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Assessing Professionalism: Measuring Progress in the Formation of an Ethical Professional Identity
No full textThe Carnegie Foundation\u27s 2007 study of legal education, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Practice of Law, observes that Across the otherwise disparate-seeming educational experiences of seminary, medical school, nursing school, engineering school, and law school, [we] identified a common goal: professional education aims to initiate novice practitioners to think, to perform, and to conduct themselves (that is to act morally and ethically) like professionals. This article focuses on the third goal of legal education - to help law students to conduct themselves morally and ethically as professionals. Carnegie calls this the apprenticeship of professional identity formation or the apprenticeship of professionalism.
This essay outlines why a clear definition of professionalism is important, and notes the failure of scholarship in both law and medicine to provide a clear definition. The article proposes a definition consisting of five elements of an ethical professional identity. The article then provides criteria by which measures to assess the professionalism of a student or practicing lawyer should be evaluated, and then applies those criteria to current tools we have available to assess student and practicing lawyer professionalism. The article recommends the development of new professionalism assessment tools tailored specifically for the legal profession
Law Students with Attention Deficit Disorder: How to Reach Them, How to Teach Them
No full textMost law school classes are likely to include students with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or its related disorder - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It is imperative for teachers to be equipped for teaching law students with ADD. To be effective in reaching those students, law professors should understand the common learning-style traits of ADD students. This article describes what researchers know about ADD and how it can impact learning. It summarizes empirical research and describes the Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles Model. It also discusses federal statutes and court cases mandating individualized approaches to teaching students with learning disabilities. Finally, it recommends ways in which law professors can diversify their teaching methods to assist ADD students and their classmates
Unpacking the Bar: Of Cut Scores, Competence and Crucibles
No full textBar passage rates of first-takers vary widely among both the states and the law schools. State grading practices also vary widely, particularly as to minimum passing scores ( cut scores ) and whether they scale state exam components to the MultiState Bar Exam ( MBE ). The broad ranges of Bar passage rates and of state grading practices call into question the stewardship of the states over admission to the practice of law. This study uses generalized linear modeling, with a logit link function, to isolate the effect on the Bar passage rates of ABA-approved law schools of three factors: (i) the LSAT scores of entering classes, (ii) state cut scores; and (iii) scaling to the MBE. LSAT scores of a law school\u27s entering classes were the most significant factor in determining a law school\u27s Bar passage rate. But differences in state cut scores, and in MBE scaling, are associated with large differences in the Bar passage rates of law schools with equivalent LSAT scores. This suggests that the states need to work together with a view to reaching a national consensus as to the elements of minimum competence, and how best to measure them
For-Credit Bar Exam Preparation: A Legal Writing Model
No full textGiven the ABA\u27s recent decision to permit law schools to offer a bar exam preparation course for credit, schools now have an enhanced opportunity to increase the percentage of their students who pass the profession\u27s all-important licensing exam. For many law schools, an effective means of taking advantage of this opportunity could be a for-credit course focusing exclusively on the written portions of the bar exam and targeting primarily those students whose law school grades place them at the greatest risk of failing the exam. Offering a for-credit course on only the written portions of the exam, in lieu of a comprehensive bar exam preparation course, taps a strength of law schools - teaching the skills of legal reading, analysis and writing. It also leaves to the omnipresent commercial preparation courses what they best provide and what law schools are disinclined or ill-equipped to provide: comprehensive outlines and rote lecturing on substantive law, and practice multiple-choice questions from the Multistate Bar Exam.
Providing a for-credit course specifically on writing for the bar exam makes particular sense at schools whose graduates take the bar exam mostly in jurisdictions that place greater scoring weight on the written portions of the exam, and at schools whose graduates tend to perform better on the multiple choice questions than on the written ones. Both of these factors hold true at the school where I teach, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, which offers a two-credit bar writing course. Through invitation letters and a priority enrollment procedure, the law school ensures the course includes a large percentage of students whose academic performance places them at higher risk of failing the bar exam. In the course, students write answers to several practice essays and a performance test under test-taking conditions and receive extensive feedback through various means. Initial lay statistical analysis suggests the course has had a positive impact on the law school\u27s bar passage rate
Affirmative Action in Law School Admissions: What Do Racial Preferences Do?
No full textThe Supreme Court has held repeatedly that race-based preferences in public university admissions are constitutional. But debates over the wisdom of affirmative action continue. Opponents of these policies argue that preferences are detrimental to minority students -- that by placing these students in environments that are too competitive, affirmative action hurts their academic and career outcomes. This article examines the so-called mismatch hypothesis in the context of law school admissions. We discuss the existing scholarship on mismatch, identifying methodological limitations of earlier attempts to measure the effects of affirmative action. Using a simpler, more robust analytical strategy, we find that the data are inconsistent with large mismatch effects, particularly with respect to employment outcomes. While moderate mismatch effects are possible, they are concentrated among the students with the weakest entering academic credentials. To put our estimates in context, we simulate admissions under race-blind rules. Eliminating affirmative action would dramatically reduce the number of black law students, particularly at the most selective schools. Many potentially successful black law students would be excluded, far more than the number who would be induced to pass the bar exam by the elimination of mismatch effects. Accordingly, we find that eliminating affirmative action would dramatically reduce the production of black lawyers
The Dynamics of Professional Identity Formation: Graduates\u27 Transitions from Higher Education to Working Life
No full textThis paper explores the development of professional identity as a relationship between professional and personal aspects of life. The focus is on student and novice professional psychologists’ and political scientists’ processes of professional identity formation in their transition from higher education to working life. Drawing on Wenger’s theory of nexus of multimembership (1998), the findings indicate that professional identity is a dynamic relationship between different life spheres rather than an isolated phenomenon only taking place at the university or in the work context. The analysis yielded three different forms of professional identity, non-differentiated identity, compartmentalised identity and integrated identity, which exemplify different negotiated relationships between professional, personal and private life spheres. The findings show that these three forms of professional identities are sequential, from an individual focus to more relational and integrated ways of reasoning about one’s profession. It is through the negotiations between personal and socially derived imperatives that identity formation progresses throughout working lives
Cracking the Egg: Which Came First—Stigma or Affirmative Action?
No full textThis Article examines the strength of arguments concerning the causal connection between racial stigma and affirmative action. In so doing, this article reports and analyzes the results of a survey on internal stigma (feelings of dependency, inadequacy, or guilt) and external stigma (the burden of others\u27 resentment or doubt about one\u27s qualifications) for the Class of 2009 at seven public law schools, four of which employed race-based affirmative action policies when the Class of 2009 was admitted and three of which did not use such policies at that time.
Specifically, this Article examines and presents survey findings of 1) minimal, if any, internal stigma felt by minority law students, regardless of whether their schools practiced race-based affirmative action; 2) no statistically significant difference in internal stigma between minority students at affirmative action law school and non-affirmative action law schools; and 3) no significant impact from external stigma
Racial and Ethnic Preferences in Admissions at the University of Nebraska College of Law
No full textFor over thirty years, racial and ethnic preferences have played a key role in how admissions officers at many of the nation’s public and private institutions of higher learning have chosen their classes. A system of racial and ethnic preferences in admissions operates by establishing different standards of admission for individuals based upon their racial or ethnic background, with some students held to a higher standard and others admitted at a lower standard. Earlier in this century, some colleges and universities denied admission to Jews, blacks, women, and members of other groups even when their grades, test scores, and other measures of academic achievement surpassed those of white males who were offered an opportunity to enroll. The passage of new civil rights legislation in the 1960s made this kind of discrimination illegal.
Since then, however, many colleges, universities, and professional schools have created programs meant to boost the enrollment of students whose backgrounds previously had excluded them from pursuing a higher education – especially blacks and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics – by granting them preferences during the admissions process.
This study of the University of Nebraska College of Law builds on previous work on racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate, law, and medical school admissions done for the Center for Equal Opportunity and is one of several CEO studies since the Grutter decision. As with CEO’s reports on three Virginia public law schools and the University of Michigan law school, CEO sought the data on individual applicants’ admission status, matriculation status, racial/ethnic group membership, sex, in-state or out-of-state residency, LSAT scores, and undergraduate GPAs
Unlocking the Benefits of Diversity: All-Inclusive Multiculturalism and Positive Organizational Change
No full textAs the demographic composition of organizations in the United States rapidly shifts, such that minority groups are becoming the numerical and economic majority, organizations are grappling with ways to manage diversity in the workplace. The two forms of diversity initiatives most frequently implemented in organizations—colorblindness and multiculturalism—have clear benefits; however, each also contributes to feelings of exclusion by different organizational members. In this article, the authors describe problematic issues raised by these two approaches to diversity and offer an alternative perspective—all-inclusive multiculturalism, or the AIM model. The authors posit that AIM serves as a catalyst for positive and effective organizational change through the development of social capital and positive relationships at work and enables organizational members to grow to their fullest potential
Identifying Predictors of Law Student Life Satisfaction
No full textCompared to the U.S. population, law students are at greater risk for stress-related health disorders. However, law students have the potential to experience a high degree of meaningful engagement with their work, to feel a sense of community involvement and support, and to feel proud of their achievements. Based on prior well-being research, it was predicted that engagement, social support, and perceptions of academic success would relate to enhanced satisfaction with life for a national sample of law students. Findings from a multilevel regression analysis revealed that smaller, more diverse law schools with higher quality instruction and class discussion were most conducive to life satisfaction. Students who felt supported by their academic and home communities and students who were academically successful were the most satisfied with their lives