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Who\u27s Going to Law School? Trends in Law School Enrollment Since the Great Recession
No full textThis study provides a comprehensive analysis of recent U.S. law school enrollment trends. With two sets of JD enrollment data from 1999 to 2019, we discuss how the demographic composition of law students has changed since the Great Recession. We examine enrollment data by gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality, with particular attention to Asian Americans, who too often remain an invisible minority in contemporary discourse on diversity. We also undertake a novel analysis of enrollment demographics by law school ranking. Our findings include the following: Total enrollment has declined almost 25% since the recession and, despite a recent increase, seems unlikely to rebound to pre-recession levels. Women have outnumbered men in law school since 2016; the recent uptick in total enrollment is entirely attributable to more women pursuing law. Since the recession, Asian Americans and Whites have comprised a smaller share of enrollment; African Americans and Hispanics have comprised a larger share. Women, African American students, and Hispanic students are disproportionately enrolled in lower-ranked schools with lower rates of bar passage and post-graduation employment. It is thus unclear to what extent the changing diversity of law students will translate into greater diversity in the legal profession. Asian American enrollment has declined more steeply than any other group since the recession. As a result, the number of Asian American lawyers, after rising for four decades, will begin to stagnate in the year 2030. The number and percentage of JD students who are foreign nationals or who identify as members of two or more racial groups are growing. These trends have particular salience for Asians and Asian Americans, and they present increasingly serious challenges for collecting and reporting demographic data.
As a whole, our study provides a fresh and comprehensive empirical foundation for current discussions of diversity in law school and the legal profession
Building a Better Bar: The Twelve Building Blocks of Minimum Competence
No full textThe bar exam tries to distinguish minimally competent lawyers from incompetent ones: it exists to protect the public from the harms of incompetent legal representation. That protection is critical to maintaining the integrity of the profession, but the bar exam achieves that goal only if it effectively assesses minimum competence. The unfortunate reality is that, although the bar exam has existed for more than a century, there has never been an agreed-upon, evidence-based definition of minimum competence. Absent such a definition, it is impossible to know whether the bar exam is a valid measure of the minimum competence needed to practice law or an artificial barrier to entry.
While there have been a handful of efforts to gain an empirical understanding of the skills and knowledge new lawyers use in their early years of practice, few researchers have explicitly sought to define minimum competence. The few attempts to probe minimum competence have relied on surveys, which lack the ability to delve into the nuances of new lawyers’ work. Surveys do not allow new lawyers to describe their work in detail or to explain how they use their skills and knowledge in that work.
We designed this study to address these substantial gaps in our knowledge, build on the existing research, and develop an evidence-based definition of minimum competence. In the latter half of 2019 and early 2020, we conducted 50 focus groups using a protocol we developed to gather data about the knowledge and skills new lawyers need to practice competently. Of those focus groups, 41 were conducted with new lawyers, while the remaining nine were conducted with those who supervise new lawyers.
Based on our findings, we propose 10 recommendations for courts, law schools, bar associations, bar examiners, and other stakeholders to consider in their efforts to move towards evidence-based lawyer licensing
How Institutional and Ecological Forces Shape the Career Profiles of Organizational Leaders: An Analysis of US Law School Deans, 1894–2009
No full textHow do macro social forces shape the career profiles of organizational leaders? The aim of the article is to answer this question by examining how institutional and ecological forces have influenced the careers of law school deans in the US from the late 19th century to the present. Specifically, we focus on the coexistence of two social forces—professionalization and the diversity of an organizational population. On the one hand, we view professionalization as a converging institutional force that promotes homogeneity among leader career profiles. The diversity of an organizational population, on the other hand, is viewed as a diverging ecological force that increases heterogeneity among leader career profiles. We show how these two opposing forces have left different imprints on leader career profiles with a unique career data of 1396 deans in American law schools from 1894 to 2009. We utilize optimal matching analysis to assess the degree of similarity (or dissimilarity) among deans’ career sequences and test our hypotheses. This study contributes to our understanding of the link between macro social transformations and leader career profiles
The Effects of Demographic Mismatch in an Elite Professional School Setting
No full textTen years of administrative data from a diverse, private, top-100 law school are used to examine the ways in which female and nonwhite students benefit from exposure to demographically similar faculty in first-year, required law courses. Arguably, causal impacts of exposure to same-sex and same-race instructors on course-specific outcomes such as course grades are identified by leveraging quasi-random classroom assignments and a two-way (student and classroom) fixed effects strategy. Having an other-sex instructor reduces the likelihood of receiving a good grade (A or A–) by 1 percentage point (3 percent) and having an other-race instructor reduces the likelihood of receiving a good grade by 3 percentage points (10 percent). The effects of student–instructor demographic mismatch are particularly salient for nonwhite and female students. These results provide novel evidence of the pervasiveness of demographic-match effects and of the graduate school education production function
Distance Learning Questionnaire Findings
Get PDFDistance learning is now a central component of the law school curriculum. The COVID-19 pandemic forced law schools to engage in emergency remote teaching after in-person instruction became too dangerous. As a result, nearly every law school is now engaging in some form of distance learning, at least temporarily. Fortunately, sophisticated models exist for both synchronous and asynchronous online learning. And online delivery of the J.D. curriculum is not brand new to legal education. There are hundreds of practicing lawyers today who earned their law degrees through programs that were delivered in significant part online. Just prior to the sudden, temporary shift from in-person instruction in the spring of 2020, there were four law schools that were operating under variances from ABA rules restricting the number of J.D. credit-hours that could be delivered online, and other non-ABA law schools have had online J.D. programs for some time
Examining the California Cut Score: An Empirical Analysis of Minimum Competency, Public Protection, Disparate Impact, and National Standards
Get PDFThe selection of a minimum bar exam passing score (“cut score”) shapes the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in the legal profession and the quality of access to justice in the state. California and national policy makers have not had the benefit of detailed exam performance data that analyzes the effect of the cut score on race and ethnicity. Because policy makers consider the cut score an important public protection mechanism, this study also explored whether the selection of higher cut scores better protected the public from attorneys who do not have the minimum competence to practice law.
To conduct the analysis, the study used two data sets. The first data set included 85,727 examinees who sat for 21 administrations of the CBX from 2009-18 and the race and ethnicity of each examinee. The second data set included the ABA discipline data from up to 48 U.S. jurisdictions from 2013-18 and the cut scores in each jurisdiction.
Using the first data set,the study determined how the selection of a minimum cut score (1) widens or narrows the racial and ethnic impacts of the bar exam and/or (2) alters the racial and ethnic composition of new attorneys joining the legal profession. Both historical actual and simulated cut scores were analyzed. Using the second data set, this study examined a third factor: the relationship, if any, between minimum cut scores and rates of attorney discipline.
This analysis determined that initial and eventual passing rates differed significantly between racial and ethnic groups, and this gap was wider at higher simulated cut scores. A simulation analysis using actual examinee scores confirmed that selecting a lower cut score would have significantly narrowed the achievement gap between Whites and racial and ethnic minorities and would have increased the number of newly admitted minority attorneys in California. For example, at 1440, the achievement gap between Whites and Blacks was 27.4 percentage points. But at a simulated cut score of 1300, the achievement gap between these two groups would have been only 14.5 percentage points. This 12.9 percentage point difference in the achievement gap at 1440 and 1300 demonstrates a disparate effect of the higher cut scores.
Using the second data set about disciplinary statistics, the study determined that no relationship exists between the selection of a cut score and the number of complaints, formal charges, or disciplinary actions taken against attorneys in the jurisdictions studied.
California’s recent decision to lower the cut score from 1440 to 1390 moved California from having the second-highest cut score to the fourth-highest cut score in the country. However, the report data established that at 1390 California will continue to produce significantly disparate pass rates on the basis of race and ethnicity when compared to the national norm of 1350, the New York standard of 1330, and the simulated model of 1300.
This study establishes that maintaining a high cut score does not result in greater public protection as measured by disciplinary statistics but does result in excluding minorities from admission to the bar and the practice of law at rates disproportionately higher than Whites
Future in Law? A Profile of Graduating College Seniors Interested in Legal Education and Careers
Get PDFThe recent decline in law school applicants is well-documented. Despite a slight increase in 2018, the number of law school applicants remains substantially lower than levels observed prior to 2011. This decrease in the demand for legal education presents an opportunity to better understand the pathway to law school and the formation of interest in pursuing a law degree or career.
The American Association of Law Schools pioneered inquiry in this area with their groundbreaking study, Before the JD: Undergraduate Views on Law School, which surveyed undergraduates from 25 four-year institutions and first-year law students from 44 law schools, to learn more about what attracts and deters undergraduate interest in legal education and other advanced degrees. This report aims to build on this work by analyzing a broader dataset of undergraduate students—specifically, college seniors—to further describe the characteristics, academic behaviors, goals and career path considerations of those who report an interest in law compared to those who have other career and degree aspirations. Utilizing 15 years of data from the College Senior Survey administered by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles, our study offers insight about the traits of college seniors aspiring to a law degree and/or career, when their interest in law develops, and the extent to which their interest in law changes during college
Raising the Bar on Accessibility: How the Bar Admissions Process Limits Disabled Law School Graduates
No full textThink about the steps it takes to get from law school admission through passing the Bar exam. Not only do you have to graduate with your college degree, but you have to take the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT); enroll in law school; potentially take out student loans; do plenty of reading; pass all of your classes; survive a few internships; participate in clinics, practicums and activities; obtain the juris doctor degree; study for weeks and months on end to take the bar exam; and hope for good news to begin your journey as an attorney.
While it sounds like a lot of steps and hurdles to go through for any law student, imagine the additional hurdles and difficulties for law students with disabilities. Until a 2014 consent decree, the Law School Admission Council would flag LSAT scores obtained with disability accommodations, signaling to admissions officers the applicant likely had a disability. Standardized tests have a history of discrimination against test-takers with disabilities.
This Article aims to address the hurdles and accessibility issues associated with the bar examination and application processes, as well as the laws and precedents governing access to the legal profession. Part I of this Article first expands upon the congressional intent and purpose behind the Americans with Disabilities Act, along with a history of reasonable accommodations in high-stakes testing scenarios under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Part II will then dovetail into the unique situations surrounding the Americans with Disabilities Act in the bar admissions process under both Title II and Title III, such as analyzing how mental health questions on the character and fitness portion of the bar application are discriminatory and infringe on the rights of emerging lawyers and recent graduates with disabilities. After providing an understanding of the preliminary inquiries, Part III gives an overview of various hurdles in the process of taking the bar exam and culminates by analyzing reasonable accommodations on the bar exam itself. To conclude, Part V offers final reflections about the future of the exam for disabled law graduates and balancing the needs of accommodation and fairness for lawyer licensing
Say What?: A How-To Guide on Providing Formative Assessment to Law Students Through Live Critique
No full textThe American Bar Association requires law schools to move beyond the traditional, single final exam and incorporate more assessment. One method law professors may use is live critique. Through live critique, the professor examines students’ work for the first time in front of students and reacts to it live. This article details the benefits of live critique for law students, which include enhanced learning, increased confidence, and practice-ready skills. It also describes how professors can boost the effectiveness and efficiency of their feedback by delivering it live. Finally, the article provides suggestions for professors in overcoming potential challenges and provides step-by-step guidance on how to integrate live critique into any law school course
The Marginalization of Black Aspiring Lawyers
No full textThis paper argues that Black people who aspire to be lawyers endure marginalized existences, which span the law school admission process through the matriculation process and into the law school classroom. The manner in which the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) drives the vetting of law school applications ensures that Black applicants face steep disadvantages in gaining admission. In the 2016-17 admission cycle, it took about 1,960 Black applicants to yield 1,000 offers of admission, compared to only 1,204 among White applicants and 1,333 overall.2 These trends are explained in large part by racial and ethnic disparities in average LSAT scores. The average score for Black test-takers is 142—11 points lower than the average for White and Asian test-takers of 153.3 Therefore, for large proportions of Black law school applicants—49 percent in 2016-17—their marginalization in the admission process ends in outright exclusion