RSS 1.0Law Faculty Publications
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Building the Future of Law Libraries: Artificial Intelligence, Opportunities, and AdvancementThe Future of Law Libraries initiative convened six regional roundtables on Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries with experts from academic, court, firm, and government law libraries, as well as allied professions, using scenario-building methodology to examine how AI is reshaping legal education, work, and systems and what law libraries must do to lead that change. The common message: legal information professionals must take an active, coordinated role in AI policy, training, and infrastructure or risk being sidelined as legal information vendors and non-library actors set the agenda. This white paper distills convergent themes and proposes collaborative directions. It explores three recommendations that sprang from the roundtables: 1) create a centralized AI organization, 2) develop tiered training for legal information professionals, and 3) establish a shared knowledge hub. If we are successful in this next stage, we will have coordinated advocacy and standards, a workforce with more advanced skills, and an open, authoritative, dynamic, centralized repository. We will be convening teams to push these recommendations forward and we provide a link in the Call to Action section for our colleagues to join this effort.
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No Department, No Enforcement: Title IX After the Collapse of the Department of EducationThe structural foundations of Title IX enforcement are undergoing a profound transformation. President Trump’s 2025 executive order initiating the closure of the Department of Education, combined with the vacatur of the 2024 Title IX regulations and the Supreme Court’s elimination of Chevron deference in Loper Bright, has fundamentally dismantled the administrative framework that long anchored Title IX protections. Unlike prior regulatory shifts, these developments raise the question of whether meaningful federal enforcement will continue to exist at all. As administrative structures recede, courts will assume a much greater role in defining Title IX’s scope and enforceability, despite their institutional limitations. This Article argues that the resulting shift will narrow substantive protections, restrict access to justice, and produce fragmented interpretations of Title IX across jurisdictions. It examines the statute’s original design as an evolving administrative framework, explores the barriers marginalized students will face under a litigation-driven model, and explains why courts are ill-equipped to provide consistent, forward-looking guidance. This Article concludes by considering potential legislative reforms to restore national coordination in Title IX enforcement, drawing lessons from Congress’s intervention following Grove City College v. Bell.
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An Innovative Approach to Medical-Legal Partnership: Unauthorized Practice of Law Reform as a Civil Justice Pathway in Patient CareThis Article discusses the design of an innovative approach to the traditional medical-legal partnership. This potentially transformative service model proposes the use of unauthorized practice of law (UPL) reform to embed civil legal problem solving within a patient care setting. Unlike in the traditional medical-legal partnership — a service model which embeds lawyers within patient care settings to address patients’ justice needs — we explore the promise of patient advocacy through community-based justice workers (CBJWs): members of the community who are not lawyers but who have specialized legal training and authorization to provide civil legal help to those who need it most. This work is the result of a partnership between Innovation for Justice, a social justice legal innovation lab housed at both the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business, and University of Utah Health. The present framework for UPL-reform-based medical-legal partnerships was developed through robust community-engaged research and design work across the 2022–23 academic year. This article discusses the research findings and proposes a framework for replication in other jurisdictions.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: The Continuing Study of Legal Writing Should Be Deemed a Required Part of Our Professional ResponsibilityThis, at times, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek article is about how the Arizona State Bar should award professional responsibility continuing legal education credit for a seminar on legal writing. First, the article addresses the rules of professional conduct in Arizona. Second, the article discusses why effective legal writing should be included as an explicit part of a lawyer’s duty of professional responsibility. Third, the article discusses examples where courts have chastised lawyers for incomprehensible writing and tied that into a lawyer’s professional responsibility. Finally, the article contains recommendations to better encourage lawyers to continue learning about effective legal writing.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Don't Be a Turkey—Avoid GobbledygookThis, at times, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek article is about how law students and lawyers tend to use complex words instead of sticking to plain language. First, the article discusses the history behind the plain language movement in general and in legal writing circles specifically. Second, the article discusses how some of the federal rules of civil procedure promote plain language and how courts have enforced the mandate to use plain language. Third, the article addresses tips and tricks for legal writers to ensure that plain language is used.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Response Times Are So Slow These Days, Email is Now Sloth MailThis, at times, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek article is about how email response times have declined and proposes some best practices on responding to email. First, it gives examples of away messages that leave the recipient with the impression that a response will not follow any time soon. Second, it explains that when professionals ignore emails, that conduct is rude and unprofessional. It then, however, turns to some studies indicating that the high volume of email traffic has impacted our mental health and provides information regarding actual average email response times and the best time to send an email if you want a fast response. Finally, it covers why responding promptly to emails may rise to an ethical obligation because the Rules of Professional Conduct require lawyers to promptly inform clients of certain matters.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Chat GPT Makes a Better Therapist Than a LawyerThis, at times, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek article is about how Chat GPT (and generative AI in general) makes a better therapist than a lawyer. First, it references examples where generative AI has hallucinated cases, refers to the real-life example where an attorney was sanctioned for submitting fake cases, and refers to the court orders that followed where courts have limited the use of generative AI. Second, it discusses an example of how Google Bard missed a key issue when writing a case brief for first-semester law students and made improvements to an excellent office memo that a student prepared in a way that did not conform to best practices in legal writing. However, examples are also provided where AI is helpful in terms of organizing thoughts or providing general information on a legal subject. Finally, it references areas where generative AI does excel—creating dating profiles and giving advice on maintaining friendships.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Unlike Belly Buttons, Commas and Periods with Quotation Marks Cannot Be Innies or OutiesThis, at times, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek article is about how law students are increasingly placing periods and commas outside quotation marks, which is incorrect. First, the article addresses the rules for placement of periods and commas with quotation marks and the rationale underlying these rules. Second, the article then covers the British rule for these same punctuation issues. Third, the article addresses the rules for placement of other punctuation, such as semicolons, colons, question marks, and exclamation marks with quotation marks.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Down the Rabbit Hole with DoeThis, at times, irreverent, article is about the practice of using Doe parties in litigation. First, the history of the practice is covered. Second, expansion of the practice is covered along with the reasons why it is disfavored and what the legal test is for allowing fictitious names in litigation, Finally, the article addresses the wide range of names used for pseudonyms beyond just Jane and John Doe.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Exclamation Proliferation and Why it Has to Stop!This article analyzes the exclamation point (and the overuse of it) from a legal writing professor’s perspective. First, it traces the history of the exclamation point. Second, it addresses how both grammarians and legal writing experts have suggested using the exclamation point on a limited basis. Third, it discusses studies showing that women use the point more than men to live up to society’s expectation of friendliness and that, according to one study, use of an exclamation point can lead to impaired judgments. Finally, the article addresses advocates of the use of the point who believe it can help lighten the tone when it comes to digital communication.
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True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Semicolons SuckThis article analyzes the semicolon from a legal writing professor’s perspective and suggests that we eliminate semicolons because educators today are less concerned with sentence-level mechanics and proper punctuation, and law students already face a steep learning curve on so many other, more fundamental levels. It also traces the history of the semicolon and suggests, as have other commentators, that it is a pretentious mark that can be replaced with periods, em-dashes, and other devices.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: Dictionaries Should Not Be a DemocracyThis, at times, irreverent, tongue-in-cheek article is about how dictionaries include words legal writers should not use in their writing, such as, irregardless, anyways, and judgement. First, the article addresses the word “irregardless” because law students frequently include that word (incorrectly) in their writing. Second, the article discusses how lexicographers decide to include words in dictionaries based on popular usage. Third, the article covers additional (incorrect) words that students write, such as “anyways” and “judgement.” Finally, the article concludes that, while legal writers should consult dictionaries, they should not view the words within them as the final arbiter for proper usage in legal writing, which has its own conventions.
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More True Confessions of a Legal Writing Professor: I Will Never Surrender to the Sinful Comma SpliceThis, at times, irreverent and tongue-in-cheek article analyzes the increase in the use of comma splices from a legal writing professor’s perspective and suggests ways to fix the problem. First, it traces the increase of comma splices to the Harry Potter series because, as English professors have suggested, that best-selling series is full of comma splices. Second, it explains exactly what a comma splice is and how historically, the use of comma splices was acceptable. Third, it provides examples of sentences with comma splices and suggests different methods of fixing the sentence to correct the problem. Finally, it addresses exceptions to the ban on comma splices.
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The New Social ContractsContracts rule our digital world. Platform terms of service determine speech rights, privacy rights, and much more. This is no accident—from the very beginning, the U.S. model of internet governance was explicitly built around private ordering. In this context, it is worth asking what contract law and contract scholarship have to say about the public harms of digital dealmaking. The answer, quite surprisingly, is: not much. To be sure, the rise of the digital economy has generated over two decades of sustained scholarship and several huge national reform efforts aimed at updating contract law. But this work has largely focused on the procedural fairness of online agreements—especially mutual assent to clickwrap. If ever there were a case to be made for contract law to interrogate both the substance and the social impact of an agreement, today’s platform terms of use are it. These are society-wide pacts, and while they are in part commercial agreements outlining the terms of a market exchange, they are also—unlike other commercial contracts—the basic ground rules for our digital society. Moreover, our public laws, from our speech laws to our surveillance laws, often defer to these private agreements, giving them the power to supply and even to supplant constitutional norms. This puts contract law in an uneasy place—effectively leaving private law as the chief protector of public values on the internet. Having contract law play this role is not the first-best solution. Yet as long as we allow contracts to rule our digital society—as long as our internet policy is contractarian—contract law will and ought to play a larger role in policing the public impact of these agreements. In a sense, that would mean building a more public-minded contract law of the sort imagined by scholars going back to the Progressive Era. The alternative would be to give contracts less power to set public rules online. Choosing between these options will require comparative institutional analysis of a kind that is not common in law and technology debates.
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Advancing Virtual Care Practices Across the Cognitive Impairment ContinuumAs the population of older adults grows, providing high-quality, cost-effective healthcare for those with cognitive impairments is an increasing priority. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift towards receiving virtual care at home through temporary Medicare flexibilities. However, the uncertainty surrounding the continuing extension of these flexibilities at the federal level and variations in reimbursement policies across the states present challenges for virtual care practices to meet the rising demand for care amid unprecedented workforce shortages. Sustainable, long-term reimbursement at the federal and state levels, a trained and integrated healthcare workforce, and adherence to recognized accreditation standards and guidelines are essential to advance the quality and safety of virtual care for cognitively impaired patients. Furthermore, reimbursement policies that incentivize investments in technology infrastructure and digital literacy outreach are needed to ensure equitable access to virtual care for all patients across the cognitive impairment continuum.
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Rewriting Precedent: How International Adjudicators Influence ComplianceInternational cooperation depends on adaptation to changing conditions. International dispute settlement bodies can play a key role in maintaining cooperation over time. Evidence suggests that when legal bodies successfully adapt the law through the reinterpretation of rules, they can promote state compliance. However, this process is incremental and may not happen quickly enough, which can lead to backlash against international courts. In this article, we analyze these dynamics at the World Trade Organization (“WTO”), the global institution regulating international trade. Relying on data and case studies, we show how the Appellate Body modified its interpretations to promote compliance. Because this cannot happen in every dispute, the WTO illustrates the tensions between consistency and adaptation legal institutions face.
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Demonstrating Inclusion and Allyship: Amplifying an Indigenous Voice Through Physical and Digital ExhibitionIn this chapter, I discuss how I displayed resources to help promote the knowledge that the Navajo people have “always had the rule of law” and to amplify the Navajo writer, Joseph K. Austin, behind that knowledge.3 To support and demonstrate the need for further inclusion, I provide a literature review of scholarship and detail the genesis of the physical and digital exhibits I curated from the works cited by Austin in his article, “The Words of the Talking God: Building and Sustaining Native Nations Through the Common Law.” I describe my collaboration with Austin and other colleagues from my law library and discuss how future collaboration is sustainable.
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(Hidden) in Plain Sight: Migrant Child Labor and The New Economy of ExploitationMigrant child labor pervades supply chains for America’s most beloved household goods including Cheerios, Cheetos, Lucky Charms, J. Crew, and Fruit of the Loom. Migrant children, some as young as twelve and thirteen, de-bone chicken sold at Whole Foods, bake rolls found at Walmart and Target, and process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. Most work grueling shifts, including overnight and over twelve-hour days, and some, working in extremely hazardous jobs such as roofing and meat processing, have died or suffered serious, permanent injuries. When their heartbreaking stories were revealed in an exposé by New York Times investigative journalist Hannah Drier, the nation was stunned. Since then, however, very little has changed. This is unsurprising given that responses to the crisis focus mainly on enhancing enforcement and increasing penalties under existing child labor laws. But these reforms will not help the migrant children at the heart of this crisis. Indeed, these so-called solutions threaten to make the situation worse for these children, many of whom are unaccompanied minors and have no choice but to work. Existing child labor laws and the historical premises underlying them cannot address the entrenched and overwhelming problem of contemporary, migrant child labor. Instead, a new legal framework is needed. This paper is the first to analyze the current crisis and argue that recommending effective solutions requires considering unaccompanied minors’ experiences as children, migrants and low-wage workers. Drawing from the theory of work primacy and international child labor literature, this paper charts a multifaceted course that might realistically address the predicament of migrant child workers who are precariously perched at the intersection of migration and labor.
