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From Prestige to Performance: Evaluating Law School Outcomes Using Value-Added Modeling
No full textBar passage and employment rates are widely used to evaluate law school performance, yet these raw outcomes often reflect student selection rather than institutional performance. This study applies a value-added modeling (VAM) framework to assess the contributions of law schools to student success, controlling for prior achievement and contextual factors. Using a 10-year panel dataset of 189 ABA-accredited law schools, we estimate fixed-effects models to isolate the impact of the law school learning environment on first-time bar passage and law-related employment. Our findings reveal that schools traditionally viewed as underperforming often exceed expectations when student background is accounted for, challenging the validity of prevailing rankings. These results have implications for accreditation, accountability, and equity in legal education, particularly for mission-driven institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. By centering institutional contributions rather than student inputs, this study advances the use of VAM in postsecondary evaluation and offers a more equitable framework for assessing educational quality
Visible Learning: Adapting Primary and Secondary Pedagogical Approaches to Legal Education
No full textStudents of Generation Z bring a unique set of characteristics, values, and expectations to legal education. The “norm” this generation experienced as children was fundamentally different from that of anyone before them—a digital world that operated at speed, scale, and scope. This cohort of students grew up learning in elementary schools with web-based tools and learning management systems, simulations, and other online methods. At an early age, they developed an early facility with digital tools that allowed them to be self-reliant, pragmatic, and highly collaborative. This generation has also been able to access peers, trends, and news from all over the world—developing a greater appreciation for diversity and finding their own unique identities.
Like their predecessors, Generation Z students arrive at law school with diverse life, professional, and academic experiences, as well as varied learning strategies. Recognizing that “learning is not a one-size-fits-all experience,” many legal educators are willing to adapt their teaching methods to maximize student outcomes. In other words, dedicated professors are deeply invested in their students’ success.
As we welcome students of Generation Z into our law school classrooms, could gaining an understanding of their prior educational experiences provide us with additional insights? Could examining how our students have previously learned help us better strategize and inform our pedagogical approaches moving forward?
In this Article, I argue that law professors can draw inspiration from pedagogical approaches in primary and secondary education to increase law student outcomes and promote successful learning. In Part II, I describe Visible Learning, an instructional approach which has had a significant impact on K-12 classroom practices today. In Part III, I explore ways in which teaching is unclear and how Visible Learning can help law professors overcome clarity problems to improve learning. Lastly, in Part IV, I propose a conceptual framework which situates Visible Learning within the context of legal pedagogy and provide several examples law professors can use to adapt to their law classrooms
Licensure as Pathway, Not Barrier
No full textConnecticut stands at a pivotal moment in addressing its access to justice crisis. Despite enacting a landmark civil right to counsel for tenants facing eviction, the state struggles to meet demand due to a shrinking attorney population and declining bar passage rates. This article argues that Connecticut should pair its Right to Counsel program (CT-RTC) with a supervised practice pathway to attorney licensure. Such a pathway would allow law graduates to demonstrate competence through structured coursework, supervised legal service, and portfolio assessment—offering a more equitable and practice-ready alternative to the traditional bar exam.
Drawing on successful models from Oregon and national recommendations like the Lawyers’ Justice Corps, the proposed CT-RTC pathway would help stabilize and expand eviction defense services while creating a licensure route aligned with public service. The article contends that this approach would not only strengthen CT-RTC’s implementation but also diversify the legal profession and better protect the public.
By leveraging its existing civil Gideon framework, Connecticut has a unique opportunity to lead national licensure reform. A pilot program linking supervised practice to licensure in eviction defense could serve as a scalable model for other public interest areas, ensuring that legal representation is both accessible and reflective of the profession’s evolving needs
Reimagining Legal Education: Aligning Curriculum and Pedagogy with the NextGen Bar Exam
No full textThe NextGen Bar Exam, launching in 2026, represents a significant shift in the assessment of law graduates, emphasizing practical legal skills such as analysis, client counseling, negotiation, and dispute resolution. Unlike the existing Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), which prioritizes memorization, legal reasoning, and application across traditional doctrinal subjects like Torts, Contracts, and Evidence, the NextGen Exam focuses on foundational knowledge and real-world lawyering abilities. While the portability feature remains a major advantage of the UBE, its closed-book, standardized approach contrasts sharply with the skill-based, practice-oriented framework of the NextGen Exam.Given these fundamental differences, law schools must reevaluate their curricular priorities and teaching practices to ensure greater emphasis on skill development and experiential learning. Traditional doctrinal courses should be redesigned to integrate practical exercises, role-playing simulations, drafting assignments, and client advocacy experiences alongside doctrinal instruction. This shift would also necessitate a reimagining of student assessment, blending doctrinal examinations with performance-based evaluations. Adopting a NextGen-focused course design will better prepare students for the evolving expectations of legal practice and bar licensure.The NextGen Bar Exam, unlike its predecessors, seeks to measure not only a student’s mastery of substantive law but also the application of that knowledge in practice-oriented contexts. This transformation signals a paradigm shift in both the testing and teaching of future lawyers. As the exam moves beyond rote memorization and isolated rule application, legal education must respond by cultivating the competencies most predictive of success in lawyering: analytical reasoning, client-centered problem solving, negotiation, communication, and professional judgment. These are not peripheral skills but essential lawyering capacities that require deliberate and systematic development throughout the curriculum.In addition, the new exam underscores the importance of integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) principles into legal training, reinforcing the expectation that law graduates demonstrate cultural competency and awareness in professional practice. Law schools, therefore, have a responsibility not only to teach the law but also to prepare graduates to engage ethically and effectively with diverse clients and communities.Implementing these reforms will require a collaborative institutional effort. Faculty must adapt their teaching strategies, academic support professionals must provide new models of bar preparation, and administrators must ensure adequate resources and faculty development opportunities. Moreover, assessment practices must evolve to include simulated client interactions, drafting tasks, and integrated performance exercises that mirror the structure of the NextGen Bar Exam.
Ultimately, the introduction of the NextGen Bar Exam presents a unique opportunity for law schools to align more closely with the realities of modern legal practice. By embracing curricular innovation and rethinking assessment, institutions can better equip graduates to not only pass the bar exam but also to thrive in practice, serving clients with competence, confidence, and professionalism
An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Student-Faculty Demographics on Law School Graduate Attrition, Attrition Rates, J.D.s Awarded, and Bar Passage
No full textThis paper seeks to delve into one of legal education\u27s most critical yet scarcely explored questions: How does the interplay between student and faculty demographics impact law students\u27 sense of belonging and, in turn, their rates of attrition, the earning of Juris Doctor degrees, and their success on the bar exam The necessity for this exploration is highlighted by enduring disparities in bar passage rates and the continual underrepresentation of women and minorities within the legal profession.
Despite a growing emphasis on the alienation experienced by women and minority students in law schools and its effects on their graduation rates, a significant understanding gap remains regarding the potential for faculty-student demographic congruence—or its absence—to either mitigate or exacerbate these challenges.
Through a detailed empirical examination, this research aims to make a vital contribution to the conversation on enhancing inclusivity and equity in legal education. It seeks to enrich the ongoing dialogue around legal education reform and to underscore the critical role that faculty diversity plays in creating a more inclusive and supportive environment for all law students
Breaking Down Bar Passage: Examining the Predictive Utility of Academic Performance and Student Characteristics on Subscale Scores of the Uniform Bar Exam—A Follow-Up Study
No full textBuilding on a prior study by Farley et al. (2019), this study examines the predictive utility of academic performance and student characteristics on the subcomponents of the Ohio Bar Exam—the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE), Written Essay, and Multistate Performance Test (MPT)—and situates findings within the context of the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE). Results support the notion that in-law school factors, such as cumulative GPA and upper-level bar coursework, are more predictive of first-time bar passage than pre-law school credentials or demographics alone, but statistical models struggled to identify clear predictive patterns between experiential coursework and MPT performance—highlighting the need for additional research on the MPT specifically. Overall, findings underscore the timeliness of the newly developed 2026 NextGen Bar Exam, while making a conceptual contribution to bar passage research and providing valuable insights for legal education, policy, and practice
ABA Profile of the Legal Profession
No full textThe Profile of the Legal Profession is a compilation of statistics and trends about lawyers, judges and law students, gathered from the ABA’s National Lawyer Population Survey, the federal government and nonprofit organizations
Measuring \u27Up\u27: The Promise of Undergraduate GPA Growth in Law School Admissions
No full texthttps://arc.accesslex.org/featured_publications/1026/thumbnail.jp
2023 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms
No full textOverall, women, people of color, and LGBTQ lawyers continued to see incremental improvements in representation at major U.S. law firms in 2023 as compared with 2022, according to the latest demographic findings from the analyses of the 2023 NALP Directory of Legal Employers (NDLE) — the annual compendium of legal employer data published by NALP. For the first time ever, women made up the majority of associates in 2023, with that percentage likely to grow in the coming years. Another bright spot in this year’s report is the largest ever year-over-year increase in the percentage of associates of color — growing by 1.8 percentage points to 30.15%.
Additionally, women saw record annual growth at the partnership level — where they now comprise 27.76% of all partners (a 1.1 percentage point increase) and Black and Latina women each finally accounted for 1% of all partners for the first time in 2023. Despite these improvements, both women and people of color are particularly underrepresented within the partner ranks, with women of color accounting for less than 5% of partners overall.
While progress was made at the associate and partnership levels in 2023, for the first time since 2017 the percentage of summer associates of color declined. However, by both gender and race/ethnicity, summer associates are more diverse when compared to the demographics of recent law school graduates. After a large increase in the percentage of Black and multiracial summer associates in 2022, these were the only racial/ethnic groups to see a decline in representation at the summer associate level in 2023 — driving the overall decline in summer associates of color. The share of LGBTQ summer associates continued to grow at a much higher rate when compared to lawyers overall — with now almost 12% identifying as LGBTQ.
The tables and charts that follow provide an in-depth analysis of the state of diversity in U.S. law firms in 2023 and how these figures have changed over time
What Occupational Licensing Requirements Protect the Public? Evidence from the Legal Profession
Full text linkI investigate the types of occupational licensing requirements that protect the public. To do so, I employ professional discipline as a measure of potential harm and exploit considerable state-level variation in distinctive licensing requirements for American lawyers. Using novel data from 34 states between 1984 and 2019, I find evidence suggesting that the only requirements that reduce harm are those that restrict entry for certain high-risk individuals. Even with these requirements, however, it takes over a decade following licensing for any noticeable reduction in harm to materialize, and the cumulative impact on harm reduction is small in absolute terms