Faculty Spotlight: Joshua Jones

Since joining the California Western faculty in 2021, Professor Joshua Jones has made an indelible mark on the community. As a 1L Legal Skills and Legal Writing professor, he dedicates his time to developing personal relationships with his students, helping them acclimate to the rigors of law school. He also puts his award-winning fiction writing talent to work creating realistic scenarios for students to hone their analytical skills. When he’s not teaching, Professor Jones is the Co-Director of CWSL’s Law, Justice, and Technology Initiative (LJTI), which launched last October to, in his words, “create a powerhouse law school, blending technology and social justice.”

Professor Jones joined us for a Q & A, sharing how he’s gone from a small town Alabaman to a first-generation college graduate with a degree in music education to civil rights lawyer on the front lines of LGBTQ+ rights to legal writing professor and LJTI Co-Director.

You studied music education in undergrad. What do you play? And what motivated the shift in your career? 

When you’re a music education major, you have to learn to play everything, so I can play pretty much every instrument. Wind instruments are my thing. Saxophone and oboe. I also play piano. I perform with the Hillcrest wind ensemble and with Sax Diego, a saxophone choir. I just love it all so much.

As for my career change, it was toward the end of my undergrad program that a music theory professor posted an article that said Music Ed majors had the highest acceptance rate to medical and law school the prior year. I immediately thought, “Oh, I’ll be an entertainment lawyer!”

After a few years of practicing, I found that I missed teaching, so I enrolled in the University of New Hampshire’s J.D. and Master of Education program. The two for me are always connected— law is a teaching profession. Every day, you’re educating yourself, your clients, opposing counsel, judges, juries. I try to instill in my students that as lawyers, we have to be self-regulated learners. You’ve got to be teaching yourself every day.

You worked with the ACLU of Florida and Equality Florida on LGBTQ+ issues and have written extensively about Title IX protections for transgender people, among much else. What do you find most rewarding about civil rights advocacy?

Well, I feel lucky to have gotten where I’ve gotten. I didn’t know a lawyer until I got to law school. I come from a small town in the northeast corner of Alabama, where we didn’t have a red light. I was the first person in my immediate family to graduate from college. I feel obligated to pay it forward and help marginalized people; I feel called to service in this profession. As a gay man, it was and is extremely important for me to be involved in the LGBTQ+ movement. When I moved to Florida, there was a proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage. I wanted equality for myself and thought, Who’s going to fight, if not me?

You spent much of your early career in the South. What drew you to California Western? 

I’d gotten to know the legal writing team here and was impressed by what they were doing and eager to join them. And when I realized Sean Scott was the Dean, I knew I had to be here. I knew her work, and I’d seen her speak. She is so well respected across the academy, and deservingly so.

You are on the front lines with 1L’s, teaching legal writing and legal skills. How do you help them adjust to the steep learning curve?

I try to create a collaborative space in the classroom. I look at myself as a facilitator for learning, as opposed to being the fountainhead of knowledge. My students all come from such different backgrounds; we have a lot to learn from each other.

I feel grateful as a 1L teacher to be able to do some of the early handholding, to teach students who may be the first in their families to go to law school all of the hidden legal skills of etiquette and networking.

With legal writing, I make it clear right away that we’re starting with a fresh slate, building a completely new skillset. I tell my students that I came out of undergrad with a 4.0 and had always had my writing praised, but I had a rude awakening when I started with legal writing. The sooner students realize they’re starting from a new place, the better they do. Because the legal writing process is a key to build analytical skills, and it’s entirely different than any other genre.

You’re also an accomplished fiction writer – do you find ways to bring your penchant for creative writing into the classroom?

Absolutely! I create all of my hypotheticals. I love creating the stories and characters for them, building believable fact patterns.

My background in fiction helps me create complex characters in my problems. This summer term, I wanted to incorporate Native American culture into a problem. I used Merriweather v. Hartop as a model – a professor in Ohio who didn’t want to use students’ transgender pronouns. In my scenario, a community college is considering adding a land acknowledgement policy, but they ultimately reject it. As a protest, the students adopt Indigenous names and demand that the professor use them. The professor refuses, kicks them out of class, and is fired for it. He files a discrimination suit claiming his academic freedom has been violated.

Students had to really work to understand the plaintiff’s case, even if they didn’t want to empathize with him. I actually didn’t realize how challenging a problem it was, but they did so well with it. Afterward, I told them that getting through that assignment, they’ll be able to do anything having to do with the First Amendment.

You’re the Co-Program Director of CWSL’s Law, Justice, and Technology Initiative. What was the motivation to develop the Initiative? What are you most looking forward to this year and the upcoming years?

It was Dean Scott’s idea; she knows that there is a need for this type of project in the region. The tech industry is booming – it’s a no-brainer that we should be building a powerhouse program that blends the law, technology and social justice. We’re at the forefront because no school has synthesized the social justice aspect of these issues. It’s a unique niche we can occupy within the industry.  

I’m looking forward to our October seminar, which will be an annual event now. Our topic this year is “Criminal Justice and AI.” Fitting again because San Diego is leading the test market for these technologies, with “smart” streetlights, with AI providing statistics on crime solving and automatically scanning license plates. Students need to be aware of what’s happening.

In the spring, I’ll be teaching a 1L elective called “AI Law and Practice.” We’ll be looking at the EU’s AI law that just went into place, studying how it will that affect US businesses, analyzing terms of service agreements with tech companies. We’ll be using AI as the platform to understand fundamental statutory and regulatory concepts.  

What are three recommendations (books, media, apps) you’d give current and aspiring law students? 

First, Stephen King’s On Writing. It’s a fantastic book. Everyone should read it.  

Before first-years get here, they should be reading John Steinbeck. The thing about his writing is that it packs a lot of punch in a few simple sentences. That’s what we want to train in legal writing. Clear. Concise. To the point.

All students should pay attention to the ABA Journal and read about what happened this week in the law. It’s important to stay in touch with what’s happening in the market. Everyone comes to law school with a dream of being a certain kind of lawyer, but most of the time, you’re going to do what the market is asking for. If the economy is bad, you’re probably not going to be working in real estate. You might be in family law or bankruptcy. So, it’s essential to understand what the market is demanding.

And the last recommendation I make to my students is “Listen to me: the syllabus, the syllabus, the syllabus.”