Brian Wall

What are you working on right now?

In my day job, now that scholarships and financial aid are (mostly) fixed for the Spring semester, we’re working on bringing in the Class of 2024. On the scholarly front, I’m currently organizing an LSAC symposium in March with some other law school admissions professionals about how the pandemic and resulting lockdowns have changed the landscape of legal education.  
  
When students ask you what they should read outside the required textbooks and other law-related books, what do you suggest?

My academic background is in law and literature, and I really believe there’s major value in engaging with fictional texts about the law. Whether it’s Charles Dickens’s Bleak House on property and estate law or Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus on immigration law, fictional narratives help the brain engage with the law in different and interesting ways than purely legal texts. 

What have you read, listened to, or watched recently that has influenced you or your work?

Knives Out is not only one of the funniest and most original movies I’ve seen in years, but it also makes estate planning look a lot more interesting than it is in real life – and, like most movies involving the law, it gets some important laws about wills right and some of them incredibly wrong, which makes it a fascinating tool for teaching about will capacity, attestation requirements, and the slayer rule.