While acknowledging the “black box” nature of these systems, we’ll explore their linguistic and machine learning foundations in accessible language. We’ll demonstrate the free, open access “Law Professor’s AI Sandbox,” showing how a “playground” approach fosters experimentation and critical thinking. Attendees will gain understanding of GenAI’s technical foundations, strategies for experimental approaches, and concrete classroom integration examples. This webinar empowers legal educators to confidently engage with GenAI tools, ensuring these technologies enhance rather than undermine legal education and practice.
Tracy L.M. Norton, Erick Vincent Anderson Professorship, Assistant Professor of Law, LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center
Professor Tracy L. M. Norton, a national leader in legal education, currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Law at the LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center. She has taught legal research and writing at LSU Law since 2022. Her distinguished career showcases a blend of innovative teaching, scholarly excellence, and visionary leadership in the integration of technology and neuroscience in legal education.Before joining the Law Center, she served as an Associate Professor of Legal Process at Touro University Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in New York, where she designed and taught courses in the traditional and hybrid J.D. programs and contributed to a broad range of institutional initiatives. Prior to that, she served on the faculties of South Texas College of Law and Texas Tech University School of Law. Going beyond traditional law school teaching methods, Professor Norton uses team-based learning, collaborative writing technology, micro-conferences, and a multimedia resource approach to encourage student engagement and success. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a forward-thinking mindset in a variety of teaching spaces, including in-person and fully asynchronous courses. During the coronavirus pandemic, she assisted faculty throughout the country in adapting to asynchronous and synchronous online course delivery. Professor Norton began integrating technology into legal education in 1998 with the co-development of the Interactive Citation Workstation, hosted by LexisNexis. The ICW was the first digital teaching tool in widespread use in legal education and is currently used in more than half of American law schools. She has recently emerged as a thought leader in incorporating generative AI literacy into law practice and education. Her presentations on the ethical use of AI, leveraging AI for storytelling, and crafting compelling human stories using AI have been well-received by both lawyers and law professors nationwide. Professor Norton earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas and her J.D. from Baylor University School of Law, concentrating in Criminal Practice.
Susan Tanner, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law
Dr. Susan Tanner brings a distinctive blend of academic excellence, technological innovation, and practical legal experience to the Brandeis School of Law. Her work at the intersection of artificial intelligence, linguistics and law has established her as an international authority on generative AI in legal practice. She studied law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law and rhetoric and composition at Arizona State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Carnegie Mellon University, where she collaborated with leading scholars in rhetoric and digital humanities, machine learning, cognitive brain science and law and linguistics. Her doctoral dissertation combined computational and corpus linguistics, and argument theory to analyze legal opinions as a genre.Dr. Tanner has been teaching and researching the science of learning for more than two decades. At Carnegie Mellon University, she taught courses in professional writing, privacy law and writing about public problems, and served as Assistant Director of First-Year Writing, where she led evidence-based curriculum redesign and program assessment initiatives. Her scholarship on legal education has appeared in numerous legal pedagogy journals including The Second Draft, Prompt and Perspectives, and she is a co-author and co-editor for “Legal Argumentation,” an open educational resource textbook for legal writing. Dr. Tanner’s legal scholarship focuses on privacy law, artificial intelligence, and law, rhetoric and corpus linguistics. Her articles have been published in numerous journals including Creighton Law Review, Mitchell Hamline Law Review and the Rutgers Computer and Technology Law Journal, and she also contributed to a Cambridge University Press edited collection. Her work in comparative law encompasses civil law systems, Navajo legal traditions and legal cultural competence and linguistic accessibility in Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Before joining UofL, Dr. Tanner practiced at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where she specialized in corporate law, mergers and acquisitions and legal analytics. Prior to her legal career, she held executive positions in the modeling and talent industry, and taught and tutored high school.
