Course design for a new age — from timeshighereducation.com by Campus contributors , Laura Duckett
Learn how to design courses that respond to the evolving needs of both students and employers

At a time when the value of a degree is being called into question, many argue that teaching subject knowledge is no longer enough. University courses must be flexible and embed work training and skills development to serve today’s students. This collection of resources is a guide to designing courses that respond to the evolving needs of both students and employers.


Teaching is a verb: what sets good teachers apart — from timeshighereducation.com by William J. Owen
Reflection is what moves teaching beyond performance and towards continuous improvement, writes William Owen

What sets good teachers apart is their willingness to continually reflect, learn and grow alongside their students. Great teaching is not a destination, it is an ongoing practice of curiosity, humility and intentionality. And perhaps that is what makes it so challenging and so rewarding.


How to set your students up to write compelling op-eds — from timeshighereducation.com by Arafat Reza and Shahariar Sadat
Help students develop their writing and refine their arguments by publishing opinion pieces. Find advice for supporting student writers here

Academics are ideally placed to bridge this gap. Beyond teaching disciplinary knowledge, they can help students develop the confidence and practical skills needed to engage in public discourse. Here, we discuss practical ways in which academics can encourage students to write op-eds that inform people, influence law and policymaking, and inspire positive change in society. Plus, find five tips for teaching students to write compelling arguments.


Rethinking course design to enliven student engagement — from timeshighereducation.com by
To foster students’ meaningful learning, educators should be using class time to maximise the benefits of the in-person experience, as Nasreen Sultana explains

We landed on four practical strategies to make learning more interactive, relevant and student-centred. Although developed in a management classroom, these tips can be adapted across disciplines.

 

Exceptional Videos of Authors Reading Their Books Aloud for Young Students — from edutopia.org by Kristin Rydholm
These 14 books can help teachers celebrate student writing by weaving literacy and social and emotional learning into the school day.

This classroom scenario is an example of how finishing a piece of writing is a dual celebration—an ending and a beginning. A published piece of writing means crossing a finish line as the culminating event within the writing process, but it is also a starting line, where a story begins a journey of its own—being read, seen, heard, and shared by others.

Who better to assist with modeling these transitional and celebratory moments than 14 professional authors of picture books?

Where to start
Featured below are links to exceptional authors and author/illustrators reading their picture books. Watching these videos, a child can see and hear the diverse faces and voices of authors who have prioritized stories about kids like them.


4 Ways to Encourage Great Questions in the Science Classroom — from edutopia.org by Katie Budrow
Here’s how a middle school teacher guides students to proactively ask and answer questions like ‘why does that happen?’

Narrow, prescribed tasks are known as convergent tasks. Define the parts of a cell has a specific answer. Sometimes, convergent tasks make the most sense. But whenever possible, I prefer to use broader divergent tasks, which allow for multiple ways to approach the learning. Describe the different ways that cell parts can work together to form a system is an example of a divergent task.

Divergent tasks inherently drive more student questions, since the answers aren’t just one-and-done. Divergence promotes “deep thinking, requiring students to analyze and evaluate concepts,” according to a study on the subject. Students are not just trying to find the “best” answer—they’re working toward a more complex concept.


A First-Week Routine That Gets Middle School Students Thinking Like Scientists — from edutopia.org by Bexaida Buzzie
Here’s a day-by-day plan for guiding your students to start the year by asking questions. Just resist the urge to answer them.

I realized I was spending so much of my time going over my classroom rules that I forgot that the students were there to learn how to learn.

Once I took the pressure off myself, everything changed. Instead of focusing on perfection, I started to focus on curiosity and fun. Instead of cramming information and reaping frustration, I slowed down.

Here’s what my first five days look like, and how they build a foundation for scientific thinking.


15 Effective Ways to Manage Dysregulated Students — from edutopia.org by Andrew Boryga
Teachers are seeing more big emotions and disruptive behavior in early elementary classrooms. These practical strategies can help youngsters reflect, reset, and repair.

While many experts cite the pandemic’s role in creating skill deficiencies, it’s only a part of the story. Educators also point to major changes in the culture around child rearing, pointing to issues like rising screen time, less play, and fewer opportunities for face-to-face interaction—“developmental needs that no digital program, however sophisticated, can fully replicate,” writes elementary school teacher Cara Zelas.

Serious behavioral issues and developmental concerns require broad support from administrators, specialists, and families. But for everyday moments that derail lessons—a child melting down, refusing directions, or struggling to rejoin the group—many teachers find that simple practices, consistently applied, can help turn big feelings into moments of growth instead of lost instructional time.

 

A Writer’s Toolkit — from wondertools.substack.com by Mallary Tenore Tarpley and Jeremy Caplan
Useful tools for every stage

Per Jeremy Caplan: My friend and colleague Mallary Tenore Tarpley writes an excellent newsletter, Write at the Edge, with helpful writing tips and best practices. She’s a professorjournalist, and author who has written for The New York TimesThe Washington Post, and other outlets. She recently published an important debut book, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.

Mallary recently interviewed me about writing tools. She wrote up a summary of our conversation, highlighting the tools I talked about. I’m turning the rest of this post over to her summary.

 

A screenplay written by a Calvin Prison Initiative student while incarcerated is now screening at film festivals across the country. — from linkedin.com by the Calvin Prison Initiative


From DSC:
I used to work with Calvin film and media professor Geert Heetebrij — who was behind this endeavor. I went to the same church that he and his family attended. I can’t say enough good things about him. He’s just fantastic! By the way, he was there for me when twelve of us didn’t survive the fourth round of layoffs at Calvin (back then it was Calvin College). He periodically — but consistently — checked in on me as the job search continued. He prayed for me (and for my family). His steadfast encouragement meant a lot to me.

I also worked with Sam Smartt, who was also mentioned in the article. Go Geert! Go Sam! And go Calvin for continuing to do your prison ministries! You were one of the first to do this, if not thee first.


 

 

Summer 2026 with the Michigan Learning Channel:
2026 Summer Activity Books Now Available!

Get ready for a summer full of learning, fun, and skill-building! The Michigan Learning Channel’s 2026 Summer Activity Books are now on sale—created to help kids stay engaged, curious, and confident all summer long.

.

 

Let AI Interview You — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan & Jay Dixit
A smarter way to get past the blank page

There’s nothing wrong with using AI to get answers to your questions. But there’s another mode of interacting with AI that many people never consider — one I find much more useful for my creative process.

Here’s what I do instead: I flip the script and let the AI ask the questions. Instead of prompting AI, I get the AI to prompt me.

 

Something Big Is Happening — from shumer.dev by Matt Shumer; see below from the BIG Questions Institute, where I got this article from

I’ve spent six years building an AI startup and investing in the space. I live in this world. And I’m writing this for the people in my life who don’t… my family, my friends, the people I care about who keep asking me “so what’s the deal with AI?” and getting an answer that doesn’t do justice to what’s actually happening. I keep giving them the polite version. The cocktail-party version. Because the honest version sounds like I’ve lost my mind. And for a while, I told myself that was a good enough reason to keep what’s truly happening to myself. But the gap between what I’ve been saying and what is actually happening has gotten far too big. The people I care about deserve to hear what is coming, even if it sounds crazy.


They’ve now done it. And they’re moving on to everything else.

The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from “helpful tool” to “does my job better than I do”, is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I’ve seen in just the last couple of months, I think “less” is more likely.

The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago. The debate about whether AI is “really getting better” or “hitting a wall” — which has been going on for over a year — is over. It’s done. Anyone still making that argument either hasn’t used the current models, has an incentive to downplay what’s happening, or is evaluating based on an experience from 2024 that is no longer relevant. I don’t say that to be dismissive. I say it because the gap between public perception and current reality is now enormous, and that gap is dangerous… because it’s preventing people from preparing.


What “Something Big Is Happening” Means for Schools — from/by the BIG Questions Institute
Matt Shumer’s newsletter post Something Big is Happening has been read over 80 million times within the week when it was published, on February 9.

Still, it’s worth reading Shumer’s post. Given the claims and warnings in Something Big Is Happening (and countless other articles), how would you truly, honestly respond to these questions:

  • What will the purpose of school be in 5 years?
  • What are we doing now that we must leave behind right away?
  • What can we leave behind gradually?
  • What does rigor look like in this AI-powered world?
  • Does our strategy look like making adjustments at the margins or are we preparing our students for a fundamental shift?
  • What is our definition of success? How do the the implications of AI and jobs (and other important forces, from geopolitical shifts and climate change, to mental health needs and shifting generational values) impact the outcomes we prioritize? What is the story of success we want to pass on to our students and wider community?
 

6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2026 — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

It’s that time again ~ the annual round-up of tech tools we think are worth a look this year. This year I really feel like there’s something for everyone: history teachers, math and science teachers, people who run makerspaces, teachers interested in music or podcasting, writing teachers, special ed teachers, and anyone whose course content could be made clearer through graphic organizers.


Also somewhat relevant here, see:


 

Why Parents Aren’t Reading to Kids, and What It Means for Young Students — from the74million.org by Jessika Harkay
A recent study found less than half of children are read to daily. The consequences are serious for early learners who enter school unprepared.

For children not getting the benefits of being read to at home, the opportunity gap has widened, with those young students entering school unprepared compared to those who have been read to.

“The gap really begins very, very early on. I think we underestimate how large a gap we’re already seeing in kindergarten,” said Susan Neuman, professor of childhood and literacy education at New York University, adding she recently visited a New York City kindergarten classroom and saw some children who only knew two letters compared to others who were prepared to read phrases.

A 2019 Ohio State University study found a 5-year-old child who is read to daily would be exposed to nearly 300,000 more words than one who isn’t read to regularly.

 

News deserts hit new high and 50 million have limited access to local news, study finds — from medill.northwestern.edu
Federal funding cuts to public broadcasting may accelerate local news crisis

EVANSTON, ILL. — The number of local news deserts in the U.S. jumped to record levels this year as newspaper closures continued unabated, and funding cuts to public radio could worsen the problem in coming months, according to the Medill State of Local News Report 2025 released today.

While the local news crisis deepened overall, Medill researchers found cause for optimism — more than 300 local news startups have launched over the past five years, 80% of which were digital-only outlets.

For the fourth consecutive year, the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications conducted a months-long, county-by-county survey of local news organizations to identify trends in the rapidly morphing local media landscape. Researchers looked at local newspapers, digital-only sites, ethnic media and public broadcasters.


               


How Local Newsrooms Are Rethinking Political Coverage — from adigaskell.org

For decades, election reporting in the U.S. has leaned heavily on the “horse race”—who’s up, who’s down, and who’s raising the most money. But new research from the University of Kansas suggests that this approach is starting to shift, thanks to a national training program aimed at helping journalists better engage with their communities.

The program, called Democracy SOS, encourages reporters to move beyond headline polls and campaign drama. Instead, it asks them to focus on the issues people care about and explain how those issues are being tackled. In other words: less spectacle, more substance.


Addendum on 11/13/25:

Why Losing Local Newspapers Costs More Than We Think — from adigaskell.org

So why can’t digital journalism fill the gap?
The researchers argue that online media isn’t a true replacement for local reporting. “If you’re in New York writing about San Francisco, you just don’t know the area,” they say. “You don’t have the context. You’re not there.”

Even local online reporters face pressure to chase clicks. “Every journalist now has a global audience,” they explain. “That means the stories that matter most—ones that require digging, patience, and a deep knowledge of the community—often get ignored.”

The takeaway: local newspapers may seem like an old-fashioned idea, but they play a key role in how communities function. And when they vanish, the costs go beyond the news.

 

There is no God Tier video model — from downes.ca by Stephen Downes

From DSC:
Stephen has some solid reflections and asks some excellent questions in this posting, including:

The question is: how do we optimize an AI to support learning? Will one model be enough? Or do we need different models for different learners in different scenarios?


A More Human University: The Role of AI in Learning — from er.educause.edu by Robert Placido
Far from heralding the collapse of higher education, artificial intelligence offers a transformative opportunity to scale meaningful, individualized learning experiences across diverse classrooms.

The narrative surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education is often grim. We hear dire predictions of an “impending collapse,” fueled by fears of rampant cheating, the erosion of critical thinking, and the obsolescence of the human educator.Footnote1 This dystopian view, however, is a failure of imagination. It mistakes the death rattle of an outdated pedagogical model for the death of learning itself. The truth is far more hopeful: AI is not an asteroid coming for higher education. It is a catalyst that can finally empower us to solve our oldest, most intractable problem: the inability to scale deep, engaged, and truly personalized learning.


Claude for Life Sciences — from anthropic.com

Increasing the rate of scientific progress is a core part of Anthropic’s public benefit mission.

We are focused on building the tools to allow researchers to make new discoveries – and eventually, to allow AI models to make these discoveries autonomously.

Until recently, scientists typically used Claude for individual tasks, like writing code for statistical analysis or summarizing papers. Pharmaceutical companies and others in industry also use it for tasks across the rest of their business, like sales, to fund new research. Now, our goal is to make Claude capable of supporting the entire process, from early discovery through to translation and commercialization.

To do this, we’re rolling out several improvements that aim to make Claude a better partner for those who work in the life sciences, including researchers, clinical coordinators, and regulatory affairs managers.


AI as an access tool for neurodiverse and international staff — from timeshighereducation.com by Vanessa Mar-Molinero
Used transparently and ethically, GenAI can level the playing field and lower the cognitive load of repetitive tasks for admin staff, student support and teachers

Where AI helps without cutting academic corners
When framed as accessibility and quality enhancement, AI can support staff to complete standard tasks with less friction. However, while it supports clarity, consistency and inclusion, generative AI (GenAI) does not replace disciplinary expertise, ethical judgement or the teacher–student relationship. These are ways it can be put to effective use:

  • Drafting and tone calibration:
  • Language scaffolding:
  • Structure and templates: ..
  • Summarise and prioritise:
  • Accessibility by default:
  • Idea generation for pedagogy:
  • Translation and cultural mediation:

Beyond learning design: supporting pedagogical innovation in response to AI — from timeshighereducation.com by Charlotte von Essen
To avoid an unwinnable game of catch-up with technology, universities must rethink pedagogical improvement that goes beyond scaling online learning


The Sleep of Liberal Arts Produces AI — from aiedusimplified.substack.com by Lance Eaton, Ph.D.
A keynote at the AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium Conference

This past weekend, I had the honor to be the keynote speaker at a really fantstistic conferece, AI and the Liberal Arts Symposium at Connecticut College. I had shared a bit about this before with my interview with Lori Looney. It was an incredible conference, thoughtfully composed with a lot of things to chew on and think about.

It was also an entirely brand new talk in a slightly different context from many of my other talks and workshops. It was something I had to build entirely from the ground up. It reminded me in some ways of last year’s “What If GenAI Is a Nothingburger”.

It was a real challenge and one I’ve been working on and off for months, trying to figure out the right balance. It’s a work I feel proud of because of the balancing act I try to navigate. So, as always, it’s here for others to read and engage with. And, of course, here is the slide deck as well (with CC license).

 

“A new L&D operating system for the AI Era?” [Hardman] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

From 70/20/10 to 90/10 — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A new L&D operating system for the AI Era?

This week I want to share a hypothesis I’m increasingly convinced of: that we are entering an age of the 90/10 model of L&D.

90/10 is a model where roughly 90% of “training” is delivered by AI coaches as daily performance support, and 10% of training is dedicated to developing complex and critical skills via high-touch, human-led learning experiences.

Proponents of 90/10 argue that the model isn’t about learning less, but about learning smarter by defining all jobs to be done as one of the following:

  • Delegate (the dead skills): Tasks that can be offloaded to AI.
  • Co-Create (the 90%): Tasks which well-defined AI agents can augment and help humans to perform optimally.
  • Facilitate (the 10%): Tasks which require high-touch, human-led learning to develop.

So if AI at work is now both real and material, the natural question for L&D is: how do we design for it? The short answer is to stop treating learning as an event and start treating it as a system.



My daughter’s generation expects to learn with AI, not pretend it doesn’t exist, because they know employers expect AI fluency and because AI will be ever-present in their adult lives.

— Jenny Maxell

The above quote was taken from this posting.


Unlocking Young Minds: How Gamified AI Learning Tools Inspire Fun, Personalized, and Powerful Education for Children in 2025 — from techgenyz.com by Sreyashi Bhattacharya

Table of Contents

Highlight

  • Gamified AI Learning Tools personalize education by adapting the difficulty and content to each child’s pace, fostering confidence and mastery.
  • Engaging & Fun: Gamified elements like quests, badges, and stories keep children motivated and enthusiastic.
  • Safe & Inclusive: Attention to equity, privacy, and cultural context ensures responsible and accessible learning.

How to test GenAI’s impact on learning — from timeshighereducation.com by Thibault Schrepel
Rather than speculate on GenAI’s promise or peril, Thibault Schrepel suggests simple teaching experiments to uncover its actual effects

Generative AI in higher education is a source of both fear and hype. Some predict the end of memory, others a revolution in personalised learning. My two-year classroom experiment points to a more modest reality: Artificial intelligence (AI) changes some skills, leaves others untouched and forces us to rethink the balance.

This indicates that the way forward is to test, not speculate. My results may not match yours, and that is precisely the point. Here are simple activities any teacher can use to see what AI really does in their own classroom.

4. Turn AI into a Socratic partner
Instead of being the sole interrogator, let AI play the role of tutor, client or judge. Have students use AI to question them, simulate cross-examination or push back on weak arguments. New “study modes” now built into several foundation models make this kind of tutoring easy to set up. Professors with more technical skills can go further, design their own GPTs or fine-tuned models trained on course content and let students interact directly with them. The point is the practice it creates. Students learn that questioning a machine is part of learning to think like a professional.


Assessment tasks that support human skills — from timeshighereducation.com by Amir Ghapanchi and Afrooz Purarjomandlangrudi
Assignments that focus on exploration, analysis and authenticity offer a road map for university assessment that incorporates AI while retaining its rigour and human elements

Rethinking traditional formats

1. From essay to exploration 
When ChatGPT can generate competent academic essays in seconds, the traditional format’s dominance looks less secure as an assessment task. The future lies in moving from essays as knowledge reproduction to assessments that emphasise exploration and curation. Instead of asking students to write about a topic, challenge them to use artificial intelligence to explore multiple perspectives, compare outputs and critically evaluate what emerges.

Example: A management student asks an AI tool to generate several risk plans, then critiques the AI’s assumptions and identifies missing risks.


What your students are thinking about artificial intelligence — from timeshighereducation.com by Florencia Moore and Agostina Arbia
GenAI has been quickly adopted by students, but the consequences of using it as a shortcut could be grave. A study into how students think about and use GenAI offers insights into how teaching might adapt

However, when asked how AI negatively impacts their academic development, 29 per cent noted a “weakening or deterioration of intellectual abilities due to AI overuse”. The main concern cited was the loss of “mental exercise” and soft skills such as writing, creativity and reasoning.

The boundary between the human and the artificial does not seem so easy to draw, but as the poet Antonio Machado once said: “Traveller, there is no path; the path is made by walking.”


Jelly Beans for Grapes: How AI Can Erode Students’ Creativity — from edsurge.com by Thomas David Moore

There is nothing new about students trying to get one over on their teachers — there are probably cuneiform tablets about it — but when students use AI to generate what Shannon Vallor, philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh, calls a “truth-shaped word collage,” they are not only gaslighting the people trying to teach them, they are gaslighting themselves. In the words of Tulane professor Stan Oklobdzija, asking a computer to write an essay for you is the equivalent of “going to the gym and having robots lift the weights for you.”


Deloitte will make Claude available to 470,000 people across its global network — from anthropic.com

As part of the collaboration, Deloitte will establish a Claude Center of Excellence with trained specialists who will develop implementation frameworks, share leading practices across deployments, and provide ongoing technical support to create the systems needed to move AI pilots to production at scale. The collaboration represents Anthropic’s largest enterprise AI deployment to date, available to more than 470,000 Deloitte people.

Deloitte and Anthropic are co-creating a formal certification program to train and certify 15,000 of its professionals on Claude. These practitioners will help support Claude implementations across Deloitte’s network and Deloitte’s internal AI transformation efforts.


How AI Agents are finally delivering on the promise of Everboarding: driving retention when it counts most — from premierconstructionnews.com

Everboarding flips this model. Rather than ending after orientation, everboarding provides ongoing, role-specific training and support throughout the employee journey. It adapts to evolving responsibilities, reinforces standards, and helps workers grow into new roles. For high-turnover, high-pressure environments like retail, it’s a practical solution to a persistent challenge.

AI agents will be instrumental in the success of everboarding initiatives; they can provide a much more tailored training and development process for each individual employee, keeping track of which training modules may need to be completed, or where staff members need or want to develop further. This personalisation helps staff to feel not only more satisfied with their current role, but also guides them on the right path to progress in their individual careers.

Digital frontline apps are also ideal for everboarding. They offer bite-sized training that staff can complete anytime, whether during quiet moments on shift or in real time on the job, all accessible from their mobile devices.


TeachLM: insights from a new LLM fine-tuned for teaching & learning — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Six key takeaways, including what the research tells us about how well AI performs as an instructional designer

As I and many others have pointed out in recent months, LLMs are great assistants but very ineffective teachers. Despite the rise of “educational LLMs” with specialised modes (e.g. Anthropic’s Learning Mode, OpenAI’s Study Mode, Google’s Guided Learning) AI typically eliminates the productive struggle, open exploration and natural dialogue that are fundamental to learning.

This week, Polygence, in collaboration with Stanford University researcher Prof Dora Demszky. published a first-of-its-kind research on a new model — TeachLM — built to address this gap.

In this week’s blog post, I deep dive what the research found and share the six key findings — including reflections on how well TeachLM performs on instructional design.


The Dangers of using AI to Grade — from marcwatkins.substack.com by Marc Watkins
Nobody Learns, Nobody Gains

AI as an assessment tool represents an existential threat to education because no matter how you try and establish guardrails or best practices around how it is employed, using the technology in place of an educator ultimately cedes human judgment to a machine-based process. It also devalues the entire enterprise of education and creates a situation where the only way universities can add value to education is by further eliminating costly human labor.

For me, the purpose of higher education is about human development, critical thinking, and the transformative experience of having your ideas taken seriously by another human being. That’s not something we should be in a rush to outsource to a machine.

 

Stanford Law Unveils liftlab, a Groundbreaking AI Initiative Focused on the Legal Profession’s Future — from law.stanford.edu

September 15, 2025 — Stanford, CA — Stanford Law School today announced the launch of the Legal Innovation through Frontier Technology Lab, or liftlab, to explore how artificial intelligence can reshape legal services—not just to make them faster and cheaper, but better and more widely accessible.

Led by Professor Julian Nyarko and Executive Director Megan Ma, liftlab is among the first academic efforts in legal AI to unite research, prototyping, and real-time collaboration with industry. While much of AI innovation in law has so far focused on streamlining routine tasks, liftlab is taking a broader and more ambitious approach. The goal is to tap AI’s potential to fundamentally change the way legal work serves society.


The divergence of law firms from lawyers — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
LLMs’ absorption of legal task performance will drive law firms towards commoditized service hubs while raising lawyers to unique callings as trustworthy legal guides — so long as we do this right.

Generative AI is going to weaken and potentially dissolve that relationship. Law firms will become capable of generating output that can be sold to clients with no lawyer involvement at all.

Right now, it’s possible for an ordinary person to obtain from an LLM like ChatGPT-5 the performance of a legal task — the provision of legal analysis, the production of a legal instrument, the delivery of legal advice — that previously could only be acquired from a human lawyer.

I’m not saying a person should do that. The LLM’s output might be effective and reliable, or it might prove disastrously off-base. But many people are already using LLMs in this way, and in the absence of other accessible options for legal assistance, they will continue to do so.


Why legal professionals need purpose-built agentic AI — from legal.thomsonreuters.com by Frank Schilder with Thomson Reuters Labs

Highlights

  • Professional-grade agentic AI systems are architecturally distinct from consumer chatbots, utilizing domain-specific data and robust verification mechanisms to deliver the high accuracy and reliability essential for legal work, whereas consumer tools prioritize conversational flow using unvetted web data.
  • True agentic AI for legal professionals offers transparent, multi-agent workflows, integrates with authoritative legal databases for verification, and applies domain-specific reasoning to understand legal nuances, unlike traditional chatbots that lack this complexity and autonomy.
  • When evaluating legal AI, professionals should avoid solutions that lack workflow transparency, offer no human checkpoints for oversight, and cannot integrate with professional databases, ensuring the chosen tool enhances, rather than replaces, expert judgment.

How I Left Corporate Law to Become a Legal Tech Entrepreneur — from news.bloomberglaw.com by Adam Nguyen; behind a paywall

If you’re a lawyer wondering whether to take the leap into entrepreneurship, I understand the apprehension that comes with leaving a predictable path. Embracing the fear, uncertainty, challenges, and constant evolution integral to an entrepreneur’s journey has been worth it for me.


Lawyering In The Age Of AI: Why Artificial Intelligence Might Make Lawyers More Human — from abovethelaw.com by Lisa Lang and Joshua Horenstein
AI could rehumanize the legal profession.

AI is already adept at doing what law school trained us to do — identifying risks, spotting issues, and referencing precedent. What it’s not good at is nuance, trust, or judgment — skills that define great lawyering.

When AI handles some of the drudgery — like contract clause spotting and formatting — it gives us something precious back: time. That time forces lawyers to stop hiding behind legalese and impractical analysis. It allows — and even demands — that we communicate like leaders.

Imagine walking into a business meeting and, instead of delivering a 20-page memo, offering a single slide with a recommendation tied directly to company goals. That’s not just good lawyering; that’s leadership. And AI may be the catalyst that gets us there.

AI changes the game. When generative tools can translate clauses into plain English, the old value proposition of complexity begins to crumble. The playing field shifts — from who can analyze the most thoroughly to who can communicate the most clearly.

That’s not a threat. It’s an opportunity — one for lawyers to become better partners to the business by focusing on what matters most: sound judgment delivered in plain language.


 

AI firm Anthropic reaches landmark $1.5B copyright deal with book authors — from washingtonpost.com by Will Oremus; this is a gifted article
The authors hailed the settlement as a win for human creators after they alleged the company downloaded millions of books without permission.

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the popular chatbot Claude, will pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by book publishers and authors, according to documents filed in federal court Friday.

The settlement allows Anthropic to avoid going to trial over claims that it violated copyrights by downloading millions of books without permission and storing digital copies of them. The company will not admit wrongdoing.

 

I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students. — from nytimes.com by Meghan O’Rourke; this is a gifted article.

We need a coherent approach grounded in understanding how the technology works, where it is going and what it will be used for.

From DSC:
I almost feel like Meghan should right the words “this week” or “this month” after the above sentence. Whew! Things are moving fast.

For example, we’re now starting to see more agents hitting the scene — software that can DO things. But that can open up a can of worms too. 

Students know the ground has shifted — and that the world outside the university expects them to shift with it. A.I. will be part of their lives regardless of whether we approve. Few issues expose the campus cultural gap as starkly as this one.ce 

From DSC:
Universities and colleges have little choice but to integrate AI into their programs and offerings. There’s enough pressure on institutions of traditional higher education to prove their worth/value. Students and their families want solid ROI’s. Students know that they are going to need AI-related skills (see the link immediately below for example), or they are going to be left out of the competitive job search process.

A relevant resource here:

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian