Bespoke Pedagogy

Curriculum Analysis & Development

AI can help with legal writing curricula. For example, input your course objectives like "Students will draft persuasive motion briefs" and receive a semester plan that progressively builds necessary skills. It will map prerequisite skills like case synthesis, counter-argument analysis, and persuasive framing. The AI then suggests how to sequence these skills across the semester, including specific exercises and assessments for each stage.

Example: When planning a brief-writing unit, input successful sample briefs and your grading criteria. The AI will break down the briefs' components and suggest a teaching sequence - from basic legal analysis to sophisticated persuasive techniques. It might recommend starting with issue statements, then progressing to argument headings, before tackling complete argument sections.

Lesson Planning

Give it your learning objective for the day, and GAI can generate a complete lesson structure including opening exercises, skill demonstrations, and practice opportunities.

Example: For teaching rule synthesis, tell the AI you have 75 minutes and want students to synthesize rules from three cases. It will suggest timing blocks, provide practice exercises, and offer alternative approaches if students struggle with the concept.

Assessment Planning

AI tools can design assessments that target specific legal writing skills while maintaining consistent difficulty levels across different fact patterns. They excel at creating variations of similar problems to test the same skills in different contexts.

Example: For teaching motion practice, the AI could generate related fact patterns about personal jurisdiction - one involving an e-commerce dispute, another about social media defamation, and a third concerning interstate real estate transactions. Each tests the same analytical framework but requires students to apply it to different scenarios.

Skill Integration Planning

AI helps ensure skills build logically throughout the semester. Tell it your major assignments, and it identifies opportunities to integrate multiple skills within single exercises.

Example: When teaching persuasive writing, input your final assignment requirements. The AI suggests how to combine citation practice, rule synthesis, and counter-argument analysis within single exercises, maximizing student practice time.

Here are some suggested prompts for you to try out. 

Creating New Exercises 

AI transforms course material creation by generating customized exercises, examples, and practice materials. Input your teaching objective and preferred format, and receive tailored content that matches your pedagogical goals. The AI adapts materials for different skill levels, learning styles, and specific legal writing challenges.

For citation practice, tell the AI your preferred citation style and jurisdiction. It generates exercises using real cases, statutes, and regulations. Request variations ranging from incomplete citations for correction to citation matching exercises. The system can create progressive difficulty sets that begin with basic book citations and advance to complex short form variations.

Document Templates

AI excels at creating document templates and writing frameworks. Input successful examples of memos, briefs, or client letters, and the AI generates customizable templates that highlight key components and common pitfalls. These templates include embedded instructions, example text, and self-check questions throughout the document.

Example: When you need a template for teaching persuasive point headings, the AI creates a framework showing various heading styles, with annotations explaining the rhetorical function of each component. Include sample fact patterns, and it generates multiple heading variations demonstrating different persuasive techniques.

Student Support

Use AI to analyze student writing patterns to identify specific areas needing improvement. While it's not great at finding trends on it's own, if you comment on student papers, you can input those comments to GenAI and have it identify patterns that you've spotted in the student work. Then use those patterns for personalized intervention strategies. For students struggling with rule synthesis, it can create exercises that progressively build synthesis skills. 

For advanced students, the AI can generate sophisticated exercises combining multiple skills. These might include multi-issue analysis problems, complex procedural contexts, novel legal questions requiring creative analysis, and policy-based arguments. Each exercise builds upon previous skills while introducing new challenges.

The great part is that it does all this almost instantaneously. You can generate alternative examples of legal concepts, create quick practice exercises, or receive different explanation approaches. The system suggests real-world applications and develops impromptu hypotheticals to illustrate key points.

Example: When teaching statement of facts, ask the AI to instantly generate multiple versions of the same fact pattern. It can create a chronological version, a witness-based version, and an issue-focused version to demonstrate organizational choices.

Here are some suggested prompts for you to try out.

Adherence to Formatting and Structural Norms

AI can generate a sample memo that strictly adheres to the formatting and structural norms typically expected in legal writing. We've found that it's not great at strict adherence to IRAC and CREAC without significant prompting, but you can get it there.

Comprehensive Legal Analysis

Based on the specifics of a legal problem or case, AI can draft a comprehensive legal analysis that covers the issue at hand in depth. By inputting key details and desired focus areas into the AI system, educators can receive a draft that incorporates the necessary statutory and case law references. While these may need to be double-checked for accuracy and relevance, they can serve as a valuable starting point and reduce the burden on educators to draft these complex analyses manually.

Show Common Mistakes

AI can be programmed to intentionally include common errors or weaknesses in reasoning, structure, or citation for pedagogical purposes. During the in-class critique, these intentional mistakes serve as points of discussion, guiding students on what to avoid in their own writing. This approach is particularly useful for educators who aim to teach not just what constitutes good legal writing but also what pitfalls to avoid.

Dynamic and Customizable Content

AI-generated sample memos can be easily updated or customized to focus on different aspects of legal writing, such as argumentation, citation styles, or clarity of language. If a professor wishes to focus on a specific skill set, such as effective use of precedent in arguments, AI can produce a sample that emphasizes this aspect, thereby serving the immediate educational objective.

Offering Diverse Perspectives

One of the limitations of manually crafted sample answers is that they often reflect the perspectives and biases of the individual educator. AI, especially if programmed thoughtfully, can offer multiple perspectives on the same issue. For instance, the system could generate one memo arguing in favor of a particular legal interpretation and another arguing against it, thereby enriching the class critique process with diverse viewpoints.

Instantaneous Generation for Real-Time Use

Perhaps one of the most significant advantages of using AI for this purpose is the speed at which it can generate content. In a dynamic classroom setting where time is of the essence, being able to instantly generate a sample memo for immediate critique can be highly advantageous.

Here are some suggested prompts for you to try out.

GAI can help with the laborious tasks of creating major writing assignments, like Memo and Brief problems. 

AI-Enhanced Document Creation

• Drafting Hypothetical Case Transcripts: AI can generate realistic transcripts for trial or appellate advocacy exercises. By inputting specific case details, legal issues, and character profiles, LRW professors can use AI to create detailed and authentic-looking transcripts. This not only saves time but also provides students with a practical tool to analyze and reference in their legal writing.

  • For instance, AI can simulate a witness testimony based on a given fact pattern, which students can then use to practice drafting direct and cross-examination questions or to write a trial brief.

• Developing Fact Patterns and Evidence: Crafting intricate fact patterns and corresponding pieces of evidence is a cornerstone of legal writing assignments. AI can assist in generating complex, yet coherent, fact scenarios that are legally relevant and challenging. Additionally, AI can create realistic evidence documents, such as contracts, emails, or medical records, which students must analyze and incorporate into their legal arguments.

  • You can even use AI to add fun or interesting elements to your problems like pictures, songs, and movies. 

  • This approach not only enhances the realism of the writing assignments but also helps students develop critical skills in evidence analysis and argumentation.

• Customizing Problem-Based Learning Materials: AI can tailor legal problems to align with specific course objectives or current legal issues. By inputting parameters related to the legal topic, jurisdiction, and level of complexity, AI can generate unique legal problems that are both educational and engaging.

  • This customization allows for a diverse range of problems, ensuring that students are exposed to various areas of law and different types of legal writing.

Here are some suggested prompts for you to try out.

• Feedback and Revision: AI can provide initial feedback on student drafts, highlighting areas for improvement such as issues with clarity, organization, or legal reasoning. While it cannot replace the nuanced feedback from a professor, AI can offer a first layer of review, allowing students to refine their drafts before submission.

• [Note from Susan Tanner]: I've not found GAI particularly helpful for feedback about content on its own, but I do use it to "language out" the comments I've made. So, I start by assessing student work using the rubric, making a few notes for myself, and then feeding what I've written into ChatGPT. I've created a special GPT for commenting so that it remembers to add positive comments and to phrase everything in a supportive way that fosters student agency, even if I forget to do so myself. 

Here are some suggested prompts for you to try out.

If you're looking for a memo problem that incorporates AI issues, here's one about celebrity deepfakes.

The rest of these are more general resources about AI and the Law.

• Here is a chapter Susan Tanner wrote that gives a quick introduction to some emerging issues with AI and the Law. 

• And two activities that build on the chapter:

  • Deepfakes

  • AI Bias