The Economic Value of Law Clinic Legal Assistance

Posted on May 9, 2022 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

Robert Kuehn, Washington University School of Law

Each year law school clinics provide free legal assistance to tens of thousands of clients, most of whom would otherwise go unrepresented. The work of clinic students and faculty allows clients to advance or defend their rights or obtain assistance or funds to which they are entitled, assistance that is in many ways invaluable to clients and their communities. While the benefits of clinic work can be difficult to monetize, it is possible to estimate the dollar value of the millions of hours of free legal assistance law clinics provide each year to individuals, governmental agencies, and non-profit organizations. As explained below, law clinic students alone provide tens of millions of dollars in pro bono legal services each year.

During academic year 2020-21, 114,520 J.D. students were enrolled in ABA-approved law schools.[1] The ABA ceased collecting data on law clinic course enrollment in 2016. But in the six years prior, schools reported that enrollment each year in their clinics (“seats filled”) was between 85% to 76% of the total number of seats available for enrollment (“seats available”), decreasing in percentage each year from 2011 to 2016.[2] Because there is no evidence of a noticeable increase in enrollment in experiential courses since 2016,[3] a reasonable assumption is that of the 32,062 reported seats available in 2020-21, around 24,000 students (75% of 32,062) actually enrolled in one of the school’s clinics (21% of all J.D.s). Only a handful of clinics charge a fee for their services and approximately 10% of the clinics in the 2019-20 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) survey might assist some for-profit organizations, though even those are generally of limited means.[4] After excluding those categories of clinic work, it is reasonable to conservatively assume that in 2020-21, approximately 22,000 clinic students provided their free assistance just to individuals, government entities, and non-profits.

The CSALE survey collected information on 950 law school clinics. The median number of credits awarded for just the clinic student’s field or casework (i.e., non-classroom activity) on behalf of clients was 3.5, with each credit representing 42.5 hours of work under the minimum standard set by the ABA. The average clinic student, therefore, worked 149 hours during the term on the casework portion of their law clinic course. Thus, during the 2020-21 academic year, the 22,000 students in law school clinics are estimated to have provided approximately 3,278,000 hours of free legal assistance to individuals, government entities, and non-profits.

The Supreme Court held that in awarding legal fees to prevailing parties, paralegals and law clerks are to be awarded fees at market rates, and courts also award fees for comparable clinic student work at market rates.[5] One national survey of typical billing rates for paralegals found that law firms charge their clients between $100-$200 per hour, with most falling in the median of that range;[6] another survey found that rates for non-lawyers across states ranged from $99 to $220 per hour.[7] If law student work is conservatively valued at a market rate of $100 per hour, as cases support,[8] clinic students are estimated to have provided over $325 million in free legal assistance in 2020-21.

Alternatively valuing student time at the lower prevailing wage rate also shows the enormous economic value of clinic assistance. Wages for law students vary widely, from around $20-25 per hour in some areas and for some types of law offices and clients, to $100 per hour for summer work at elite law firms. There is no Bureau of Labor Statistics median wage for law student employment. However, the median wage for paralegals and legal assistants is $27.03 per hour.[9] Using this lower valuation of student time, law clinic students still provided over $88.5 million in free legal assistance in 2020-21.

Clinic Students2020-21 HoursValue/HourTotal Value
Market Rate3,278,000$100.00$327,800,000
Wage Rate3,278,000$27.03$88,604,000

An Association of American Law Schools survey of law schools also sought to value student pro bono services. It reported 4.7 million hours in donated legal services by students during academic year 2018-19, valued at the general rate for volunteer time of $25.43 per hour, for a total value of $119 million.[10] The survey only obtained information from 103 schools and the questionnaire did not define or limit what a school could count as pro bono service or break out hours by the type of service reported (i.e., law clinic, externship, or student organization activities).[11]

Public service is a core value of legal education[12] and pro bono legal activities a professional responsibility of law professors.[13] Although schools often bemoan their costs, law clinics play a primary role in fulfilling these ideals by providing local communities with millions of hours of much-needed legal assistance and hundreds of millions of dollars in free services each year.

[1] ABA, 2021 Standard 509 Information Report Data Overview, https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/statistics/2021/2021-509-enrollment-summary-report.pdf.

[2] ABA, 509 Required Disclosures─Curriculum, https://www.abarequireddisclosures.org/Disclosure509.aspx.

[3] Robert R Kuehn, Implementation of the ABA’s New Experiential Training Requirement: More Whimper Than Bang (Spring 2021),  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3837606.

[4] Robert R. Kuehn, Margaret Reuter & David A. Santacroce, 2019-20 Survey of Applied Legal Education (excluding clinics described as entrepreneurship/small business, intellectual property, technology, and transactional), https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5d8cde48c96867b8ea8c6720/5f8e46e59e39d4dc82e70a54_Report%20on%202019-20%20CSALE%20Survey.10.19.20.pdf.

[5] Missouri v. Jenkins, 491 U.S. 274, 285 (1989), https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/491/274.

[6] CosmoLex, How Much Should Our Law Firm Bill for Paralegal Work?, https://www.cosmolex.com/resource-center/running-a-law-office/how-much-should-our-law-firm-bill-for-paralegal-work.

[7] Clio, 2021 Legal Trends Report 63, https://www.clio.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-Legal-Trends-Report-Oct-26.pdf.

[8] See, e.g., League of Wilderness Defenders/Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project v. U.S. Forest Serv., 305 F. Supp.3d 1156 (D.Or. 2018); Davis v. Lancatser, No. 4:13CV1638 HEA (E.D. Mo. Jan. 18, 2019), https://casetext.com/case/davis-v-lancatser.

[9] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook – Paralegals and Legal Assistants, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/paralegals-and-legal-assistants.htm#tab-1.

[10] Association of American Law Schools, AALS Law Student Pro Bono Hours Survey Report (2019), https://www.aals.org/aals-newsroom/2019-aals-law-student-pro-bono-hours-survey-report.

[11] Association of American Law Schools, AALS Law Student Pro Bono Hours Survey Questions (2019), https://www.aals.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/AALS-Law-Student-Pro-Bono-Hours-Survey-Questions-2019.pdf.

[12] Association of American Law Schools, Law Student Pro Bono Contributions (2019), https://aalsweb.wufoo.com/forms/w1fuc2201qpe1pe.

[13] Association of American Law Schools, Law Professors in the Discharge of Ethical and Professional Responsibilities, https://www.aals.org/about/handbook/good-practices/ethics.

Filed under: Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, empirical studies of legal education, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Imperative and Power of Empirical Research

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By Anahid Gharakhanian, Southwestern Law School

Allison Korn and Laila L. Hlass’s Assessing the Experiential (R)evolution, recently published in Villanova Law Review, should be celebrated as a much needed example of empirical investigation and analysis in legal education, specifically experiential education.  As aptly noted in the Experiential Education section of Building on Best Practices, “[l]egal education urgently needs empirical research on what methods will best promote deep learning that transfers to practice.” 

For many years, the experiential teaching community has had the benefit of the triennial CSALE Study, providing extensive data about the infrastructure of clinics and externships.  Now Korn & Hlass’s empirical work provides data about the proliferation of deans/directors of experiential education and growth in experiential curricula.  This data sets the stage for the important questions they raise about what law schools are doing about the following:  “working to uplift experiential programming as an essential part of the institution,” and “core to the law school curriculum”; “taking steps to identify, recruit, and support clinicians of color”; and ensuring security of position and voice in law school governance.  Korn & Hlass’s work, along with CSALE’s compilation of data since 2007 about applied legal education, serves as an essential foundation for posing these important questions and joins the clarion call of others that rigorous empirical research is critical in every aspect of our assessment and advancement of experiential education – the students’ learning, role of experiential curricula, and diversity of and equity for experiential faculty. 

I think about the critical importance of empirical work from the vantage point of externships or field placement courses, which provide a singularly unique bridge to practice and where so much of the student’s experience occurs outside of the classroom and the externship professor’s direct observation.  Anecdotally we know that these real world experiences are very important to a student’s professional development and practice readiness as a new attorney.  At the same time, the ABA and some in legal education have worried about the educational rigor outside of the law school setting.  What’s needed is exploration of our impressions and perceptions through rigorous empirical work.  In the world of externships, this translated into research questions that Carolyn Young Larmore, of Chapman University, Fowler School of Law, and I took up in a year-long, multi-school study, assessing students’ success at externships and factors contributing to it (involving three law schools in the same geographic area, with very different externship program designs, and widely different incoming credentials – with 2019 median LSATs of 153, 158, and 168).  The study yielded helpful information about the importance of externships to practice readiness.  Also, a notable finding of our study – related to access – was that students from all three surveyed schools achieved very similar levels of externship success (measured in terms of first-year practice readiness), regardless of widely different entering credentials as well as the academic component of the externship programs.  Similarly, the study found that law school GPA plays a very limited role in predicting externship success.  You can see how this data could be a powerful tool in creating access for law students, from many diverse academic backgrounds and schools, to career-shaping professional experiences while in law school and beyond.

As we tackle empirical questions in experiential education, it’s helpful to think about backward design.  In the case of the experiential programming that we offer to our students, a couple of recent national studies are enormously helpful: IAALS’s Foundations for Practice, a relatively recent national study about what foundations entry-level attorneys need to begin a successful legal career (which is the study that Carolyn and I used to define externship success in our own study – i.e., how close are externs by the end of their externship to first-year practice readiness); and the very recent study by IAALS and Professor Deborah Jones Merritt, Building a Better Bar: Capturing Minimum Competence, with one of its two objectives to “[d]evelop and promote understanding of the minimum competence needed to practice law” (and the second one to “[a]lign the bar exam with research-based concepts of minimum competence”). 

To borrow from IAALS and Professor Merritt, the key here is being guided by research-based concepts.  Whether assessing our students’ learning (as Carolyn and I tackled in our externship study), or raising questions about the role of experiential curricula, and diversity of and equity for experiential faculty – as Korn & Hlass have done – we need to engage in more empirical research and use this powerful tool to inform and advance the critical work of experiential education and educators.

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Clinical Scholarship | Tagged: , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Dean Darby Dickerson — on Equity, Security, and Status

Posted on December 2, 2020 by davidafinger

Many of us were inspired to hear AALS President Darby Dickerson, Dean, UIC John Marshall Law School speak about “caste”, “candor”, and “change” during her address at the January 2020 Annual Meeting.

In this new article, first posted in the AALS Newsletter, she follows up with some worrisome data from the 2019-2020 CSALE study, works through potential harms to schools and students, and issues a call to action to address issues of pay equity, security, and status.

We value the conversations and discussions that often happen live and informally at in-person conferences as we share our progress (or lack thereof). So, dear readers, please let us know in the comments about any promising practices or initiatives at your schools. How are leaders addressing pay equity, security, and status in an era of hiring freezes and financial insecurity? What changes are you working toward?

Warmly,

Davida and Melanie

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Comments Off on Dean Darby Dickerson — on Equity, Security, and Status

Important New Report on Essential Lawyering Skills

Posted on November 2, 2020 by John Lande

Ohio State Professor Deborah Jones Merritt and Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System Research Director Logan Cornett just published an important report, Building a Better Bar: The Twelve Building Blocks of Minimum Competence, based on insights from 50 focus groups.

They found that minimum competence consists of 12 interlocking “building blocks,” including the ability to interact effectively with clients, communicate as a lawyer, and see the “big picture” of client matters.

They propose 10 recommendations that courts, law schools, bar associations, bar examiners, and other stakeholders should consider in their efforts to move towards better, evidence-based lawyer licensing.

These include requirements that candidates for licensure should be required to complete coursework that develops their ability to interact effectively with clients and negotiate.

In addition, they recommend that candidates should be required to complete coursework that focuses on the lawyer’s responsibility to promote and protect the quality of justice and includes closely supervised clinical and/or externship work.

They include recommendations to use performance tests and restrict use of essay and multiple choice exams.

Here’s a summary of the report.  You might share it with your deans and curriculum committee chairs in case they haven’t seen it.

This brief summary doesn’t do justice to the insights from the report.  I’m sure that faculty are working like crazy in this year of living dangerously, especially at this point in the semester.  You might find it worth your time to spend an hour reading this report when you feel like procrastinating.

The report doesn’t include all my radical ideas for a negotiation school, but it clearly recommends moving in that direction.

I will discuss these ideas with Peter Robinson and Sukhsimran Singh in an upcoming event, They Should Call It Negotiation School, Not Law School, sponsored by the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution.  It will be on Tuesday, November 10, at 1 PT, 2 MT, 3 CT, 4 ET.  Come join the conversation.

Filed under: Bar Exam, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | 1 Comment »

MOVING FORWARD: DAY TWO OF DREXEL (and some favorite poetic quotes)

Posted on May 28, 2020 by Mary A. Lynch
Congratulations are in order to Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, to Dean Dan Filler and to all who planned and presented at the virtual conference.  LEANING INTO UNCERTAINTY: ENSURING QUALITY LEGAL EDUCATION DURING CORONAVIRUS.  Previously,  I wrote a few thoughts about Day One of the conference.  In this post, I will focus on Day Two. But first, good news for those of you who were unable to join virtually: Drexel’s Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research, Alex C. Geisinger, plans to create a digest of the ideas and questions raised and discussed at the conference. As law schools face the evolving uncertainty presented by both the virus and the conflicting responses of our state and federal leaders, they will benefit from the kind of collaborative efforts and stimulating exchange of ideas that the Drexel conference organizers skillfully facilitated.  As I work with my law school colleagues to plan an exciting and enriching Fall 2020 Semester, I am using the wisdom gained from the conference. A few maxims from yesterday’s gathering stayed with me:
  • Acknowledge and name your biggest WORRY.
  • In crisis, there is OPPORTUNITY.
  • There is always ANOTHER crisis, we just don’t know what it will be.
I was reminded by the wise words of William Butler Yeats

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold  

Below I share five conference discussions which interested me. 1.  Relationships Still Matter and Matter Even More We know from LSSSE that for health and wellness and law students “Relationships Matter.”  How do we prioritize and facilitate those in a virtual or partly virtual world?
  • Phone call contact with each incoming 1L to find out worries, concerns, and hopes and model that relationships with individuals at the school matter.
  • Throughout semester, should teachers, staff, and administrators be polling the mood of the day or the week?
  • Set up a more systematic “social work case management system” to keep tabs on individual student, staff, and faculty wellness.
  • Provide in a simple format directly to each student in a personal phone call, meeting, or interaction a single document which outlines who the actual person and contact is when in trouble – academically, financially, emotionally, physically.  Maybe start this process over the summer using all employees  throughout the law school?  (CALI worked on a lesson that each school can use to modify the system or contact flow Lesson is at https://www.cali.org/lesson/18103)
  • Prioritize peer-to-peer opportunities for mentoring, collaboration, and synergy.
2.    Create Distinct “Places” for Students To Be
  • Virtual Libraries
  • Virtual Study Spaces
  • Virtual Social Spaces
  • Dedicated physical place for experiential learners to access supplies – not necessarily in clinic office space.
Makes me think of having students feel they have in the words of poet Mary Oliver’s a “place in the family of things”
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
3. Anticipate Enforcing Safety and Health Regulations During A Polarized Presidential Election Season
  • Messaging and Communication of Community Rules
  • Incorporate into Student and Personnel Regulations
  • Harder to Anticipate What Will Happen in a Public School Setting
4.  What changes are Temporary? What Will Continue after the Pandemic? Although forced to engage in Remote Emergency Teaching, Professors became facile with useful pedagogical online tools and will incorporate them into their general toolbox.
  • Investment already made in technology will accelerate usage.
  • This was all going to happen anyway as part of Law School 2.0?
  • Increasing options for law students? For institutions growing online programming?
  • Will law schools and universities be more open to allowing staff to work remotely?
  • Will we better appreciate, celebrate, and prioritize the importance of presence and in-person relationship in Higher Ed Learning?
5. With the impact of COVID-19 elevating the issues of access disparity and the diverse needs of our students, how can law schools minimize the threat to learning continuity and academic success?
  • Continue to modify assessment and grading practices?
  • Financial Insecurity?
    • Loss of Employment
    • Food Insecurity  – Virtual Food Pantry
    • Rent and Housing
    • Alums offered physical space (offices) for students without good space to study and take exams.
  • Supporting caregivers and others with outside responsibilities.
  • Evolving accommodations for students with disabilities and immune-suppressed students as we change the manner and methods of teaching.
The above five are a poor summary of the many ideas and queries raised at the conference and thus I look forward to the report back. As we arrive at the end of May 2020, take courage and know we are all in this TOGETHER!
One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.  Maya Angelou

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Disruptive Leadership, Diversity & Social Justice, Teaching Methodology, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on MOVING FORWARD: DAY TWO OF DREXEL (and some favorite poetic quotes)

Is Mandatory P/F An Opportunity to More Accurately Assess Competency to Practice Law and For Bar Admission?

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Mary A. Lynch

As our knowledge of COVID19 and its impact becomes more extensive each day, each workplace, profession and community is facing some common and some unique questions. Those working on the front lines in hospitals – such as several of  my relatives in NYC and NJ – are experiencing the kind of trauma, shortages, emotional overload and duress that is usually experienced in wartime. It can only be weakly imagined by the rest of us.   For those of us not experiencing  people suffering and dying in front of us on a daily basis, some less horrific choices are before us:  How do we modify “business as usual”?  How do we evolve and adapt with each days new tsunmai of information and data?  How do we support our best selves and our core values in this historically momentous time on our shared planet? 

Before turning to the topic of grading and assessment, I want to pause to give a shout-out to my home institution. Our multi-talented leader Dean Alicia Ouellette has been holding  community town halls every day since Friday March 20th. (BTW Dean Ouellette  just shared on Facebook  that she had been suffering from “presumptive COVID 19” fever and symptoms but thankfully is now symptom free). During our daily town halls, my faculty colleagues and I have expressed our wonder and gratitude for the  character, resilience and grit of our law students who are balancing so much right now, and facing so many financial, tech-related, health and extended family burdens. Our students’ engaged and forgiving response to “tech-curious but not necessarily tech-savvy” teachers and their community-minded empathy for those hardest hit keeps the faculty motivated and inspired.

One of the COVID19 decisions for legal educators involves whether and how we assess and sort — which in reductive  vernacular means “grade and rank.”  Maintaining appropriate expectations, options, rigor and excellence in law teaching  may assume primacy for those  who have been long focused on ensuring that law students receive real value for the time, talent and treasure they expend on law school.   For others focused on fairness in law placement,  transparent employer signals about how they will view Spring 2020 legal education may be most influential.  For those concerned about our profession’s  reputation for lack of wellness and lack of diversity, those concerns are elevated at this moment when those least advantaged are most hard pressed.  For those struggling with equity, there are so many permutations and consequences of COVID19 – whichever choice a school makes – that voting faculty could become as immobilized as Chidi Anagonye on THE GOOD PLACE. (BTW Good idea for escape television for those who love philosophy or Kristen Bell).

On the other hand, might this be a moment to look for the opportunities for reform and improvement that only come when the status quo is disturbed and rocked to its foundations as is happening now.  Here is what I am thinking:

Might Mandatory P/F force educators and employers to admit that traditional law school grading and ranking is a misleading and reductive proxy for measuring potential success as a lawyer?

Could it force employers to use other ways to learn about the WHOLE STUDENT with all her strengths, gaps, and individual aptitudes including the situation she faced during law school?

Might it accelerate a move to a more qualitative than quantitative assessment of each law student? Or, at least might it prioritize learning which enables a school to assemble a portfolio of student recommendations ( demonstration of knowledge, skills, aptitudes, and professionalism)?

Foundational resources include of course Educating Lawyers, Best Practices in Legal Education, and Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World, which also provide helpful wisdom points. In addition, looking back through the dozen or so years of this blog’s existence, there are lessons from which we can pull core knowledge and core values to assist in our continued educational deliberations at this turbulent time. 

CORE KNOWLEDGE AND REFLECTIONS

Valuing Legal Education over Sorting – For example, focus on the difference between assessment and grading.  Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers conferences have brought employers, law schools, and legal education stakeholders together to tackle the disconnect between our current sorting systems (primarily used to help elite employers looking for a simple and reductive initial screening system) and the needs of society and most employers for competent new attorneys and the needs of students and the profession for fairness.

Focus instead on formative and evaluative assessment of law students and graduates

Focus on growth mindset, on reflection and learning from mistakes or experience

Recognize the limits and problems with GPA’s or LSAT scores to create a more competent profession with more able and diverse learners.

Acknowledge that the media and the academy is still stuck in a mindset that focuses on sorting methods rather than on better preparation and assessment of law students to serve clients and society.

Class rank does not predict who will become a competent, healthy and ethical lawyer

Effective Education includes

CORE LEARNING VALUES

Growth Mindset 

Inclusion and Diversity

Student-centered Learning  and the Introduction to the original Best Practices – “One of our basic tenets is that law schools should become more student-centered”

Wellness  

Collaboration and Innovation

Integrity 

Character 

Justice

Situational Excellence

There is a common theme here: P/F with alternative assessment information and measures should be seen not as temporary emergency expedients to “sort and rank”, but rather as long overdue components of a better educational program and more nuanced assessment paradigm.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.  I wish all our readers and citizens of our little blue planet moments of peace, love, safety, and compassion. May someone be kind to you today and let’s pay it forward.

 

 

 

Filed under: academic freedom, Bar Exam, Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Disruptive Leadership, Diversity & Social Justice, First Year Law School Innovations, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

After All These Years: Another Bar Exam Over, Another Entering Class, but Still a Disconnect between the Licensing Exam and What We Need Lawyers to Be and Do

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Mary A. Lynch

I was never a Journey fan but I truly am astonished that after all these years of preparing lawyers for practice, and after two years of an unprecedented undermining of  the rule of law in our nation, law schools still live with a disconnect between the profession’s  licensing exam and what business, government and society needs lawyers to be and do, which includes protecting  the rule of law. 

The National Law Journal recently discussed two new major studies which will analyze whether the current exam is the best measure of new lawyer competence.  The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) is in the midst of a three year study  to “ensure that the bar examination continues to test the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for competent entry-level legal practice in the 21st century.”  (Hmm, continues? that’s a bit biased) and has already held 30 listening sessions.  

The second study, “Building a Better Bar: Capturing Minimum Competence” is an initiative of  the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System in partnership with Ohio State Law Professor Deborah Merritt, and aspires to develop a “fair, evidence-based definition of minimum competence” to improve the current licensing process.  Funded by Access-Lex, the researchers:

will be holding 60 focus groups in 12 locations around the country. While these focus group participants will primarily be new lawyers, we will also hold a number of specialized groups with supervisors. Additional specialized groups will include only women and only people of color, as well as groups in rural areas; traditional job analyses can mask the views of these lawyers, yet their perspectives are essential to create a more fully representative view of minimum competence and how to test for it effectively. Through these focus groups, we will be able to capture key information from a diversity of perspectives and provide concrete data on the definition of minimum competence that the profession can use to improve the bar exam and how lawyers are licensed.

 

Readers may remember that IAALS has provided helpful research in the past through its Foundations for Practice  research, which identified the  competencies over 24,000 legal employers value in new hires (most of which go untested by the current licensing process) as well as the evaluation of the graduates of the Daniel Websters Honors alternative to the bar exam in “Ahead of the Curve:  turning Law Students into Lawyers ”

I suppose I should be delighted that more studies are being launched. They are addressing the exact issues so many of us have raised for decades. However, my reaction is uncharacteristically pessimistic.  (Readers here who have tolerated my enthusiastic use of exclamation points and emphasis will agree it is uncharacteristic).  Perhaps it is the August humidity. Perhaps, it is the sorrow surrounding our nation after a week of grief from senseless gun violence But more likely, it is the fact that I am feeling frustrated that we have already studied this to death! For example, working with state bar associations The Foundations for Practice Project already studied new lawyer competencies with 24,000 lawyers from all 50 states participating and found

… the foundations that entry-level lawyers need to launch successful careers in the legal profession.

In a first-of-its-kind survey, we asked, “What makes a new lawyer successful?” More than 24,000 lawyers from all 50 states answered.

What we learned is that new lawyers need more than IQ and EQ to be successful. They also need CQ: Character Quotient. In fact, 76% of characteristics (thinks like integrity, work ethic, common sense, and resilience) were identified by a majority of respondents as necessary right out of law school.

Beyond character, new lawyers are successful when they come to the job with a broad blend of legal skills, professional competencies, and characteristics that comprise what we call the “whole lawyer.”

So why is the NCBE, who clearly has a stake in the outcome, refusing to respond to the outcome of that 3 year old study but instead promising only to do its own study. JEESH! We tweak here and there, we add more pro bono or experiential requirements, but no one truly influential will admit that our insistence on anchoring the gateway to the profession to a timed, written exam instead of clinical excellence is the problem.

Starting as early as 2008, this blog has discussed the problems with the bar exam and its role as an unhelpful, anxiety producing, discriminatory, skewed, and unnecessarily speeded, gate-keeping device.  For a sporadic history of posts between then and now, in fairly chronological order, click on the links below.

Did You Know That “Bar Courses” Don’t Matter? 

New Article: No Excuses Left for Failing to Reform Legal Education

Working with State Bar Associations on Best Practices

Bar Passage and Best Practices for Legal Education

One BAR to rule them all?

The Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program

NYSBA Task Force on the Future of the Legal Profession Report

New Requirements for Bar Exam Stress Clinical Education

Existential Crisis and Bar Exams: what is really cruelest?

The Bar Exam Inhibits Curricular Reform

NEW YORK STATE BAR ASSOCIATION VIGOROUSLY OPPOSES PROPOSAL TO BRING UBE TO NY THIS JULY

Preparing Students for the Multistate Bar Exam

Musings on the Bar Exam and Legal Education’s Attitude toward it

Bar Exam Musings, Part II: Skillfully Changing the Bar Exam Narrative

Experts in the Legal Field Question the Bar Exam…

What’s going on in California? “TFARR- recommended” 15 credits of competency training

New York Proposes “Experiential Learning Requirements” as Condition of Licensure: CLEA and NYS Bar Committee Respond

Examining the Bar

Keeping an experiential identity in bar passage reform

Whither Clinical Courses and Bar Passage – by Prof. Robert Kuehn

DO LAW SCHOOLS ADEQUATELY PREPARE STUDENTS FOR PRACTICE? SURVEYS SAY . . . NO! – Robert Kuehn, Washington University School of Law

Professor Merritt’s Blog post on attorney discipline and bar exam WORTH A READ!

Studying Better Ways to Test Bar Applicants for Minimum Competence: Another Reason to Care about the California Bar Exam (Besides the Cut Score Debate)

Scholarship on Bar Exam Alternatives Needed

ABA Commission on Future of the Profession & ABA Vote on Bar Passage Proposal

Drafting Exams With Test-Taking Speed in MindConcrete Suggestions for Bar Exam Reform

We have to talk about the bar exam

What can Law Schools Learn about Bar Passage from Medical Schools’ Approach to Studying Students Who Struggle with Licensing Exams?

More Resources Re Teaching, Learning, and Bar Passage

A Fresh Look at the Uniform Bar Examination

Letters raise concerns about changes to the bar pass accreditation standard

Time to Remedy the Ills Afflicting ABA Council’s Standard 316 Proposal

Are the Students Failing the Bar Exam Today Canaries in the Coal Mine warning us of a More General Need to Change Legal Education?

Shifting the Focus of Legal Education Back to Just That: Education

How Practice Tests Reduce Anxiety in Bar Preparation and the Exam

Quite a listing, huh? I suspect that the IAALS and Merritt project will provide us with extraordinarily helpful insights into measuring minimum competence. But political clout is also needed. Will this BLOG simply be adding more posts for years to come on the unfairness and inappropriateness of a slightly modified, unnecessarily stressful, timed, bar exam — a continued hazing tradition?  I hope the NCBE and other institutional influencers proves me wrong.

Filed under: academic freedom, Bar Exam, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Disruptive Leadership, Diversity & Social Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Comments Off on After All These Years: Another Bar Exam Over, Another Entering Class, but Still a Disconnect between the Licensing Exam and What We Need Lawyers to Be and Do

The role of law school internships and supervisors

Posted on August 9, 2019 by Mary A. Lynch

Today’s ABA Journal contains an op ed by a law student complaining that “law school  biases”  infringe on his right to free speech. Part of his critique involved a change in clinical policies after he wore a #BuildTheWall T-shirt to his internship.

“It had been expressed that we could wear T-shirts, and that has been the norm for my one year at this internship. I took extra precaution by bringing a light jacket to cover it up if a client came to meet with me unannounced.”

Others are better prepared than I to debate the issue generally of whether his claims demonstrate bias in higher education or bias on the part of the student. Others can ponder whether as educators, we are more apt to be triggered by exclusive versus inclusive messages since we value designing welcoming learning environments  and growth mindset .  However, I am not interested in this school’s particular behaviour or this student’s startling apparent nonchalance about how his clothing affected his colleagues, peers and the workplace.  Rather, I am more interested in developing a better understanding of the difference between an academic discussion about self-expression, and the responsibilities and possible repression of some self-expression that most lawyers and law students undergo when donning their professional role as legal interns do.

In my 30 years in clinical education, I have witnessed multiple instances of clinical faculty navigating the tricky balance in communicating professional norms, protecting clients and academic programs, and  respecting a student’s rights. Here are just a few issues we have addressed:

helping students without wealth obtain professional clothing

multicultural insensitivity to clients by both majority and minority students

student difficulty interacting with racist, homophobic and/or sexist, clients, judges, witnesses or opposing attorneys

Unlaundered clothes, smelly students

tight clothes (in men and women)

Clacking heels, scuffed shoes, or wearing clogs all day, every day, one’s whole life

Hair over eyes

dirty fingernails

evolving norms around piercing, black women’s hair, women wearing pants, more casual clothing, hair with color not found in nature

evolving norms around cell phones in local courts, e-mail

learning to use an ancient device called a telephone, to actually initiate a call or listen to voicemail

navigating support for transgender students in unwelcoming situations

drooping pants, belly showing, off the shoulder outfits, cleavage

loud talking, gum chewing,

informality in general which can appear as rudeness to supervisors

“distracting” jewelry

women students raising their voices in a question at the end of a sentence

…and I am sure you teachers can add many more. Feel free.

As a law professor steeped in clinical legal pedagogy and theory, I start the conversation with a few  questions:

  • what is the student’s “educational goal” for her academic/professional journey or experience
  • what is the student’s “lawyer goal” in the context of this internship, case or professional experience
  • what are the client’s/workplace’s needs and goals
  • what are the needs and goals of the community that supports you having this experience — the support staff, the court officers, your sister and fellow students, the local legal community (in this area I first must acknowledge my priorities and how current student behavior may close off opportunities for future students)

Then I discuss with the student how the student’s desired self-expression fits within those questions and priorities, and the possible disconnect from her goals and the programs.

This is my approach.  What do you do?

 

 

Filed under: academic freedom, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

A Fresh Look at the Uniform Bar Examination

Posted on January 22, 2019 by ottostockmeyer

The bar exam is back in the news. Later this month the ABA House of Delegates will consider a proposal to raise the bar-passage standard. The proposal would require that 75% of an accredited law school’s graduates pass a bar exam within two years of graduation.

In most states, bar exam means the National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Uniform Bar Exam. The UBE has been adopted by 35 jurisdictions and is under consideration in others. It carries the endorsement of many ABA-related entities. They include the Conference of Chief Justices, the Law Student and Law Practice Divisions, the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, and the House of Delegates.

As a reminder of the features of the UBE, and an update on the pace of its adoption, I have accepted Mary Lynch’s gracious invitation to reblog my recent post “Will the Uniform Bar Exam Come to Michigan?” from the Western Michigan University-Cooley Law School blog. (Spoiler alert: no time soon.)

Filed under: Bar Exam, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Comments Off on A Fresh Look at the Uniform Bar Examination

Leadership Education in Law School: You’re Already Providing It

Posted on January 16, 2019 by Paula Schaefer

Regardless of whether they think of themselves as leaders, our law students will play a leadership role for the rest of their lives. Certainly many will be leaders in their local legal community, in their law offices, and in various bar associations. But beyond that, all lawyers will be expected to lead outside of their law practices. As a lawyer (and sometimes the only lawyer) in their community group, family, or organization, they will be looked to for leadership.

Just as our students may not recognize themselves as leaders, we may not recognize ourselves as teachers of leadership. But we are. Most of our classes provide excellent opportunities to talk about leadership, even if “leadership” is not in the title. And we model leadership in how we treat our students and other members of the law school, how we contribute to and connect with our communities, and how we help move our law schools forward to address the changing profession.

Recognizing the growing interest in leadership education for lawyers, the AALS Section on Leadership was chartered in November 2017. The section describes its purpose as promoting “scholarship, teaching, and related activities that will help prepare lawyers and law students to serve in leadership roles.” This section is a great place to start for a law professor who wants to learn more about leadership education.

Law professors interested in getting some innovative ideas for integrating leadership-related topics into their classes should consider attending a workshop and roundtable at the University of Tennessee College of Law on April 4-5, 2019. The program is titled Leadership Development for Lawyers. The “workshop” day of the program will give attendees the chance to choose two of four interactive sessions: collaborating with career services; integrating well-being into leadership curricula; assessing leadership development efforts; and effective leadership skill development exercises. Then, the “roundtable” day of the program will provide an opportunity for conference attendees and panelists to share ideas and experiences in leadership education.

The goal of the Tennessee workshop and roundtable is to bring together a large group of legal educators who are working in the area of lawyer leadership education–including professors who don’t (currently) think of themselves as “leadership” teachers.

 

 

Filed under: Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Disruptive Leadership, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , | Comments Off on Leadership Education in Law School: You’re Already Providing It

What can Law Schools Learn about Bar Passage from Medical Schools’ Approach to Studying Students Who Struggle with Licensing Exams?

Posted on November 28, 2018 by jennifersbard

It’s not unusual for a provost or a colleague or a relative at Thanksgiving to ask a legal academic why law students have so much trouble passing the bar exam when the pass rates for medical students are usually in the high 90th percent.  The short answer to that question is that the two processes are completely different—and there’s no obvious trick, technique, or intervention that could convert our bar passage rates into their licensure passage rates.   For one thing, it’s the wrong question.  “Passing” the medical licensing exams is certainly important, but unlike the “all or nothing” process of passing the bar exam, the score achieved on Step 1 affects medical students’ entire career path.  But there is a lot to learn about the methods that medical schools use in studying the very few students who have trouble as well as how they evaluate the effect of changes to their curriculums on scores on the licensing exams.

Quick recap on professional licensing—future doctors take a series of three exams over the first six years of their undergraduate medical education and the start of their residency.  (more links in a post I wrote earlier this year here).  The exams are almost entirely national although the actual process of being licensed is conducted on a state by state basis.   Law students take a licensing exam in the state where they intend to practice upon graduation.  For purposes of this post, the closest analogy to the bar exam is the more academic Step One students take during their second year of medical school.  Like  our NCBE, the National Board of Medical Examiners which produces United States Medical Licensing Examination works with medical licensing boards and depends on their confidence.  It issues annual reports.

The focus of this post is on the methods that medical schools use to study the small number of their students who do have trouble passing the licensing the exams as well as the factors that can affect the scores students achieve.  I’ve tried to focus on articles outside of paywalls, and would certainly encourage you to conduct your own searches in the various data bases to which you have access.  There are several journals devoted directly to studying medical education—although these articles can pop up anywhere.

Medical educators use a wide range of research techniques to learn more about students who struggle with licensure exams.  Like us, medical schools would prefer students pass the first time and many articles like this one look for characteristics who fail the first time but eventually pass.  Others look for characteristics of students at risk for failure here and here  or even  what students think of the exam.    Another area for inquiry involves the role stress plays in the score students achieve.   In partnership with social scientists at our schools or in our communities, we too could be conducting studies to help us learn more about students who face difficulty passing the bar exam.  These studies can be part of graduate student work or may even be funded by groups like Access which is making money available to study bar passage.

 

The actual reason the medical school pass rates are so high, though, may not be all that helpful.

It’s not just because they are able to limit admission to students who have already demonstrated an ability to score very highly on the MCAT.  A test that is much more similar to step 1 than the bar exam is to the LSAT.  Indeed, medical schools have direct input in both the MCAT and the Licensing Exams—so when one changes, the other can too. And it’s not clear that anything in the curriculum makes a difference at all—the industry offering study aids and licensure prep courses dwarfs the bar prep and study aid market to a point where students often start studying for the licensing exams before the first day of medical school.

But if it is the curriculum, it’s important to remember the vast difference in time scale between medical and legal education.  We have students for three years post B.A. Medical schools in the U.S. plan their curriculum based on  8 plus years of increasingly specialized medical education.  They are therefore comfortable holding off on the direct teaching of practice skills for the first two years while they are aligning their curriculum with the content of the Step 1 exam.

Even Step 1, though, is far more focused on practice than on knowledge accumulation or deliberately confusing question formulations that characterize the bar exam. Step 2,  the second round of licensing exams prior to graduation medical school,  go past paper and pencil in that they actually test students’ ability to conduct exams and exercise medical judgement.  Another reason for the high pass rate is that most medical schools have stopped developing their own tests and instead use assessment instruments (shelf exams) provided by the same company that produces the exam.   Sure, there is grumbling and criticism about content & timing of the licensing exams, but medical schools work hard to make sure that their curriculums are aligned with the content of the exams.  Finally, medical education is extremely self-reflecting–they are constantly aware of the risks that come from confusing correlation and causation.  How do you know that a change in one part of the curriculum is the cause of a change in test scores?  You run Pearson correlations followed by stepwise linear regressions.  Seeing is not believing when comes to identifying factors that affect performance on licensure exams.   Look here, here, here, and here for studies evaluating curriculum changes.  They take nothing for granted—does attendance make a difference, does flipping classrooms really work? Does reducing the number of hours spend in the anatomy lab reduce USMLE scores?

Another standard practice in medical schools is curriculum mapping— an essential first step for any school that wants to understand what they are teaching—let alone make changes.   Like all maps, curriculum maps are DESCRIPTIVE, not PROSCRIPTIVE.  Here is   Harvard’s curriculum map, but you can find examples on the home page of just about every U.S. Medical School.This is a an article walking through how to map a curriculum.

So what’s helpful to us isn’t so much what medical schools are doing, but how they are evaluating themselves. 

In recap, neither I nor anyone else who has ever practiced law thinks it would be a good idea to emulate medical schools by fully aligning our curriculum with the bar exam so as to turn the three years of law school into one extended bar prep course.  Among other reasons, the material tested on the bar is quite static and doesn’t reflect the realities of today’s law practice.   It also wouldn’t make much sense for schools whose students take the bar exam in many different jurisdictions.   Also, the bar exam is just not equivalent to the three rounds of USMLE exams in actually testing both the knowledge and application of knowledge needed to be a successful lawyer.  If it was, we wouldn’t hear so many complaints about how students who have passed bar are never-the-less not “practice ready.”

Tomorrow—where can we get the help we need to find out this information, and who is going to pay for it?  Spoiler--Access Lex has a program.

Filed under: Bar Exam, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, First Year Law School Innovations, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques | Tagged: , , , | 7 Comments »

On the Value of Gap Years and Non-Legal Experience to Legal Employers (and Law Schools)

Posted on September 21, 2018 by Ben Bratman

Reviewing the results of the Foundations for Practice survey conducted by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), I cannot help but note how the 24,000 responding attorneys ranked the helpfulness of various criteria for hiring beginning lawyers. (See here.) Just under 80 percent (78.3%, to be exact) identified “life experience between college and law school” as either a very helpful or somewhat helpful hiring criterion. Moreover, while “legal employment” (88.4% ranking as very or somewhat helpful) and “legal externship” (81.5%) unsurprisingly sat near the top of the list, “other experiential education” — meaning non-legal — was very close behind at 79.4%.

The responding attorneys, from a wide variety of practice areas and from throughout the country, ranked these two non-legal experience criteria — “life experience between college and law school” and “other experiential education” — as slightly more helpful than certain types of legal experience, including federal court clerkships, state court clerkships, and participation in law school clinics. The starker divide, however, came when considering traditional hiring criteria related to law school performance. While well over three quarters of respondents classified both personal and professional experience of a non-legal nature as helpful hiring criteria, only 62.5% said the same about law school class rank. Similarly, only 61.1% said so about law school attended, and merely 51.2% said so about law review experience.

One narrative coming out of the survey could indeed be that practical experience matters more than academic experience, and that seems to be what IAALS is highlighting. But, consistent with the results discussed above, I would suggest another as well: Non-legal experience — both personal and professional — matters almost as much, if not just as much, as legal experience.

The survey was just the first phrase of IAALS’s broader project, entitled Foundations for Practice, and the second phrase, which is being implemented now, directly implicates law schools. IAALS is working with four law schools to “translate the survey results into actionable learning outcomes and hiring rubrics.”

The current phrase focusing on law school outcomes turns my mind to the “incoming” side of law school admissions. The results of the survey suggest to me that law schools should more explicitly prioritize admission of students with meaningful life experience or non-legal professional experience. In addition, if it is not already, LSAC ought to be gathering and reporting to law schools pertinent data as to what percentage of law school applicants are undergraduate students who would be going directly to law school. And, as to those who are not, what are the percentages one year out from the undergraduate degree, two years, three or more, etc.? Just as law schools view national statistics on other important admissions criteria (GPA, LSAT, ethnic diversity, to mention a few) as important benchmarks, they ought to be in a position to do the same for number of years since undergraduate degree.

Having a significant percentage of students with meaningful life experience outside of the law is indisputably of great benefit to the law school learning environment. I see it every year in my classroom. More to the point of the IAALS survey results, by bringing in a significant number of students with such experience, law schools will be contributing to better outcomes — learning outcomes and employment outcomes. In a typical incoming J.D. class at my home school, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, 20% to 30% of the students are three or more years removed from their undergraduate degree. We do not have a part-time or night program, and certainly those schools that do will have higher percentages of that demographic.

At least one-third and in some years close to one-half of the students in our typical incoming class are coming straight out of their undergraduate studies without even one gap year. This demographic exists at nearly every law school in the country (in varying percentages). Given what we know about the next generation of law students, and given the importance of life experience and non-legal experience as hiring criteria to today’s legal employers, these students would seem to face a more challenging path. What do law schools need to do, if anything? Offer or enhance existing professional development programming or curricula? Offer or enhance existing experiential opportunities that are not exclusively legal in nature and that expose students to non-lawyers and other disciplines and experiences? (Just two examples: teaching or working with high school students, or working with entrepreneurs at a tech startup. Law schools affiliated with a university can offer assorted interdisciplinary educational opportunities as well.)  I will be interested to see if the second phrase of the IAALS project emphasizes ideas like these or others that respond to the demonstrated need for lawyers with life experience and non-legal professional experience.

Filed under: Best Practices & Externships, Best Practices & Setting Goals, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Uncategorized | Comments Off on On the Value of Gap Years and Non-Legal Experience to Legal Employers (and Law Schools)

New Research on Law-Student Resiliency

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Carrie Sperling

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 | 1 Comment »

Experience with Peer Support, Peer Review and Feedback on Teaching?  

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Mary A. Lynch

We are all familiar with engagement in peer review of scholarship. Law faculty culture prioritizes peer input and review of scholarly ideas and articles. Sending drafts of articles to colleagues for feedback, “workshopping” preliminary ideas, and vetting scholarship is part and parcel of the work we do. We visit other schools, make presentations and attend conferences because we value peer discussion and  input. It is the basis by which we create and communicate knowledge.

I don’t believe, however, we have a similarly pervasive culture for formative peer review when it comes to teaching in law schools, although such culture exists at other higher education institutions. According to The University of Texas Faculty Innovation Center, an academic culture which prioritizes informed peer collaboration, review and input on teaching benefits everyone,

Good teachers continually learn and develop. Peer Review, which combines the examination of course materials with in-class observations and collegial discussion, helps prompt this learning among faculty. Ideally, these interactions and conversations can create opportunities for us as colleagues to reflect on and adapt our teaching practices in order to become better teachers and increase student learning.

Northeastern University Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning through Research recommends a four step process:

  • Initial conversation between the observer and the observed
  • The observation itself as an informal data collection and distillation process
  • Follow-up conversation in which the observer shares the observations and collaborates with the observed teacher in any kind of brainstorming or troubleshooting that the observations invite.
  • Reflective summary written by the observed instructor, integrating what was learned from the process and how this will influence future teaching.

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching includes the goal of “enabling more intentional and mutually supportive communities of scholar teachers.”

It is true that we have made some progress in elevating the role of teaching in law schools in the past decade. Legal Education certainly woke up to the need for a culture change around curriculum and teaching following the publication of Best Practices for Legal Education  and Educating Lawyers.  The economic downturn heavily affected the admission process and the need to focus on student learning. ABA requirements regarding student learning outcomes also redirected attention and resources towards what students actually learn while in law school. Moreover, organized efforts such as the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning  and the AALS Section on Teaching Methods  have converted many to the idea that teaching and learning are matters worthy of scholarship, innovation and peer discussion.  Places like this blog and others support exchange of ideas, methods and innovations.

It is also true that as far back as 2008, pioneering legal scholars Gerry Hess and Sophie Sparrow studied factors which encourage or assist the professional development of law teachers including peer observation. So there are many resources available to improve teaching in law schools. Yet, across the academy, are we truly immersed in a continual process of formative feedback for law teachers? If so, the web shows little evidence of it.

I think some of the culture gap is explained by the fact that historically peer review of teaching only happened during a promotion and tenure process that resulted in an up or out decision by the faculty — hardly a formative approach. A voluntary formative program of peer support and review – not used for personnel decisions – should allay those fears.  Appropriate concerns about interference with academic freedom in the classroom might explain some of the culture gap. Except that, even more concerns about academic freedom arise with respect to peer input into “controversial scholarship,” since draft writings can be more easily captured and reproduced than can observations of a single class session. What I think explains the gap, instead, is that we have not properly trained or equipped law faculty with the tools and methods for conducting and receiving helpful peer observations.

At Albany Law, we have promoted a culture of inquiry around teaching and learning for many years now — colleagues sit in each others classrooms from time to time, our Academic Dean prioritizes teaching support, our Center for Excellence in Law Teaching showcases teaching ideas and invites collegial discussion through teaching workshops, and our Director of Online Learning and Instructional Technology facilitates flipped classrooms and other innovations. What we haven’t done is formalize a voluntary peer support and review program. This year, we are planning to revisit our very loose approach and learn from the ever evolving resources and experimentation of others.

So readers, contributors and chance internet searchers, please post here what if any processes have you implemented to support peer observation of law teaching? Is it a voluntary program as we envision at Albany? How has it worked? Or, if you have an opinion about faculty peer review programs, let us know what you think!

I hope to compile the results and report back later in the year!

P.S. If you are more comfortable with e-mail than a blog comment, feel free to contact me at mlync@albanylaw.edu. 

Filed under: academic freedom, Best Practices, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Professor Merritt’s Blog post on attorney discipline and bar exam WORTH A READ!

Posted on June 4, 2017 by Mary A. Lynch

Our blog has often posted about many issues related to licensing lawyers, experiential requirements for admission, the monopolizing power of the NCBE and the pros and cons of the UBE.  Thus, I recommend to our readers an excellent post by our blogger friend Professor Deborah Merritt over at Law School Cafe on bar exam scores and lawyer discipline. Professor Merritt analyzes an article by Pepperdine Professors Robert Anderson and Professor Derek Mueller entitled The High Cost of Lowering the Bar Exam.   Professors Anderson and Mueller opine that “lowering the bar examination passing score will likely increase the amount of malpractice, misconduct, and discipline among California lawyers.” Merritt objects to any causal inference noting,

Two key facts, however, weigh strongly against drawing that type of causal inference. First, as Anderson and Muller point out, “[t]here is virtually no discipline in the first 10 years of practice.” If the bar exam measured qualities related to attorney discipline, one would expect to see disciplinary cases emerge during those 10 years. Wouldn’t attorneys with marginal competency (as measured by the current bar exam) reveal their deficiencies during their early practice years?

Second, attorney discipline almost never rests on lack of knowledge about legal doctrine, poor reasoning skills, or bad writing–the skills currently measured by the bar exam. Levin and her colleagues reported that attorneys most often received discipline for failing to communicate with clients (20.0%), lack of diligence (17.93%), and failure to safeguard client property (11.26%). Only 4.14% of disciplinary sanctions related to “competence”–and even some of those cases may have reflected incompetence in areas that are not tested by the bar exam.

My favorite comment by Professor Merritt provides another example from which we should not infer causality (however tempting it might be to some of us who have been hurt by patriarchy),

We should not exclude individuals from a profession based on qualities that merely correlate with misconduct.

To underscore that point, consider this: The strongest predictor of attorney discipline is the y chromosome. Male attorneys are much more likely than female ones to be disciplined. If we want to use correlations to reduce instances of attorney discipline, it would be much more efficient to ban men from the profession, subject them to special character exams, or require them to achieve a higher bar exam score than women. Those actions, of course, would raise special issues of gender discrimination–but they illustrate the drawbacks of predicting malfeasance based on correlations.

These questions and assumed correlations are important ones. Many defend the decreasing bar passage statistics as appropriate market correction to prevent “undesirables” from entry into the profession — a consumer protection argument. However, as Professor Merritt points out, there is so much more to unpack here. For example, most misconduct challenges occur against solo practitioners or small firms. This raises overlapping socio-economic questions: which lawyers could be perceived as easiest to challenge, which lawyers have the best legal defense teams, and which kind of clients have the most reason to complain.

After teaching for over 28 years and observing which graduates pass the bar on the first try and which do not , I am skeptical of the Anderson-Mueller argument. I would love to see the NCBE and other scholars engage in a socio-economic analysis of bar passage and of disciplinary misconduct.

Filed under: Bar Exam, Best Practices, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Best Practices, Outcomes & Assessment Techniques, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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