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Beg, Borrow, or Steal: Ten Lessons Law Schools Can Learn from Other Educational Programs in Evaluating Their Curriculum
No full textIt is indisputable that law schools are clamoring for and working toward change in their curriculum. Generally, higher education institutions have been acknowledged to have a “responsibility to endeavor to prepare graduates who are able to manage and respond effectively to change and its demands, challenges and tensions.” However, despite criticisms and active discussions regarding curriculum reform for 25 years, law school curriculum reform has been seen as tedious and frustrating, resulting through the years in only modest changes.
While in the past, law schools have not had strong incentives to change, things may be different now. In our most recent economic times, tinkering with the law curriculum may have been a luxury. Now, many law schools are realizing that they are proverbially “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” Law schools are seeking to change legal training—not just incorporating more practical skills, but really thinking about doing business differently. That is a vast undertaking for legal faculties, many of whom are without direction other than their own experiences.
Our system of law is obviously known for its reliance on precedents. Legal education has modeled that through the years, taking a very “stare decisis” approach to our educational product. However, in the law, when a new case comes to a court which demonstrates that the law they have been faithfully applying for years is no longer serving its purpose, courts change course. But before inventing radical new courses on which to embark however, courts look to other jurisdictions or situations in which they might borrow a method or process and develop a new plan accordingly.
The time has come for legal education to do the same. The current crisis in legal education should be demonstrating to legal educators that their decisions should not stand. Legal educators should be looking at other programs in higher education, other programs turning out professionals, and those with years of experience studying education, as “persuasive authority” to help us determine what the right path is for legal education. While this article is not the first to suggest that other educational theories need to be incorporated into legal education, these ten suggestions, ‘begged, borrowed and stolen” from other areas of education should be considered by every institution as part of its new plan for legal education in the 21st Century
50 More Years of CLEO Scholars: The Past, the Present, and a Vision for the Future
No full textThis article details the history of the Council on Legal Education (CLEO) and offers a vision for the future of CLEO grounded in educational research and the POSSE Program, an undergraduate diversity student success program
Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Database
Get PDFThe information for this database was collected in the spring of 2014. Variables include: School Location Public/Private Mentions Religion in Mission Statement Religiously Affiliated Based on Baylor\u27s Association of Religiously Affiliated Law Schools Religiously Affiliated Based on Other Information Religious Affiliatio
Of Old Dogs and New Tricks - Can Law Schools Really Fix Students\u27 Fixed Mindsets?
No full textResearch suggests that a belief in the malleable nature of intelligence allows students to thrive during challenging periods of their lives. In contrast, the belief that intelligence is a fixed attribute leads people to respond to mistakes, confusion, and challenges with negative affect, ineffective strategies, and even cheating and lower performance. This research presents a troubling picture for law schools because law schools likely reinforce a fixed mindset. Because things like confusion and high-stakes challenges trigger maladaptive responses, including decreased performance, in fixed mindset students, this research also presents a troubling picture for graduates sitting for the Bar exam and beginning their law practices.
Although the scientific literature contains numerous studies that have successfully induced short-term changes in mindset, little information exists on how to induce long-term, cognitively-accessible changes in mindset. But, studies that incorporate into their methodology research on changing deeply held beliefs suggest that law schools can not only teach their students to adopt a growth mindset in the short-term, they can teach an enduring shift to the growth mindset.
Part I of this article summarizes the literature on mindsets as it relates to law students and law schools. Part II delves into the research on changing deeply held beliefs. Part III concludes that the steps for inducing a growth mindset in law students proposed by existing legal scholarship will likely induce a shift to the growth mindset that is not sufficiently deeply ingrained to persist over time and control at critical moments. The article then discusses specific methods to foster an enduring, cognitively available shift to the growth mindset. These methods include a series of lessons designed primarily for orientation or a first-year seminar or legal writing class, and an approach to feedback designed to trigger the adaptive responses associated with the growth mindset, which can be used in small and large law school classes and clinical settings
An Empirical Analysis of Diversity in the Legal Profession
No full textThe purpose of this Study is to empirically examine the diversity of the legal profession. The primary distinctive features of this empirical analysis are that it evaluates diversity in the legal profession by (a) carefully comparing it against other prestigious professions that have significant barriers to entry, and (b) focusing on young individuals who recently began their careers. These distinctions are made to isolate anomalies that are more likely caused by forces specific to the legal profession rather than general social forces that limit the eligibility of historically disadvantaged groups to pursue prestigious employment opportunities. Further, by narrowing our focus to attorneys who recently began their careers, we get a clearer picture of the current state of diversity. In contrast to prior studies, we find that, although woefully underrepresented as a whole in the legal profession, the representation of young African Americans and Hispanic Americans in the legal profession is comparable to the representation of these groups in other prestigious professions. This finding suggests that the underrepresentation of African Americans and Hispanic Americans in the legal profession may be caused primarily by social forces external to the legal profession, and that, in addition to continuing its current diversity efforts, the legal profession should put a concentrated emphasis on initiatives that assist these underrepresented groups to become eligible to pursue all types of prestigious employment opportunities that have significant barriers to entry. Further, we find that Asian Americans, in contrast to other minorities, are very poorly represented in the legal profession as compared to other prestigious professions. Finally, there is some evidence suggesting that women were relatively well represented in the legal profession when compared to other prestigious professions until recently, when they appear to have become slightly underrepresented. This recent drop may be caused by the failure of the legal profession to provide just and inclusive workplaces, leading to greater dissatisfaction and higher attrition rates among female associate
Annual Bar Examination and Admission Statistics
No full textThe National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) collects statistics from all U.S. jurisdictions on the February and July administrations of the bar examination and on annual admissions. These statistics, along with national score distributions, examinee counts, and mean scaled scores for the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE), and scores earned and transferred by jurisdiction for the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE), are published annually in the Spring issue of the Bar Examiner
A Survey Instrument to Develop, Tailor, and Help Measure Law Student Cultural Diversity Education Learning Outcomes
No full textLegal education reformers are increasingly focused on an outcome-oriented approach to legal education. Law school accreditors are poised to adopt learning outcomes standards requiring each law school to dentify the knowledge, attitudes, and skills its law graduates should possess. Among the skills suggested for inclusion in law school learning outcomes is the ability to work effectively across cultures. Despite the importance of cultural competence for effective legal practice, law schools have not yet developed a systematic method for helping students develop awareness of how cultural perspectives shape lawyer-client interactions, affect transactions, and influence the development of the law. This article identifies ways law schools might conceptualize learning outcomes that will enhance law students’ abilities to effectively represent clients in today’s multicultural world and global legal environment. It provides legal educators with a statistically valid and reliable survey instrument developed to help identify, and potentially measure, some of those learning outcomes. It discusses the survey design and findings. Finally, this article suggests several ways our survey instrument and research can help legal educators conceptualize ways to integrate the inclusion of cultural sensibility learning and learning outcomes into the law school curricula
Improving the Performance of the Performance Test: The Key to Meaningful Bar Exam Reform
No full textIf there are going to be bar exams in the United States — and there are, for the foreseeable future — then the lingering question is how to improve them to better serve the goal of evaluating minimum competence. The bar exam is roundly and rightly criticized by academics and practitioners as disconnected from the actual functions that lawyers perform. The focus of the exam, critics say, is too much on knowledge and memorization of law. That focus is exacerbated by the recent addition of a seventh substantive subject, Civil Procedure, to the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE).
The path to meaningful bar exam reform does not run through the MBE or the essay examination; it runs through the performance test. The Multistate Performance Test (MPT) or a comparable state-produced version appears on the bar exam in nearly 80 percent of U.S. jurisdictions. It evaluates real-world lawyering skills that simply cannot be tested to anywhere near the same extent, if at all, by the MBE or essay examination, each of which requires knowledge of extensive doctrinal content.
Designed to evaluate several of the fundamental lawyering skills identified in the ground breaking MacCrate Report, the performance test had great potential. But in significant ways it has not yet fulfilled that potential. A review of MPT questions administered to date reveals a narrow and stagnant testing vehicle that is not adequately evaluating the range of competencies central to the work of today’s newly licensed lawyer. The MPT has even failed to test on some of the skill sets listed within its published scope of coverage. Moreover, the performance test still remains the smallest part of the bar exam, relegated to third fiddle behind the MBE and essay examination.
Especially in light of empirical evidence that competent performance of many specific lawyering skills is more important to the work of beginning lawyers than knowledge of law, bar examiners should reinvigorate the performance test. Improved and expanded performance test questions could more thoroughly evaluate a wider array of the skills that bar applicants need upon entry to the profession. In addition, more performance test questions could be administered on each bar exam, and, notwithstanding psychometric limitations, examiners could increase the test’s scoring weight relative to that of the other exam components. It is through these reforms that the bar exam can become an instrument that truly evaluates competency to practice law more than knowledge of law
Looking Forward to Diversity in Legal Academia
No full textThis study examines law school faculty diversity particularly for women of color. There are currently low retention and recruitment rates for women of color. Further compounding the issue is low faculty recruitment rates overall due to decreased enrollment. In 2009, only 7% of law school faculty were women of color. While most studies focus on student diversity as impacting change, Deo argues that diverse faculty will lead to long term institutionalized change
A Double-Edged Sword: Student Loan Debt Provides Access to a Law Degree but May Ultimately Deny a Bar License
No full textThe Character and Fitness assessment has been criticized by bar applicants, bar members, and scholars because of its arbitrary and unpredictable admission standards. Like many aspects of the legal profession, the Character and Fitness assessment has not evolved to reflect current economic and social trends, as student loans are an integral and pervasive tool for many to attend law school. Thus, basing the determination of an applicant\u27s character and fitness on the concept of financial irresponsibility is an antiquated approach; the process must evolve to accurately reflect the current legal market.
Due to the increasing costs and grim financial prospects associated with the pursuit of a law degree, reform is necessary in each state\u27s perception of student debt as a factor in a Character and Fitness assessment, specifically the applicant\u27s financial irresponsibility determination. Since the 1980s, law school tuition has risen dramatically; from 1983 to 2008, for example, law school tuition rose at least two times faster than the inflation rate. Between 2001 and 2013, the number of established law schools in the United States rose by nine percent. Moreover, in 2012, average tuition at private law schools was 23,590. This rise in price means that as of early 2013, the average law school graduate could expect to graduate with debt near or exceeding $100,000, not including any debt that he or she accumulated as an undergraduate student...The ABA recognizes that attending law school can be a financial burden for law students who fail to carefully consider the financial implications of their decisions.
Part I of this Article evaluates the bar admissions process, with a specific focus on the Character and Fitness assessment and the considerations that are taken into account by a Character and Fitness Committee before it issues a finding of financial irresponsibility. Part II discusses the Loan Repayment Assistance Programs ( LRAPs ) that are in place at the state and federal, and which are also offered by many law schools. It argues that these programs are insufficient to address the large amounts of debt that law students can accumulate during the pursuit of a law degree. Part III further explores whether a legal education is a wise investment based on the abundance of misreported and misunderstood salary and employment statistics supplied by some law schools, student debt concerns, and the various tactics employed by some law schools to encourage prospective law students to obtain a law degree. Part IV analyzes the class action suits that law schools have faced because of the alleged misrepresentation in employment and salary data for former and current law students. Finally, Part V considers possible reforms that bar admissions boards should adopt to treat student loan debt separately from a determination of financial irresponsibility that adapts to meet the demands of twenty-first century lawyers