On November 30th, the AALS Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning, and Research digitally published its Fall/Winter 2025 newsletter, featuring micro-essays on topics including “professionalism—from classroom to courtroom.”

Included was Visiting Assistant Professor of Legal Writing Eric W. Shannon’s piece, Beyond Punitive Policy: Deadlines as Ethics-Based Professional Identity Development Opportunities. In it, Professor Shannon invites legal writing faculty to rethink deadlines as opportunities for professional identity development. By connecting due dates to the ethical duties of practicing lawyers, the piece shows how instructors can help students build realistic planning habits, reflect on priorities, and learn how to communicate when emergencies arise. Drawing from experience in student affairs, it encourages a move away from inflexible policies toward approaches that are compassionate, practical, and aligned with real-world lawyering. Deadlines, when reframed, become a powerful teaching tool for client-centered professionalism and student well-being.

The full newsletter is available from the AALS Section on LWRR (pdf).