Abstract
This article asserts that the combination of AI-assisted writing tools and the immediacy of the NextGen Bar compel changes in legal education’s goals, expectations, and delivery methods. Topping off these forces, the ABA is considering increased requirements for additional experiential credits prior to graduation. These challenging mandates provide opportunities for law faculty, who can construct courses that help students learn through integrated experiential credits while promoting and spreading legal knowledge to organizations that lack legal advice.
Through the example of a Housing Discrimination course, this article demonstrates a method for constructing a course that is resigned to the presence of ChatGPT while it seeks to hone skills that will be tested on the NextGen Bar, all while improving enforcement of civil rights via the federal Fair Housing Act. Building on emerging scholarship in how LRW professors are meeting the challenge of assessing student writing in the presence of ChatGPT, this article identifies opportunities for faculty to address the need to help students develop the client-focused skills they will need to succeed on the NextGen Bar, while promoting efforts to enforce anti-discrimination laws.
This article argues that law faculty should consider ways in which their doctrinal interests can be overlaid upon experiential teaching to benefit organizations that cannot afford a lawyer. A roadmap is provided for faculty to select from the proposed skills NextGen will test to serve as the organizing principle for their course assignments. The article asserts that by integrating essential skills—such as how to interview, communicate with, perform legal research for, and counsel an organizational client—with the substantive law, faculty can enable students to meet the challenges of NextGen.
In the provided example, the client is a non-profit fair housing center that serves at the forefront of fair housing enforcement, but relies on lay advocacy to investigate whether discriminatory housing practices have occurred. While their non-law-trained advocates are well-versed in fair housing concepts, their interactions with housing consumers, housing industry groups, and local governments often raise unique or novel questions of law. Connecting student assignments to these organizations serves an additional need by ensuring some of their questions no longer remain unanswered.
Recommended Citation
Margaret Moore Jackson, Embrace the Chaos: Contributing to Experience in the Face of AI and NextGen, 45 Pace L. Rev. 405 (2025)DOI: https://doi.org/10.58948/2331-3528.2108
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/plr/vol45/iss2/4
