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Market Research on Law School Student Aid Award Letters and Shopping Sheet Information
No full textNow more than ever, financial aid information plays a key role in a student’s college enrollment decision – particularly at the graduate level. While there is a plethora of financial aid information available for prospective and current undergraduate students and their parents, the resources specifically targeting students in graduate professional programs, such as law, are more limited. Moreover, the effectiveness of these materials at clearly communicating financial aid award information and concepts to graduate students has not been studied. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) and its Consumer Information & Law Student Indebtedness (CILSI) Task Force, with a grant from Access Group, Inc., sought to fill this gap in the research by testing financial aid award materials with a diverse group of prospective law students and current law students enrolled in accredited law school programs. In 2015, NASFAA contracted Coffey Consulting, LCC, an independent research firm, to test two financial aid award letters and two Shopping Sheets: Award Letter A and Award Letter B were both developed by the NASFAA CILSI Task Force. Award Letter A included the financial aid award information in the body of an email. Award Letter B provided a brief paragraph acknowledging that the financial aid request had been processed and hyperlinks to an online “student portal” that contained more detailed award information. Shopping Sheet A was the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) one-page Financial Aid Shopping Sheet. Shopping Sheet B was a one-page document developed based on the recommendations from the NASFAA CILSI Task Force and NASFAA’s previous study on award letters (NASFAA, 2013).
Coffey conducted online and in-person focus groups with students at four public and 12 private institutions. All of the in-person focus groups were held in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. The online focus groups allowed for more diversity in terms of location, and included participants from institutions located in the Northeast, the South, the Midwest, and the West. After reviewing the proposed award letters and the Shopping Sheets, Coffey invited participant feedback and opinions on the level of clarity of financial aid calculations and concepts in each document, the features participants found helpful or confusing, and suggestions for improvement. Participants were also asked to complete a comprehension questionnaire to better understand to what extent they were able to draw accurate conclusions about the aid awarded in each financial aid scenario
Degrees Awarded by Race/Ethnicity, 2011-2016
No full textThis source includes data on the number of law degrees awarded by race/ethnicity at ABA-approved law schools for the years 2011 to 2016
What Predicts Law Student Success? A Longitudinal Study Correlating Law Student Applicant Data and Law School Outcomes
No full textDespite the rise of big data empiricism, law school admission remains heavily impressionistic; admission decisions based on anecdotes about recent students, idiosyncratic preferences for certain majors or jobs, or mainly the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Yet no predictors are well-validated; studies of the LSAT or other factors fail to control for college quality, major, work experience, etc. The lack of evidence of what actually predicts law school success is especially surprising after the 2010s downturn left schools competing for fewer applicants and left potential students less sure of law school as a path to future success. We aim to fill this gap with a two-school, 1400-student, 2005-2012 longitudinal study. After coding non-digitized applicant data, we used multivariate regression analysis to predict law school grades ( LGPA ) from many variables: LSAT; college grades ( UGPA ), quality, and major; UGPA trajectory; employment duration and type (legal, scientific, military, teaching, etc.); college leadership; prior graduate degree; criminal or discipline record; and variable interactions (e.g., high-LSAT/low-UGPA or vice-versa).
Our results include not only new findings about how to balance LSAT and UGPA, but the first findings that college quality, major, work experience, and other traits are significant predictors: (1) controlling for other variables, LSAT predicts more weakly, and UGPA more powerfully, than commonly assumed – and a high-LSAT/low-UGPA profile may predict worse than the opposite; (2) a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) or EAF (economics, accounting, finance) major is a significant plus, akin to 3½-4 extra LSAT points; (3) several years\u27 work experience is a significant plus, with teaching especially positive and military the weakest; (4) a criminal or disciplinary record is a significant minus, akin to 7½ fewer LSAT points; and (5) long-noted gender disparities seem to have abated, but racial disparities persist. Some predictors were interestingly nonlinear: college quality has decreasing returns; UGPA has increasing returns; a rising UGPA is a plus only for law students right out of college; and 4-9 years of work is a sweet spot, with neither 1-3 or 10+ years’ work experience significant. Some, such as those with military or science work, have high LGPA variance, indicating a mix of high and low performers requiring close scrutiny. Many traditionally valued traits had no predictive value: typical pre-law majors (political science, history, etc.); legal or public sector work; or college leadership.
These findings can help identify who can outperform overvalued predictors like the LSAT. A key caveat is that statistical models cannot capture certain difficult-to-code key traits: some who project to have weak grades retain appealing lawyering or leadership potential; and many will over- or under-perform any projection. Thus, admissions will always be both art and science—but perhaps with a bit more science
Work Drive Matters: An Assessment of the Relationship Between Law Students\u27 Work-Related Preferences and Academic Performance
No full textThis article explores the dimensions of law students\u27 schoolwork-related preferences and discusses an empirical assessment of those preferences. The assessment revealed two findings: (1) a positive correlation between students\u27 schoolwork-related preferences and their first-year law school cumulative grade point average (LGPA); and (2) students\u27 schoolwork-related preferences significantly enhanced the predictive power of the traditional law school success predictors, law students\u27 LSAT performance and their undergraduate cumulative grade point average (UGPA). During spring 2014, 215 law students responded to a survey that included questions from the Multidimensional Work Ethic Profile (MWEP) and Work Drive Inventory. Analysis of the responses indicated that while the students\u27 high LSAT and UGPA explained eighteen percent of their LGPA, the students\u27 Work Drive, LSAT and UGPA explained twenty-eight percent of the students\u27 thirty-hour LGPA. The article concludes with a discussion of the significance of these findings and their impact on legal education
Reviewing ADHD Accommodations Requests for the Bar Exam: What Has and Has Not Changed over 20 Years
No full textEvery reviewer who assists testing organizations in examining documentation from applicants requesting accommodations for ADHD is well aware that some ADHD cases offer no indication that the clinical diagnosis was given in a reasonable manner (for instance, in the case of self-reported symptoms only), and that often the only evidence of impairment or limitation is that a person of average ability has reported finding law school to be a difficult and demanding academic environment. Frequently, this person is nevertheless passing law school classes before ever being granted an accommodation on a law school exam. Accommodations for such individuals should be denied, since they are simply unnecessary.
Other cases will, however, provide multiple ADHD diagnostic evaluations spanning many years with ample formal documentation of past accommodations. There is essentially no reason to deny current accommodations to an individual in such a case unless the request is for unreasonable accommodations never requested or received in the past
Smarter Law Learning: Using Cognitive Science to Maximize Law Learning
No full textRecent advances in cognitive science create smarter law learning opportunities for legal education. Legal educators can use empirical research from cognitive and learning science to improve student learning, in turn easing the bumpy transition from college to law school and maintaining confidence. More importantly, legal educators can instill effective learning strategies vital for students’ success in school, the bar exam, and in practice.
Some colleges and universities are failing in providing students with robust critical thinking, writing, and learning skills. The lack of foundational skills can create difficult transitions for students when pursuing graduate and professional educations, such as law school.
Research shows that students often rely on improvised and ineffective learning strategies like rereading, cramming, and rote memorization, which are especially ill suited to the demands of legal education requiring higher order thinking and analysis. Inversely, retrieval practice, the testing effect, and periodic review create more effective long-term learning and higher order thinking and analytical skills, yet are counter-intuitive and not always used by students. Luckily, help is available: legal educators can leverage cognitive and learning science to maximize law learning.
This Article explains how legal educators and students can leverage cognitive science for smarter law learning. It first summarizes key research findings on effective study and learning strategies, and then suggests simple, practical, and easily implemented ways to integrate them into the law school classroom
The Role of Community College Attendance in Shaping Baccalaureate Recipients’ Access to Graduate and Professional Education
No full textAlthough community colleges have received increasing attention as a steppingstone to advanced degrees for a diverse pool of students, empirical work around these institutions as a pathway to graduate and professional education is practically onexistent. Using national longitudinal data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:08/12) and propensity score matching techniques, this study examined the impact of having attended a community college on baccalaureate recipients’ access to graduate and professional schools in general and how previous community college attendance influenced student enrollment in different professional and graduate programs. Our findings revealed that there was no significant negative or positive effect of community college attendance on access to graduate or professional school, or program enrollment choices. These results imply that baccalaureate recipients having attended a community college are as likely as those who have not to advance to graduate and professional programs, suggesting that community colleges can indeed serve as a viable pathway to graduate and professional education
Strategies for Confronting Unconscious Bias
No full textResearch studies reveal just how much bias impacts decisions— not just on a conscious basis, but to a much greater extent, on an unconscious basis. Experts believe that the mind’s unconscious is responsible for 80% or more of thought processes. Yet the conscious mind is simply not capable of perceiving what the unconscious is thinking. This article identifies unconscious biases and provides research-based strategies for addressing them
The State of Legal Research Education; A Survey of First Year Legal Research Programs or \u27Why Johnny and Jane Cannot Research\u27
No full textDissatisfaction with the research skills of the new associate is an oft-repeated refrain. This article explores the state of research education in the law school curriculum. Questions explored include: whether or not legal research is a required first year class; the number of semesters of research instruction; the expertise of the professor; number of credits awarded for legal research, scope of the curriculum and observed challenges. Also considered is the impact of a more vigorous writing focus on research skills education. Survey data collected from the two hundred ranked law schools is used to explore these questions and as the basis for reforming research education
Helping Each Student Develop Affirmative Evidence of Cross-Cultural Competency
No full textNo matter a lawyer’s practice area, it is extremely important that each lawyer possess the ability to interact and communicate effectively with people from other cultures. Cargill general counsel Laura Witte emphasizes “To be truly effective counselors in today’s global marketplace, it is not enough to know the law. We must be able to communicate, build relationships, interpret and apply the law in the context of applicable cultural norms, norms that may be very different from our own.” In a litigation context, law professor Susan Bryan urges that “[l]awyers who explicitly examine the cross-cultural issues in a case will increase client trust, improve communication, and enhance problem-solving on behalf of clients.” It is strongly in a lawyer’s self-interest to develop cross-cultural competence in his or her everyday work.
Many law faculties are also emphasizing cross-cultural competency in the faculty’s learning outcomes. As of June 6, 2016, fifty-five law schools had posted learning outcomes on their websites, and of those fifty-five, twenty-one have adopted learning outcomes focused on student cross-cultural competency.
This article argues that cross-cultural competency is an affirmative competency that both law students and legal practitioners can develop in incremental stages throughout their careers. The article then shows that it is in the law student and legal practitioner’s enlightened self-interest to grow toward later stages of cross-cultural competence. With practice and continuous reflection, the student and legal practitioner can come to identify and understand when his or her cultural lens, biases, and stereotypes are affecting relationships with clients and others. Through this affirmative approach, students and legal practitioners can better serve their clients and ensure a result that best suits the client’s needs. The article then gives practical advice and techniques as to how the law student and lawyer can improve his or her cross-cultural competence and develop a strong narrative and evidence (to tell potential employers and clients) of the affirmative steps the student or lawyer has taken to develop this competency. Finally the last section of the article explores the experience of several law schools with strong learning outcomes on cross-cultural competency