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A Value-Added Ranking of Law Schools
No full textBefore and since the first publication of the U.S. News & World Report (hereinafter “U.S. News”) rankings of law schools, legal education has been characterized by competition. As the first mover in the rankings of law schools, the U.S. News’ rankings have changed the landscape of legal education. Not only do law students to measure the worth of law schools based on these rankings, but law schools are reactive to the categories favored by these rankings’ methodology in order to bolster their position relative to their peers. This fixation on one ranking may foment the progress of legal education toward providing quantifiable value to current and prospective students. This article proffers evidence of the relative time invariance of law school rankings in the U.S. News, assesses alternative rankings systems, and proposes a value-added ranking of law schools. The value-added rankings represent an outcomes-based movement, in standard deviations, from where a law school is predicted to be, based on its students’ credentials upon entry to law school, to the space it actually occupies, given those same students upon their graduation from law school. This value-added ranking, in essence, measures the effect of attending the law school. The law school value-added measures deviate significantly from existing rankings systems of law schools and suggest that traditional notions of a law school\u27s value ought to be reassessed under this new framework
Estimating the Effect of Losing the Federal Loan Subsidy on Debt Accumulation for Law and Professional Students in the United States: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
No full textThis study addresses this important gap in the literature by analyzing a recent policy change, the Budget Control Act of 2011, that eliminated the federal student loan interest subsidy. This change directly targeted the graduate and professional students who participated in the Stafford Loan program beginning July 1st, 2012. The loss of subsidized loan eligibility meant that professional and law students’ interest accrues on all Stafford loans while still in school, which we hypothesize will drastically increase their overall debt accumulation. This study is timely and relevant for the following reasons. The first is that today\u27s college-goers are the most indebted students in the country’s history (Baum, 2015). Second, there is almost no evidence about determinants of debt levels for graduate or professional students (Belasco, Trivette & Webber, 2014). Related to this point, the role of federal policy in shaping graduate students’ debt accumulation remains an understudied topic. Results indicated that Law students may be the most negatively affected group among graduate and professional students as their reliance on Stafford support increase by more than $5000 dollars before the policy implementation took place. From this view, given that Law students are relying more heavily on Stafford loans, the loss of the federal subsidy will translate into greater debt burden due to the accrual of interest while still enrolled in graduate education. Accordingly, the analysis of the NPSAS:16 remains an important endeavor
Progress Testing: Critical Analysis and Suggested Practices
No full textEducators have long lamented the tendency of students to engage in rote memorization in preparation for tests rather than engaging in deep learning where they attempt to gain meaning from their studies. Rote memorization driven by objective exams has been termed a steering effect. Progress testing (PT), in which a comprehensive examination sampling all of medicine is administered repeatedly throughout the entire curriculum, was developed with the stated aim of breaking the steering effect of examinations and of promoting deep learning. PT is an approach historically linked to problem-based learning (PBL) although there is a growing recognition of its applicability more broadly. The purpose of this article is to summarize the salient features of PT drawn from the literature, provide a critical review of these features based upon the same literature and psychometric considerations drawn from the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing and provide considerations of what should be part of best practices in applying PT from an evidence-based and a psychometric perspective
Diversity Pipeline Programs in Legal Education: Context, Research and a Path Forward
Get PDFThis report, commissioned by the AccessLex Institue, highlights the issue of diversity in legal education, provides an overview of the diversity pipeline, explores programs that seek to improve the pipeline, and provides several recommendations for leaders and supporters of diversity pipeline programs. As the racial and ethnic diversity of the United States continues to grow, it is increasingly important that comparable cultural diversity grows in the legal profession. Diversity in the legal field is central to ensuring public confidence in the legal system and provides society with a sense of fairness in the judicial system. The benefits of diverse leadership are numerous, particularly as the U.S. engages with a global, multicultural marketplace. To address gaps in the educational pipeline to the legal profession, many diversity pipeline programs have emerged to inspire interest, engagement, and success in degree programs in law. The goal of this report is to identify some of the key factors that are associated with successful diversity programs based on a scan of the literature, both within and outside of law school pipeline programs
The Emperor Has No Clothes, But Does Anyone Really Care? How Law Schools are Failing to Develop Students\u27 Professional Identity and Practical Judgment
No full textThis article addresses a growing imbalance in law school curricula and will be the first to document, through the author’s independent research, the degree to which schools are ignoring a call to cultivate students\u27 professional formation and ethical decision-making. Two influential studies, one by the Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning in Educating Lawyers (Carnegie Report), and the other by the Clinical Legal Education Association in Best Practices for Legal Education (Best Practices Report), agreed on two deficiencies in legal education. One was the lack of lawyering skills course through which students could develop skills be the ready to practice once they leave school. The other, more pervasive critique, was that law schools were failing completely to cultivate students\u27 professional formation and judgment. A recent ABA Survey of Law School Curricula showed a significant increase in skills and experiential courses. The survey was unclear on curricular efforts in law schools to address professional formation and sound judgment. By independently reviewing the published course offerings of every U.S. law school and tabulating data, the author demonstrates through that his findings show that most law schools are ignoring the recommendation to focus on students\u27 professional formation and judgment. Since originally posting this article on SSRN, the author is in the process of gathering data through a survey of law schools to determine the extent to which law schools are employing educational methods designed to cultivate professional identity formation -- or what the Carnegie Report calls the \u27Third Apprenticeship.\u27 The other development is that the original author\u27s colleague and Co-Director of Regent University School of Law\u27s Center for Ethical Formation and Legal Education Reform is assisting with the development of a survey instrument to determine data on teaching professional identity and will revised the article to reflect the findings of that empirical data. The results of the survey and the ultimate findings of this article will be presented at Regent Law Review\u27s Symposium on Cultivating Professional Identity schedule for October 4, 2014. The Symposium\u27s papers and proceedings will be included in the Regent Law Review\u27s Symposium Issue (Spring 2015).
Comparing law schools\u27 response to the recommendation on skills with their lack of response to the recommendations on professional formation shows a clear lack of commitment in most law schools to addressing a deficiency that has significant implications. Both 2007 reports, through empirical studies and investigation, that the degree to which students learn what it means for them to be profession (and not some abstract concept of professionalism in general) has a direct link to the likelihood of effectiveness and satisfaction in practice. The article addresses the reasons that may be causing law schools\u27 inertia, particularly the perception that teaching in this area is too difficult. The last third of the article provides concrete curricular efforts and teaching methods already employed in some law schools. In addition, the article examines methods from other professional schools and suggests specific methods to adapt these to law schools -- teaching methods that have not yet been used, but which should work as well in law school as they do, say, in medical school. Therefore, this article not only provides original data showing that a significant inadequacy in legal education is going unaddressed in most schools, along with clear recommendations for those schools that decide to implement professional formation on how to do so
Cultural Diversity: Is It Present in American Law Schools and the Legal Profession?
No full textThe issue of diversity is certainly not a new concept. This topic has been the focus of many corporate retreats and board room discussions. However, one of the most reputable and esteemed professions is falling short of the bar in maintaining a diverse profile. Research indicates that minority groups experience significant underrepresentation in law schools and the legal profession in general. To address this issue, this research will focus on examining the value of diversity to the legal profession, the roles of the law school, law firm, judiciary and government in balancing cultural diversity, and the recommendations for each to achieve diversity
Diversity Matters
No full textResearchers examined the relationship between level of diversity at leadership levels and the company financial performance. Diversity was defined as women and people of color. There was a statistically significant relationship between a more diverse leadership team and better financial performance. Companies with leadership in the top 25% of racial diversity were 30% more likely to have financial returns above their industry median. Companies with lower than average diversity were lagging in financial returns
Diversity and Gender Equity in Legal Practice
No full textOne irony of this nation\u27s continuing struggle for diversity and gender equity in employment is that the profession leading the struggle has failed to set an example in its own workplaces. In principle, the American bar is deeply committed to equal opportunity and social justice. In practice, it lags behind other occupations in leveling the playing field. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), only two professions (the natural sciences and dentistry) have less diversity than law; medicine, accounting, academia, and others do considerably better.\u27 Part of the problem lies in a lack of consensus on what exactly the problem is. What accounts for gender, racial, and ethnic inequalities in law firms? Who is responsible for addressing them? Which proposed solutions would be worth the cost?
These are not new questions. But recent economic and client pressures have made clear the need for better answers. Many of the obstacles to diversity and equity in legal practice are symptomatic of deeper structural problems. This Article focuses primarily on barriers involving gender, race, and ethnicity. Although these are not the only relevant dimensions of diversity, they provide a useful framework because they affect the greatest number of lawyers and have been subject to the most systematic research. However, much of the analysis below has broader application to improving the quality of professional life for other groups in legal settings.
The following discussion tracks conventional usage in referring to women and minorities, but that should neither obscure the unique experience of women of color, nor mask differences within and across racial and ethnic groups. The point, rather, is to understand how different identities intersect to structure the professional experience
Practice Ready Graduates : A Millennialist Fantasy
No full textThe sky is falling on legal education say the pundits, and preparing “practice ready” graduates is one of the best strategies for surviving the fallout. This is a millennialist version of the argument for clinical legal education that dominated discussion in the law schools in the 1960s and 1970s. The circumstances are different now, as are the people calling for reform, but the two movements are alike in one respect: both view skills training as legal education’s primary purpose. Everything else is a frolic and detour, and a fatal frolic and detour in hard times such as the present.
No one would dispute that the United States legal system has a labor market problem, but law schools cannot revive the labor market, or improve the employment prospects of their graduates, by providing a different type of instruction. Placing students in jobs is a function of a school’s academic reputation, not its curriculum, and the legal labor market will rebound only after the market as a whole has rebounded (and perhaps not then). The cause of the present troubles is a lack of jobs, not a lack of graduates (of any kind), and producing more “practice ready” graduates will have no effect on the supply of jobs. The proposal is a spectacular non sequitur to the present troubles.
Were the proposal relevant to the present troubles, it has other problems. For one, the concept of “practice ready” is unintelligible. There are as many different types of practice as there are levels of readiness for it, and proponents of the proposal do not say which of these various possibilities (and combinations of possibilities), they have in mind. If the expression had a single meaning law schools still could not act on it because practice skill depends upon dispositions (i.e., habits informed by reflection), and dispositions take longer than a law school course to develop. Diverting resources to “practice ready” programs also would undermine a law school’s ability to provide the body of knowledge and teach the critical thinking skills that underlie all law practice tasks. The ability to think from an informed perspective is the ultimate practice skill. The movement for “practice ready” instruction is a stealth move by the bar to transfer the costs of new lawyer training more than a program for improving the education of law students, and like a lot of blog commentary, it is more slogan than idea. Perhaps that is why it is so popular
The Law Review Divide: A Study of Gender Diversity on the Top Twenty Law Reviews
No full textMy goal in this Note is to provide the first comprehensive statistical analysis of independently reported and verified data on law review membership in order to determine whether or not a gender disparity exists on law reviews. I further hope that this analysis would indicate whether any given admissions process correlates particularly strongly with that gender disparity. Interestingly, no single selection method or even combination of selection methods appears to consistently yield any greater number of women than men; some law reviews with similar admissions processes have very different membership compositions by gender, and some law reviews with very different admissions processes have very similar membership compositions by gender.
One might interpret this as a rather bleak picture of women’s law review participation showing that no matter what a law review does, women will still have a more difficult time becoming members than men. I prefer instead to emphasize the non-universality of the gender disparity and suggest that the fact that seven of the twenty law reviews I studied did not display a significant gender disparity continues a positive narrative about women’s increasing participation in law schools and the legal profession