party on each issue should overlap sufficiently so that agreement is possible. The dispute should be a commercial dispute between an American company and a Chinese company. Please create (1) a detailed set of general facts for both parties in narrative form, (2) a detailed set of private facts for each party in narrative form, and (3) a teacher’s guide identifying the issues to be negotiated and the range of possible agreement. Make all names gender neutral.

Again, ChatGPT4 gave me what I asked for. I could have specified the particular issues to be negotiated, but I wanted to see what ChatGPT4 came up with – and because this is an ADR rather than substantive-law course, I did not have any particular substantive issues in mind. Though the issues ChatGPT4 came up with were not really all that complex, they were suitable for my purpose. And without me asking for it, ChatGPT4 created two roles for each party: a CEO and a chief negotiator.

That gave me an idea: I could introduce extra complexity by creating some discord between the two members of each team. I gave ChatGPT4 a follow-up prompt:

Consistent with everything above, please create a set of private facts for each participant (the CEO for each party and the chief negotiator for each party) creating some sort of conflict between the CEO and the chief negotiator for each party.

I read through the problem to ensure there were no glaring errors or weird facts, and everything looked good. I spent about 15 minutes proofing everything, transferring everything to a Word document, and formatting it to my liking. I then spent another 10 minutes splitting the material into separate documents: (1) a set of general facts that would go to all students, (2) private facts for each side, (3) private facts for each character, and (4) a “teacher’s guide” summarizing all the conflicts and the room for resolution – a total of 8 documents. The entire drafting experience took less than an hour from start to finish.

I have enjoyed using ChatGPT4 to help draft problems for class. I have even more enjoyed the effect this has had on my teaching and my students’ learning. Students are much more engaged in the doctrinal part of each class because they know the material will be important to the exercises they will do the second half of class. Students love the exercises because students are naturally competitive and they can see how the exercises are preparing them for what they will be doing in law practice.

Playing with ChatGPT4 is an ongoing experiment for me. Writing a prompt that formerly took a half hour of trial, error, and a half dozen follow-ups now takes 5-10 minutes with one or two follow-ups. I’m taking notes as I continue to experiment, and will be writing up my results for the next Teaching Issue of the St. Louis University Law Journal.

-Rick Bales

Announcing "Tax Jazz: The Tax Literacy Project"

Marjorie Kornhauser (Tulane) has launched a new project that seeks to provide non-partisan, non-technical and accessible tax information for the general public.  The project is called "Tax Jazz: The Tax Literacy Project." The website is here. It has easy-to-understand materials and excellent posts on topics like, "How do we define a fair tax?" Although the site is not designed with law students specifically in mind, there are some good materials that would be helpful in an introductory income tax class. I look forward to seeing how this project grows, because there is definitely a need for more basic economic and tax literacy.

More on Twitter and Information Sharing

For those who followed my posts on law professor use of Twitter, I thought this recent article, called "The Unbearable Lightness of Tweeting," at The Atlantic was illuminating. The gist of the article was an author's self-study of the rate that users click through to read an article. The results leave a lot of questions about the information sharing value of Twitter, not just for law professors, but for everyone.

Law Blogging Best Practices

A commenter on my last post interpreted it as a general post on best practices in law blogging. I didn't think it was, but I thought the points deserved a reairing and expansion in a full post. The questions are: What is the purpose of law blogging? Is there a purpose? Is it all about analysis? When it is not about legal analysis, is there room for the personal point of view, or is that just narcisissm?

On the one hand, these comments might be discarded as simple grousing by a bored reader. On the other hand, I've seen enough comments like this through the years to wonder whether there are different views on the whole endeavor. Indeed, I limit this to "law blogging" because the early rise of such blogging came at a time when blogs, to me, were often little more than expanded "What I had for breakfast" Facebook posts. Law blogs were different. But now that blogging in general has essentially become alternate news service, perhaps expectations have changed so much that the occassional "Why I blogged this morning" posts are intolerable in law blogging.

Let's take the three concerns of the prior commenter:

1. Too much hyperlinking to prior discussion. The primary objection is that this is merely self-indulgent self-promotion to materials that no one cares about. The link to my last post above, in other words, is merely a self-promotional ploy to get the reader to read yet another one of my posts. Another commenter defends the practice, arguing that links can provide context and lead to discussions that might have been missed. My best practices takeaway is that links are helpful, but posts in which every single word seems to be hyperlinked are a bit much.

2. Too much me, me,  me. Posts should be in the third person, and should be neutral analysis. Well, sure, dispassionate analysis can have the most widespread impact. But this is really the heart of the question: is there room for anything else? And does it depend on the website?  Some people like me, me, me postings. I know because I get them shared on my Facebook wall every day. Even Stephen Colbert stepped out of character sometimes, didn't he? The question is, what's the best mix? I have no idea. But I will share one of my favorite comments on this discussion by Bruce Boyden from a prior debate at PrawfsBlawg:

It's an odd, odd view of the scholarly enterprise (but one that I've encountered before) that we are supposed to toil away for months or even years on our pet projects and NOT LET ANYONE KNOW ABOUT IT. It's a tragic fact of life that much of what professors produce is not read (and some subset of that is not worth reading) -- but that's not the ideal!

3. Too long. Bloggers shouldn't expect readers to read a 1000 word post. It's just gasbagging in this tl;dr world. I think length is not the issue, but quality. My own target is usually 800 words, because it forces me to be succinct (and also allows me to make two posts out of one, which keeps the content rolling when I'm busy).  But that said, I think tl;dr is ridiculous. Posters should have good intros and conclusions, but shouldn't accede to the desires of those unwilling to actually read the neutral, dispasionate analysis that they claim they want. I frequently read long, long blog posts that are way better than many shorter posts that simply gloss over the same information.

All of these points are really stylistic, though. It's possible to have a completely irritating, self-indulgent blog with really great content. This leaves me wondering whether best practices are in the eye of the beholder: should bloggers deliver how they want to write, or how people want to read?

On Blogging

I'm pleased to be hanging out in the Faculty Lounge for a bit. I hope to be able to discuss some topics that don't fit in my regular (new) blogging home, Written Description. For my first post, I want to discuss blogging. I'll just discuss some of my own experiences, which may be interesting or useful to others deciding whether to spend time doing it.

I began blogging in late 2008, when Dan Markel invited me to guest for the first time at PrawfsBlawg. I had only been a tenure-track faculty member for a little over a year at the time, so I ignored whatever "don't blog pre-tenure" advice there might be out there. I soon became a regular guest contributor and also joined the group as a permablogger at Madisonian. I thought of blogging as having two primary purposes: 1) writing about things that I don't normally write about, and 2) writing about things that I normally write about. I suppose that covers the waterfront.

Worthwhile Free Online Resources for Students

One of our C.V. Starr fellows and I were having an email exchange today about resources for students in our first year transnational practice course. One of the resources I cited to him was Larry Solum's Legal Theory Lexicon.

I assign posts from it every year to students - for example, I want my Civ Pro students to start with a somewhat more theoretical overview of procedural justice than our textbook provides, and I find Larry's post on Procedural Justice  helps set up a good class discussion. As we labor through what constitutes the holding of a case and how holdings matter, I assign his post on holdings.

In general, I've found his posts to be accessible to first year law students, but also sophisticated and reliable. I also turn to them myself as a first resource when, as has happened a lot since I got to the academy, I find myself dealing with concepts long forgotten or never quite learned. 

There must be other resources similarly deep and similarly reliable out there. I'm hoping that in the comments people will weigh in with free resources that are worth assigning to or at least sharing with students. 

Social Enterprise Blog

If you have an interest in issues and events related to social entrepreneurship and social enterprise law, you may wish to bookmark the SocEntLaw blog.  Its contributors include several law professors / lecturers, including Cass Brewer (Georgia State), Deborah Burand (Michigan), Suzanne McKechnie Klahr (Harvard / Stanford),  Haskell Murray (Regent), Alicia Plerhoples (Georgetown), Dana Brakman Reiser (Brooklyn), and Kyle Westaway (Harvard).

Ladies of Liberty: DiFranco & DeMent

Ani DiFranco and Iris DeMent each have lyrics that expand far beyond the relatively narrow scope that politics plays in the life of a human being. They also have some inspirational and poignant songs that add to our political discourse.  Ani and Iris provide an opportunity to talk cyberlaw, ponder the move to a national popular vote and share some of their music.

“My country ‘tis of thee, To take shots at each other on primetime tv” – Ani, “‘Tis of Thee”

With election season in full swing, the flood of negative and misleading political ads (from all sides and SuperPACs) will soon drowned the airwaves . . . at least in swing states like Florida. 

When I teach Cyberlaw, I include Porter v. Bowen, a Ninth Circuit case holding that vote-swapping is protected by the First Amendment and not a violation of criminal or electoral codes.  Citizens formed a website whereby voters in safe states could swap their votes with voters in swing states. The purpose was to have the 2000 Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader, receive five percent of the national vote so that the Green Party would qualify for federal funds in future elections, without hurting Gore’s chances of winning the Electoral College. 

For example, a voter in Ohio that wanted to vote for Nader would vote for Gore, while swapping her vote with voter in say, Alabama (a safe state for Bush) or Massachusetts (a safe state for Gore), who would vote for Nader.  Shortly after this website began, at least one other website was created that allowed voters to swap votes for any third-party candidates with either Bush or Gore, thus expanding vote-swapping beyond Nader-Gore swaps.

I teach this case in Cyberlaw because, in addition to discussing how technological changes raise new legal questions, it also allows for a discussion on whether the Electoral College is something that remains desirable in our self-governing society.  After all, if there was no Electoral College, there would be no need to engage in vote-swapping.  While it’s hard not to forget that Gore won the national popular vote in 2000, it’s also worth noting that Obama’s “landslide” victory in 2008 was not so large when considering the national popular vote margin.  Obama won 67.8 % of the Electoral College (365 to 173), but only 53% of the national popular vote.  Does technology provide a reason to shift to a national popular vote?

Perhaps technological developments make a national popular vote system more practical than in the late eighteenth century. Whether one is in Wyoming or Washington D.C., real-time information is available through broadband, cable and radio. Is it not better for candidates to have an incentive to campaign in all fifty states by making every citizen's vote count in the final tally?  Is it likely that voters on the losing end in a safe state might be more motivated to actually vote if they know it’s not in vain? 

As I’m sure some here know, there is an organized movement for instituting a national popular vote.  The plan involves a legislative pact among states to provide all the electoral votes of a state to the national popular vote winner.  By December 2010, the District of Columbia and five states (Illinois, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey and Washington) have enacted legislation to implement the plan.  Together, they make-up one quarter of the electoral votes needed to deliver an Electoral College victory. The plan will only be implemented once enough states have enacted legislation to win the Electoral College.  The Brennan Center for Justice is listed among the endorsers of this national popular vote plan.

Here’s Ani performing a version of her 1999 song, ‘Tis of Thee, at Ralph Nader’s October 2000 Madison Square Garden campaign event.  In the March 2012 issue of Relix magazine, Ani shared some of her thoughts on Obama’s performance thus far. While she may be critical of the lack of tangible changes, she makes an important, if obvious, point about how a self-governing society functions:  “If he really felt, in this arena of dragons and monsters, that he had the force of the people behind him, he’d more empowered to act in the way that we want him to act.  But we as people kicked back and said, ‘OK, fix it.’”  

Turning to Iris DeMent, her 1996 song, Wasteland of the Free is one of my favorites.  Sadly, its message has only grown more descriptive of our society as the years roll on.

Finally, in preparing this post, I stumbled across an organization called, Ladies of Liberty Alliance. The self-described mission of this organization is to “address the shortage of female leaders in the fight for liberty.”  One has to think the organization’s founders have a sense of humor and musical acumen based on their clever acronym (LOLA) and domain name, www.iamlola.org. The “Chairman” (LOLA’s word), Angela Keaton, holds a J.D. from the University of Florida.  While I have not explored the specifics of LOLA’s agenda, it certainly seems like a group of engaged citizens that will not leave any president alone in the arena of dragons and monsters.

p.s. The only endorsements in this post are for the respective music of Ani DiFranco & Iris DeMent.

Welcome to the Blogosphere

In recent days we've been joined in the blogosphere by The National Law Journal's Law School Review (A Forum On Legal Education).

From Karen Sloan's initial post dated October 27:

Welcome to The National Law Journal's Law School Review, which is an online forum examining the current state and future of legal education. We want to address the question, "Are law schools in crisis?" If the answer is yes, what are the most pressing problems and how should educators and regulators address them? If the answer is no, what is it that law schools are doing right? Is this enough to ensure their future viability? We have assembled a panel of experts to share their thoughts on the subject (see the roll call of contributors on the right), and we hope to create a robust dialogue and exchange of ideas.

The list of contributors includes William Henderson, Brian Tamanaha, Michael Olivas, and others. 

You'll find the home page link here.

FCPA

My friend Mike Koehler has a "new and improved" website for his blog devoted to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  Here's the link.

Listservs and New Law Profs

It's that time of year when new law profs are making book selections, pondering recitation and attendance policies, looking forward (with a range of emotions) to the first day of class in August, etc.  We posted some friendly advice for new colleagues last summer.  Here's the link.  And we've touted a primer on law school teaching, which might be quite useful to recent hires.

One of my new entry-level Campbell colleagues asks this question (I'm paraphrasing):  what lawprof listservs are available for the subjects that I'll be teaching?

If you've got suggestions, please drop them in the comments!  Thanks!

Introducing Guest Blogger Sharona Hoffman

It is my pleasure to introduce my colleague, Sharona Hoffman, who will be guest blogging with us in February.  Sharona's work focuses on health law (and most recently electronic health records), employment discrimination, civil procedure, and law and religion.  Prior to joining our faculty, she worked at the EEOC in Houston for a number of years.  She Co-Directs the Law-Medicine Center at CWRU and served for three years as Senior Associate Dean at the law school.  With so much of the news focusing on health care reform these days, I'm sure her posts are going to spark a lot of enthusiastic discussion.  Welcome to the Lounge and have fun!

Introducing Guest Blogger Greg McNeal

I'm pleased to welcome an alum of CWRU Law School, Greg McNeal, who will be blogging with us throughout the month of September.  Greg is on the faculty at Pepperdine and his detailed bio is available here.

Greg teaches and researches in the areas of national security law and counter-terrorism, as well as international organizations and ethics.  He has co-authored/co-edited a number of books in these fields over the years.  He has also been a visiting faculty member at a number of law schools, including my own, before becoming a permanent faculty member at Pepperdine this year.  While he will be blogging about many topics, he is particularly interested to share his thoughts on going through the law school hiring process and sharing the benefit of his experiences with others facing the process this year.

Welcome, Greg!

Welcome to the Blawgosphere, theParetoCommons!

My colleague, Lawrence Baxter, has launched a new group blog, theParetoCommons, focusing on regulatory reform, public policy, and law.  According to Lawrence, the name was chosen “to combine the notion of Pareto efficiency and the complexity of regulating the commons in any industry (financial, environmental, communications, health care, etc.)”

There’s quite a bit of content up already and more will follow, especially as new contributors are added.  So, welcome Lawrence and the other new ParetoCommonsers! (Hmm, doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Lounge Lizards.”)

Introducing Guest Blogger: B. Jessie Hill

It gives me great pleasure to announce that my colleague, Prof B. Jessie Hill, will be guest blogging with us this month.  Jessie is no stranger to the blogosphere, but this will be her first (and hopefully not her last) stint with Faculty Lounge.  She has been at Case Western since 2003 and has a background in First Amendment and civil rights law, having previously worked for the ACLU in New York amongst other things.  She teaches Civ Pro, Civil Rights, and a Reproductive Rights seminar as well as delving into other areas like Con Law.  She publishes largely in the areas of law and religion and constitutional law.  Prior to joining the faculty she also clerked for the Honorable Karen Nelson Moore of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.  Welcome to the Lounge, Jessie!  Have fun.

Should Online Anonymity be a Habit or a Guarantee?

In light of the recent privacy debacle involving the Plain Dealer and Judge Saffold (see previous post), a number of news media outlets are reconsidering their policies relating to the anonymity of those who comment online about news stories.  I am indebted to my colleague Elizabeth Rowe for bringing this new article to my attention from The Gainesville Sun.  The article surveys the approaches taken by different news services to the anonymity of postings by online commenters.  Some very interesting points are made in the article.  One is the issue raised by the editor of the Plain Dealer, Susan Goldberg, who has suggested that anonymity should be regarded as a habit in this context, rather than a guarantee.  Another interesting aspect of the article is that it notes that a number of news services are considering revised approaches to their online commenting policies along the lines of either doing away with anonymity altogether and requiring people to post comments under their own names, or instituting a ratings system for commenters so readers could give more or less weight to certain comments.  This is a difficult issue indeed and I suspect we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg with respect to the privacy conundrums likely to be generated on these websites. 

Ohio Judge Sues Plain Dealer Over Privacy Breach

In a developing story in Cleveland this week, Cuyahoga County Court Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold has sued the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper and others for unmasking her or her daughter (the facts are not 100% clear on this point) as the anonymous poster of comments on a news website about cases over which she has presided.  She alleges breaches of contract with respect to the privacy policy posted on the cleveland.com website (associated with the Plain Dealer).  She also alleges a variety of other claims including fraud, defamation and false light publicity.  This is an interesting case because the news organization is effectively being sued for breaching its own privacy policy - as opposed to the situation where a third party has sought the information for the purposes of legal or other proceedings.  The full story is here.  A link to the Judge's complaint is here.

Guest Blogger Richard Gershon

The Faculty Lounge is pleased and excited to welcome Richard Gershon as our guest.  Richard (pictured) is a professor at Charleston School of Law and served as its founding dean, leading the school to provisional ABA accreditation.  Previously, Richard served as dean at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law.  He also has taught at Stetson University College of Law and Ohio Northern University College of Law.
                                   
Richard’s teaching and scholarly interests are in the areas of tax, estates and trusts, property, and professional responsibility.  He enjoys running, hockey, and spending time with his wife Donna Levine (a former Copy Production Chief at Vogue, and currently Copy Editor at Garden & Gun) and his daughters Claire (11) and Eve (9).

Welcome to the Lounge, Richard!

Top 10 law schools for Constitutional Law & Theory

On his Law School Reports Blog, Brian Leiter ranks, or perhaps more accurately lets readers rank, the top 10 law school faculties for Constitutional Law & Theory. He uses condorcet internet voting to discern who has the top faculties in this area of the law. A similar method is currently being employed  to create a top list of law faculties in Law &  Economics here. But for now, below are the top 5 law faculties in Constitutional Law & Theory (you'll have to go to his link to get the rest):

1. Harvard

2. Yale

3. NYU

4. University of Chicago

5. Columbia University

A "Not-To-Do" List

Busy professionals and academics often find solace and guidance in constructing "to-do" lists. However, it might be useful to think about a "not-to-do" list. On the Voir Dire Blog I have occasionally highlighted the blogging of Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Work Week. His book is somewhat controversial and he is as well. Regardles of how one views Ferris, I think that we can glean valuable insights from his blog postings. For instance, the 80/20 Pareto principle that he advocates (not his idea, he just promotes it) can be employed in analyzing the utility of many endeavors, both professionally and personally.

I list below the nine habits he suggests that we stop doing now. To read his rationales for these suggestions, you'll have to read his post. You may or may not agree with any one of these points, but I think that they provide some good food for thought.

1. Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers

2. Do not e-mail first thing in the morning or last thing at night

3. Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time

4. Do not let people ramble

5. Do not check e-mail constantly - "batch" and check at set times only

6. Do not 0ver-communicate with low-profit, high-maintenance customers (the 80/20 principle is discussed in this rationale)

7. Do not work more to fix overwhelm - prioritize

8. Do not carry a cellphone or Crackberry 24/7

9. Do not expect work to fill a void that non-work relationships and activities should