Learn more about my academic research, empirical research, and interdisciplinary scholarship.
Articles
Talk As Writing Catalyst (forthcoming article)
Legal education teaches students to think like lawyers but neglects its duty to teach students to speak like lawyers. Drawing on multi-disciplinary research, this Article argues that talk, including internal self-talk, external self-explanation, elaboration, and discussion, is not a peripheral social skill but a cognitive engine that drives critical reading, sophisticated writing, and legal professional identity formation.
Metacognitive talk strategies like elaboration and self-explanation reduce cognitive load during reading and writing, deepen comprehension of complex texts, and specifically benefit weaker readers. Talk also functions as oral rehearsal for writing as speaking generates more words, ideas, and inferences per unit of time than writing, and oral rehearsal before drafting measurably improves the coherence, cohesion, and sophistication of written work.
This Article offers concrete reforms that firmly establish oral communication as an explicit learning outcome in every law school course, move talk opportunities before rather than after writing assignments are finalized, restructure student conferences to center student rather than faculty talk, eliminate prohibitions on peer discussion, and incorporate talk-based checkpoints throughout the reading, writing and assessment process.
Law Schools As Anti-Dialogic Spaces
Talk is learning’s secret weapon. Yet, talk is chronically undervalued as a learning tool. Dialogic talk, a rigorous, student-centered discursive approach, extends classroom dialogue beyond information exchange to stimulate critical thinking. Talk bolsters thought, generates ideas, expands knowledge, and crystalizes concepts to solidify understanding. Talk powers classroom dialogue through questions, discussion, argument, and interthinking, facilitating the exchange of ideas and information leading to deep learning.
Law school classrooms are paradoxically immersed in talk yet simultaneously anti-dialogic spaces. Despite the Socratic method’s reliance on dialogue, talk in law school is teacher-controlled and interrogative, muting student voices through hierarchical power dynamics.
This Article advocates for the transformative potential of dialogic talk in legal education. Drawing on empirical research, this Article proposes that rigorous discursive pedagogy, centered on dialogic talk, supports law students’ cognitive development, reading comprehension, critical analysis, and engagement. Dialogic spaces leverage academic rigor while creating collective, reciprocal learning communities where students can express their viewpoints, critique others, and develop their legal reasoning.
The Science of Legal Synthesis
Synthesis is a key component of “thinking like a lawyer,” a skill essential to legal analysis, legal education, law practice, and legal decision-making. Yet synthesis is as much art as logic, subject to the eye of the beholder to judge whether synthesis is “good” or feels right. Despite its necessity to legal analysis, synthesis is performed subconsciously, poorly understood, and difficult to teach, frustrating novices and experts alike. This Article fills a gap in the existing literature by applying cognitive science to understand synthesis in legal analysis and how it can be learned, taught, and evaluated.
This Article explains how recent advances in cognitive science sharpen our ability to understand and perform legal synthesis, express it in our writing, explain the process to others, and gauge its reliability. The systematic application of the principles of categorization, abstraction, and induction create legal synthesis that is logically sound and inductively reliable. An understanding of the cognitive science of legal synthesis has a broad reach: all legal educators – from doctrinal to skills faculty, academic success, legal research and writing – can elevate their legal synthesis from subconscious to intentional abstraction.
Let Them Talk: Cognitive & Social Benefits of Elaboration
Prohibiting law students from talking about writing assignments with peers deprives them of positive learning benefits while fueling negative learning behaviors. Talking about writing assignments with other law students engages cognitive benefits of elaboration, social benefits of collaboration, and supports student autonomy.
This Article focuses on the cognitive and social benefits of letting students talk about all legal writing assignments outside of the classroom. Allowing students to talk about all writing assignments, including graded written assignments, outside of the classroom leverages cognitive benefits of elaboration, the discovery of additional layers of meaning, and deeper structural understanding of material. In addition, allowing students to talk about all writing assignments outside of the classroom provides students with necessary social connection, collaboration, and autonomy support, especially during remote and hybrid learning necessitated by the COVID pandemic. Talking about writing mimics the practice of law and ushers students into the discourse of the legal community.
Empirical research from a Law Student Study Habit Survey shows that practice application of the law through self-testing, self-quizzing, and elaborative strategies positively correlates with academic success in law school, while reading and briefing cases, weak critical reading skills, and rote memorization of rules without practice applying the law negatively correlates with academic success in law school.
Smarter Law Learning: Using Cognitive Science to Maximize Law Learning
Students often rely on improvised and ineffective learning strategies like rereading, cramming, and rote memorization, which are especially ill suited to the demands of legal education requiring higher order thinking and analysis. Inversely, retrieval practice, the testing effect, and periodic review create more effective long-term learning and higher order thinking and analytical skills, yet are counter-intuitive and not always used by students. Luckily, help is available: legal educators can leverage cognitive and learning science to maximize law learning.
This Article explains how legal educators and students can leverage cognitive science for smarter law learning. It first summarizes key research findings on effective study and learning strategies, and then suggests simple, practical, and easily implemented ways to integrate them into the law school classroom.
Other Research Projects
PLEDGE Research Fellowship – 2025-2026 Cohort
The Professionals in Legal Education Developing Greater Equity (PLEDGE) Fellowship aims to support law school professionals and to help foster diverse, equitable, and inclusive learning environments within law schools.
PLEDGE, a 14-month professional development program and program-based research project, targets law school administrators, faculty members, and other similarly experienced professionals. Teams of two Fellows per law school undertake program assessments called Capstones, using empirical research methods focusing on Admission and Access, Academic Performance, or Bar Exam Performance.
Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center Capstone: Studying the experiences of first-generation students at the law school, particularly pertaining to academic preparedness; navigation of the “hidden curriculum” within legal education; and sense of belonging.
Jennifer Cooper, Assistant Professor of Law
Aimee Self Pittman, Librarian and Assistant Professor of Legal Research
Law Student Study Habits Survey
The Law Student Study Habits Survey is a comprehensive empirical research instrument that asks first-year students to self-report on their law learning, study, and exam-taking skills and strategies. The results are then correlated with law student law grades, LSAT scores, and undergraduate GPA. The survey was initially developed in 2016 and is being updated to better reflect changes in technology and changes in law student behaviors post-COVID.
The revised survey will be administered to first-year law students in 2027.
