For those of you with young children, you may recognize this title from the popular kid’s show Wonder Pets where, before embarking on an adventure to rescue a pet in trouble, the team chants the familiar song (“What’s gonna work? Teamwork!”) over and over.  But teamwork isn’t limited to Wonder Pets and Paw Patrol; it can be exceedingly effective in legal education as well.  My entire career in legal education has been spent teaching in the team-based programs of legal writing and academic support.  A regular refrain from colleagues around the country is that teams do not function well.  This is not a problem unique to a particular school or specific directors; rather, I think it demonstrates the reality that working on a team is not always easy.  But teamwork is always a worthwhile pursuit for our students, and ourselves as academics.  Successful academic support and writing programs are often those that, regardless of program model, function as a team.  This essay sets out some observations on how to work well in teams, based on more than twenty years of experience with team teaching. ​

In the late 1970s, Edward Packard created a unique literary experience that allowed the reader to sit in the driver’s seat of the story, making choices about the main character’s actions to shape the plot’s outcome.  These wildly popular books, known as Choose Your Own Adventure, are lauded for capturing young readers’ attention by harnessing their innate creativity.  This interactive genre has stood the test of time and even expanded, now appearing in grown-up titles such as My Lady’s Choosing, an interactive romance novel, and interactive YouTube videos that allow viewers to choose the course of action. ​

​The ubiquitous question on law school campuses today is: what does it take to help graduates succeed on the bar exam? The responses differ depending on who you ask, and many of those responses are more reflective of wishful thinking than long-term planning. Despite the wishes of many law school administrators there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and bar success cannot be accomplished in one semester and $500, or even two semesters and $5000. Bar success is built brick by brick, semester by semester, over the course of a law school career.