Best Practices for Legal Education

Student resiliency and well-being are on-going concerns to the legal education community. Counselling, academic support, and activities like yoga have been introduced in law schools to address these concerns. Although these strategies are undoubtedly beneficial, a recent research paper suggests that legal educators may have an additional, all-encompassing solution under their noses – the cultural mindset we create in our classrooms.

In the paper The Jury Is In: Law Schools Foster Students’ Fixed Mindsets, Susan Shapcott, Sarah Davis, and Lane Hanson suggest that the law school experience promotes fixed mindsets in law students. Many educators are familiar with Carol Dweck’s work and the concept of mindsets; when students perceive intelligence as an innate trait that one either has or doesn’t have, this is a referred to as a fixed mindset. At the other end of the spectrum, perceiving intelligence as something that develops with effort, strategy and time is referred to as a growth mindset.

The authors reported that third year law students’ mindsets were significantly more fixed than first year students’ mindsets. How does this relate to resiliency and well-being? Quite simply, mindsets are predictive of students’ goals and resiliency to challenges (an inherent part of law school). As students’ mindsets become more fixed, they are more likely to adopt goals intended to demonstrate how smart they are. Consequently, they are less likely to ask for help when they most need it, they will perceive professors’ feedback as judgement, and they may interpret mistakes as evidence that they just don’t have what it takes to succeed. Not only are these behaviors motivationally problematic, they are problematic for mental well-being.

Across a range of fields, growth mindsets are associated with adaptive learning strategies and mentally healthy behaviors that promote well-being and resiliency. So arguably, this is the culture that we should be focused on developing in law schools. However, as Shapcott, et al., report, the opposite may be happening. The longer students are exposed to law-school culture, the more fixed their mindsets become. Therefore, it is time to recognize that there is something adrift in our culture. Furthermore, we cannot simply focus on students’ mindsets without reflecting on the role we as educators play in influencing them.

Students’ well-being won’t change much until law schools work to change the culture from within. Law school classrooms that help students develop growth, not fixed mindsets will do more for students’ resiliency and long-term growth. This starts with faculty members reframing how intelligence and lawyering skills are described (they are learned skills, not innate gifts). When faculty share their own vulnerabilities and struggles to grasp concepts, they create a classroom culture where students are less afraid to ask for help. And when professors give accurate feedback intended to teach students how and what is required for them to improve, rather than simply judging their intelligence, they will help create a growth-mindset culture that reduces students’ stress and increases their strategies for manage their learning experience.

Filed under: Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, First Year Law School Innovations |