Shifting Law School Faculty Demographics

Posted on January 5, 2022 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By Robert Kuehn, Washington University School of Law

In 1980, one-third of law students and only 14% of all law teachers were female, and a mere 9% of students and 4% of faculty were identified as non-white. Today, law faculties are more diverse by gender and race/ethnicity. Yet, the demographics of faculty subgroups diverge widely and, importantly, faculty remain less diverse than their students.  

Focusing principally on law clinic and field placement teachers (full time, excluding fellows), over two-thirds identified as female (cis or trans) in the latest 2019-20 Center for the Study of Applied Legal Education (CSALE) survey. The graph below reflects a trend of increasingly female clinical faculty beginning in the late 1980s/early 1990s and continuing through all five tri-annual CSALE surveys:[1]

Newer clinical teachers are even more predominantly female ─ 73% of those teaching three years or less are female. Within clinical teaching areas, those who primarily teach field placement courses are more predominantly female than those who primarily teach in a law clinic — 82% of field placement teachers are female compared to 65% of clinic teachers.

By comparison, 47% of all full-time law teachers were identified as female in 2020 law school ABA annual reports, an increase from 40% in 2011, 32.5% in 2000, and 24% in 1990. However, ABA results include the overwhelmingly female clinical and legal research and writing faculties. If clinical (67% female) and legal writing (70% female) faculty are removed from the 2020 ABA totals, women constitute fewer than 38% of full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty, as illustrated below.[2] In contrast, 54% of J.D. students in 2020-21 were female, compared to 47% in 2010, 48% in 2000, 43% in 1990, and 34% in 1980.

Faculty have increased in racial and ethnic diversity since 1980. The percentages of full-time clinical teachers by race/ethnicity are shown in the table below. Surveys indicate steady, but slow, growth in the percentage of full-time non-white clinical teachers (excluding fellows) over the last four decades.

Clinical Faculty Race/EthnicitySALT 1980[3]SALT 1986AALS 1998[4]CSALE 2007CSALE 2010CSALE 2013CSALE 2016CSALE 2019
White95%92%87%87%86%83%80%78%
Non-White5%8%13%12%13%15%17%18%
Other/2 or More Races──<1%1%1%3%3%3%

Among newer clinical teachers of three years or less, the percentage of white teachers was slightly lower at 76%. Within clinical teaching, 77% of primarily law clinic instructors and 83% of primarily field placement teachers are white.

In the 2020 annual reports, 21% of full-time law faculty were identified by their schools as “minority,” an increase from approximately 17% in 2011, 14% in 2000, and 10% in 1990. The most recent ALWD/LWR survey identified 13% of legal research and writing faculty as non-white, multiracial or other, compared to 12% reported non-Caucasian in its 2010 survey.  

Similar to gender, law school faculty are less racially/ethnically diverse than their students: 34% of students were identified in 2020 annual reports as minority, an increase from 24% in 2010, 21% in 2000, 14% in 1990, and 9% in 1980.

 Available surveys and reports do not include recent information on the age of law faculty. There has been no change, however, over the five CSALE surveys since 2007 in the median number of years of prior practice by those teaching full time in a law clinic or field placement course, remaining approximately eight years. Excluding those hired into temporary fellow positions, similarly across CSALE surveys the median number of years of prior practice experience among newer faculty teaching three years or less in a law clinic or field placement course has been eight years.

In sum, while the diversity of law school faculty has been increasing over the past four decades, it still lags behind the gender and racial/ethnic diversity among students. And even though schools are hiring increasingly more female faculty, women continue to be disproportionately hired into traditionally lower status/lower paying clinical and legal writing positions.[5] There may be no easy fix to these issues, but the first step towards addressing them is to be aware of the numbers.

[1] “SALT” percentages are from Richard H. Chused, Hiring and Retention of Minorities and Women on American Law School Faculties, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 537, 556-57 (1988) (also reporting 14% of all law teachers as female and 5% as non-white in 1980). “Angel” percentages are from Marina Angel, The Glass Ceiling for Women in Legal Education: Contract Positions and the Death of Tenure, 50 J. Legal Educ. 1, 4 (2000).

[2] The 2020 ABA annual reports identified 4,399 female and 4,986 male full-time faculty (5 reported as “other”). Removing 1,157 female clinical teachers (67% of the 1,727 full-time clinical faculty reported by the 95% of schools that participated in the CSALE survey) and 649 female legal research and writing teachers (70% of the 927 full-time LRW faculty at the 169 of 203 ABA schools that participated in the 2019-20 ALWD/LWI Legal Writing Survey) results in 2,593 full-time female non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty. Further removing 848 male faculty identified in the CSALE and ALWD/LWI surveys results in 38.5% full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing female faculty. If the missing 5% of schools in the CSALE survey and 17% in the ALWD/LWI survey are accounted for, 37% of 2020 full-time non-clinical/non-legal writing faculty were female.  

[3] The 1980 and 1986 SALT surveys excluded faculty from minority-operated schools and, therefore, likely underrepresented non-white faculty.

[4] “AALS” percentages are from an AALS Clinical Section database reported in Jon C. Dubin, Faculty Diversity as a Clinical Legal Education Imperative, 51 Hastings L.J. 445, 448-49 (2000). [1] Robert R. Kuehn, The Disparate Treatment of Clinical Law Faculty (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3760756.

[5] Robert R. Kuehn, The Disparate Treatment of Clinical Law Faculty (2021), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3760756.

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Registration is Open for the “Teaching Multicultural Lawyering” Conference!

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

By

By: Kim O’Leary, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School and Mable Martin-Scott, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce registration is open for our online conference Teaching Multicultural Lawyering: Development, Integration and Conversation at WMU-Cooley Law School.  There is no charge to attend.  

Information about registration, schedule and the conference topics and panelists follow.   The focus of the conference is teaching multicultural lawyering in a variety of forms.

The online conference will take place on Thursday, March 11 (from Noon-3:30 p.m. EST) and Friday, March 12, 2021 (11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. EST).

Registration Information

Register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/teaching-multicultural-lawyering-development-integration-and-conversation-tickets-124694060291. 
Please note that space is limited.  The deadline for registration is February 19, 2021.

Conference Schedule

The conference agenda is designed to accommodate the many demands on your time by focusing on two afternoons with two sessions each day and a keynote panel discussion on Friday.

While we understand there are many competing demands on your time, we encourage you to attend the full event if possible.  This conference will bring together law professors who teach this subject in different ways.  We would like to build on this shared knowledge to explore the possible ways we can teach these important issues to law students.

The conversations will be enriched and most effective if participants attend all presentations and activities that we have planned for these two afternoons.

That said, we know that everyone will not be able to attend all the sessions.  We only ask that when you sign up for a small group session, you are reasonably sure you can attend that small group.  You do not have to enroll in every small group opportunity.

Program Overview

The following is a brief overview of the conference.  Some of the sessions will have break-out groups to facilitate small, in-depth discussions.  We look forward to welcoming the distinguished speakers and panelists!  Listed below are panelists who are confirmed.

Thursday, March 11 (from Noon-3:30 p.m. EST)

Session 1:  Introduction; Multicultural Lawyering: Development and Teaching the Course

Professor O’Leary (co-moderator), Professor Martin-Scott (co-moderator), and WMU-Cooley Law School students

Session 2:  Learning Objectives and Assessment Regarding Multicultural Curricular Offerings
 

Professor O’Leary (moderator); Professor Dan Sheaffer, WMU-Cooley Law School; and, Catherine McCollum, Director, Teaching and Learning Center, WMU-Cooley Law School


Friday, March 12, 2021 (11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. EST)

Distinguished Panel Discussion:  Insights from Those Who Have Led the Way

President and Dean James McGrath (moderator); Dean and Professor Leonard M. Baynes, University of Houston Law Center; Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor Danielle Conway Penn State Dickinson Law, Professor Berta Hernández-Truyol, University of Florida, Levin College of Law; and, Professor Emerita Vernellia Randall, University of Dayton School of Law

Session 3:  Incorporating Multicultural Topics Into Law Courses

Professor Paula Johnson, Syracuse University College of Law; Professor Arlene S. Kanter, Syracuse University College of Law; Professor Suzette Melendez, Syracuse University College of Law; and, Professor Mary Szto, Syracuse University College of Law


Session 4:  Professional Identity and Multicultural Lawyering

Professor Martin-Scott (moderator); Professor Janice Craft, University of Richmond School of Law; and, Professor Lucy Jewel, University of Tennessee College of Law


Please contact us at mcl@cooley.edu with questions and if you would like to be added to our interest list to receive updates and other details as they become available.  Anyone who registers for the conference will receive regular updates.


We hope you can join us!

Kim O’Leary, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School

Mable Martin-Scott, Professor, WMU-Cooley Law School

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Addressing Structural Racism in Law School: CUNY Law Faculty Issues Statement and Demand for Action

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Melanie Daily, University of Kansas School of Law

At law schools across the country, we are grappling with how to respond to internal and external conversations about the role of the legal profession in addressing structural racism, white supremacy, and racist policing. At CUNY Law School, Black faculty and non-Black faculty of color recently drafted and published a Statement and Demand for Action that was endorsed by the full faculty. The impressive and comprehensive statement outlines action steps, policy demands, and faculty dynamics that must change, addresses CUNY’s problematic relationship with the NYPD, and pushes for specific action to create an anti-racist campus.

As we collectively consider the path forward, what steps in CUNY’s plan resonate? What similar discussions are taking place at other law schools, and what is changing? Let us know in the comments.

 

Full text of the statement appears below this line: 

Statement and Demand for Action to Create an Anti-Racist Campus

By Black Faculty and Faculty of Color at CUNY Law

June 30, 2020

Black Faculty and Faculty of Color of CUNY School of Law issue the following statement, endorsed by the full faculty. We believe unequivocally that Black Lives Matter. We grieve with the families of Ahmaud Aubery, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and every victim of anti-Black violence. We stand in solidarity with those who are demanding justice for their deaths, and who are fighting to dismantle white supremacy in all its forms, and specifically, systemic anti-Black racism. We join in solidarity with those in New York City and around the country who are challenging not only structural racism and racist policing, but anti-Blackness and racism in all of our institutions. The legal academy, including CUNY School of Law, are not exempt from these legacies of slavery and subjugation.

Statement and Demand for Action to Create an Anti-Racist Campus

As Black and non-Black faculty of color, we support the Movement for Black Lives Policy Platforms and stand in solidarity with the movement to defund and abolish police and redefine public safety and accountability through non-carceral investments in Black communities. Accordingly, we reject reforms that preserve the status quo.  As lawyers and educators, we acknowledge our profession’s history of upholding white supremacy and thwarting these demands. However, we are also uniquely situated to further them. Below are preliminary areas in which the law school must work in furtherance of these goals:

Our role in the legal profession: We heartily embrace the dual mission of our law school — to facilitate access to underrepresented communities historically excluded from the profession by white supremacy, and particularly anti-Blackness, and to act as an entrée into providing legal support to communities fighting against systems entrenched in white supremacy. Our view of social justice calls for a complete reimagining of the state and society. Accordingly, we seek to serve those students who will genuinely and fearlessly pursue transformative racial and economic justice.

We uplift and honor the legacy of W. Haywood Burns, the first Black law school dean in New York State, who was also the second dean of CUNY School of Law and tirelessly fought for Black liberation in and outside of the walls of CUNY Law. We are cognizant that among the central tools of oppression under white supremacy is the law, particularly as meted out by police, military and prosecutors of all stripes — be they police who criminalize or cage, police who alienize or deport, or purportedly protective agencies who demonize or separate families.

As Black and non-Black faculty of color, we are committed to dismantling these tools of oppression through a pedagogical approach that deploys critical and radical analyses to challenge our students and by offering a robust and humble praxis in service of movements that seek transformative and restorative justice.  We further reiterate the importance of affirming CUNY Law’s dual mission, from admission to graduation and beyond, through a commitment of  institutional self-reflection that is unflinching, inclusive, and continual.

Curriculum: Black students routinely call on the CUNY Law faculty to recognize and confront the negative impact that the traditional legal curriculum has had on Black students. We call on faculty to acknowledge the concerns of students of color and incorporate the feedback into their teaching.

To work towards becoming an anti-racist campus, we demand that, starting in Fall 2020, faculty mobilize pre-existing resources like the Race, Privilege, and Diversity and Professional Development committees toward educating ourselves across the administration and faculty — including adjuncts, visitors, tenure-track, and tenured faculty — on anti-Blackness, racial capitalism, state overreach into communities of color and abolition movements, particularly by engaging with work authored by Black people, incorporating critical frameworks like critical race feminism and queer theory, disability justice, abolition, and decoloniality, among others, throughout every course, and centering intersectional Black perspectives in the classroom.

To achieve these goals, we demand that CUNY Law provide the material resources so that all faculty may take the time necessary to engage in this learning and unlearning. To ensure accountability and transparency, we demand that these committees and others apprise the full faculty in writing each semester on their progress and any challenges encountered in this process.

Non-Curricular Policy Points

  • The various departments that constitute the law school make powerful choices that should be calibrated to center and uplift anti-racist objectives. We demand increased outreach to Black and non-Black students of color in admissions by the career planning office and heightened engagement with Black and non-Black alumni of color. Understanding that internships and initial jobs are key to a student’s ability to practice law over the long-term and practice in the frontlines of social justice movements, we also demand that the career planning office provide increased support to Black and non-Black students of color, particularly first-generation higher education students, whose resumes and cover letters can and should reflect the valuable perspectives and skills that each of our students has to offer the legal profession. We call on the relevant committees to report back on these developments to the full faculty in Fall 2020.
  • For too long we have participated in maintaining barriers to the legal profession even as we seek to break those down. Accordingly, we demand that, starting Fall 2020, the minimum LSAT requirement for all scholarships, including the Graduate Fellowship, be abolished and that the law school keep records of and make public the distribution of scholarship and summer fellowship funds by race. Similarly, we demand that admissions data collection be expanded beyond the required ABA categories to include more detailed, granular, and less reductive categories to better account for the multiple and diverse identities our students bring to the school. We call on the Admissions committee to report back on these developments to the full faculty on a bi-semesterly basis.
  • CUNY Law offers the services of a Nurse Practitioner and Mental Health Counselor on the premises, but otherwise, students are not offered health insurance and are instead invited to enroll in Medicaid programs during open enrollment each period. The limited resources made available are not sufficient for CUNY’s student body. Particularly given the dynamics described above, we call on the law school to consider allocation of funds to mental health services and other medical insurance.
  • Some of our academic standing policies — such as the threshold for academic probation — have a disparate impact on Black and non-Black students of color. We demand that those policies be immediately reconsidered and amended. We call on the Academic Standing committee to report back to the full faculty on these developments on a bi-semesterly basis.
  • We reiterate the importance of the role of Black and non-Black faculty of color on the faculty appointments committee. We call on the Committee on Committees to report back to the full faculty on developments to this end in Fall 2020.
  • Like many law schools, CUNY Law relies on faculty with non-secure positions for critical teaching positions. Our adjunct, visitor, instructor, and other non-tenure track faculty contribute immensely to our institution yet lack job security, opportunities for training and development, and other benefits that permanent faculty enjoy. We demand meaningful job security for our colleagues in these positions, especially Black and non-Black faculty of color. We call on all relevant committees to report back to the full faculty on progress to this end in Fall 2020.

Faculty Dynamics

  • Invisible institutional service and labor of Black and non-Black faculty of color: In 2019, 88% of lawyers were white and in 2018, 8 out of 10 law professors were white. CUNY School of Law boasts a more racially diverse faculty. We especially acknowledge the school’s laudable efforts to bring ten faculty of color, including 4 black faculty, onto the tenure track in the past 3 years alone. Nonetheless, we must do more to dismantle anti-Blackness in our governance. Black and non-Black faculty and staff of color, both at CUNY Law and throughout the U.S., routinely perform unrecognized labor beyond their job descriptions and in the service of their institutions, to confront anti-Blackness and other forms of racism. A wealth of research shows these contributions both sustain diversity and inclusion efforts in the academy and create additional demands that detract from the time required for fulfilling traditional expectations of all faculty.

Faculty of color devote significant time to mentoring and supporting Black and non-Black students of color, ensuring that our institution can retain the most marginalized students after they matriculate.  We advocate explicitly and in more personalized ways for Black and non-Black students of color, who suffer regular indignities, while we also abide microaggressions from colleagues, the profession, and indignities from broader society ourselves. We disproportionately bear the burden of ensuring equitable distribution of labor among faculty and scholarship and fellowship awards among students.

We highlight the lack of recognition (both in salary/pay and formal acknowledgement through evaluation, tenure, and promotion standards) of the amount of invisible institutional service and labor that Black and non-Black faculty and staff of color contribute to the law school.  We demand that similar to our institution’s commitment to recognizing advocacy work product as scholarship, CUNY Law change provisions in promotion, hiring, assignment to and distribution of labor on committees, and tenure policies to honestly and explicitly reflect the now hidden workload of Black and non-Black faculty and staff of color.  For example, we need more conscientious reappointment and annual review reporting policies and re-conceptualized categories of “teaching, scholarship, and service” across the faculty.  We call on all relevant committees to report back to the full faculty on progress to these ends in Fall 2020.

  • Recognition of privilege and power: We note the complex conditions inherent in participating in governance discussions. We demand that faculty be mindful of their privilege and hierarchies of power and reflect on the ways in which they participate in committees, faculty meetings, and other spaces — stepping back where appropriate.

Policing: Generations of faculty, students, and staff of color have repeatedly expressed concerns about the relationship between CUNY Law’s public safety and the New York City Police Department (NYPD). We demand that any memoranda of understanding governing the role or presence of CUNY Public Safety, of the NYPD, or of any other law enforcement agency on the CUNY School of Law campus be shared immediately with the full faculty, staff, and student body of the law school. In keeping with the demands and concerns of generations of students, faculty, and staff, we’re calling on CUNY Law School to discontinue any formal or informal relationship with NYPD and reimagine campus security by supporting the safety and well-being of the people on campus through divestment from punitive policing systems and investment in alternatives, including de-escalation, conflict resolution, and transformative and restorative justice training for all faculty, staff, and designated student representatives. The Public Safety committee was explicitly tasked with addressing these issues in the Fall of 2019. We call on that committee to report back to the full Faculty by October 2020 on progress to these ends.

Finally, we stand by Brooklyn College’s Black Faculty and Staff (BFS), Faculty of Color (FOC) Group, Latino Faculty and Staff (LFSO), and other caucus groups in the CUNY system, and we adopt our Brooklyn colleagues’ statement, slightly adapted to the law school’s context, as follows: This moment in our country is the culmination of systemic denial of dignity that typifies antiblackness. As lawyers fighting for racial and economic justice, we know that structural inequality cannot be addressed through empty statements of standing in solidarity and promoting “diversity.”

We advocate a transformational solidarity with an ethos of social justice that is action- oriented. Transformational solidarity means that the systemic racism, surveillance, and austerity that have become a normal feature of society is aggressively challenged on campus. Transformative solidarity understands that struggles against domination are shared and that anti-Blackness and austerity work in tandem and must be fought hand-in-hand. This is a fight that involves Albany and state politics but it begins with us on campus. We demand a shift in the current institutional logic of the administration that urges faculty and staff to do more for our students with less. By embracing this moment of profound possibility in response to this crisis, we hope to imagine and create a life-affirming campus we do not have, but require.

  • Chris Adams
  • Beena Ahmad
  • Naz Ahmad
  • Saba N. Ahmed
  • Bahar Ansari
  • Nermeen Arastu
  • Ann Cammett
  • Eduardo R.C. Capulong
  • Janet Calvo
  • Asima Chaudhary
  • Natalie M. Chin
  • Frank Deale
  • Farah Diaz-Tello
  • Pamela Edwards
  • Golnaz Fakhimi
  • Raquel Gabriel
  • Mary Godfrey-Rickards
  • Natalie Gomez-Velez
  • Victor Goode
  • Fareed Hayat
  • Julia Hernandez
  • Carmen Huertas-Noble
  • Chaumtoli Huq
  • Tarek Z. Ismail
  • Ramzi Kassem
  • Donna Lee
  • Degna Levister
  • Julie Lim
  • Gregory Louis
  • Lynn Lu
  • Shirley Lung
  • Princess Masilungan
  • Michelle Pinzon
  • Missy Risser-Lovings
  • Jeena Shah
  • Charisa Kiyô Smith
  • Nicole Smith
  • Yasmin Sokkar Harker
  • Cynthia Soohoo
  • Rafael Varela
  • Shomari Ward

 

We call on all of our faculty colleagues to endorse this statement, mindful that such an endorsement carries with it the responsibility of ensuring the statement’s implementation.

 

Endorsed by:

  • Mary Lu Bilek
  • Beryl Blaustone
  • Rebecca Bratspies
  • Sue Bryant
  • Janet Calvo
  • Nina Chernoff
  • Douglas Cox
  • Lisa Davis
  • Ryan Dooley
  • Dave Fields
  • Laura Gentile
  • Julie Goldscheid
  • Florence Kerner
  • JM Kirby
  • Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier
  • Sarah Lamdan
  • Stephen Loffredo
  • Matthew Main
  • Camille Massey
  • Andrea McArdale
  • Haley Meade
  • Laura Mott
  • David Nadvorney
  • Jason Parkin
  • Talia Peleg
  • Allie Robbins
  • Ruthann Robson
  • Joe Rosenberg
  • Merrick T. Rossein
  • Jonathan Saxon
  • Franklin Siegel
  • Richard Storrow
  • Erin Tomlinson
  • Sarah Valentine
  • Kara Wallis
  • Alan White
  • John Whitlow
  • Sofia Yakren
  • Deborah Zalesne
  • Steven Zeidman
  • Jean Zorn

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Let’s Take this Unprecedented period of Rapid Change to Consider What Can We Learn from the Delay of Fall On-Campus Interviewing: Further Thoughts on Equity and Inclusion

Posted on June 11, 2020 by jennifersbard

 

Jennifer S. Bard, Visiting Professor, University of Florida, Levin College of Law

In Tuesday’s post I suggested that we take the opportunity of dramatic, unexpected, and unwanted change delivered to legal education by the arrival of the Covid-19 virus and the need to rapidly revise decades, if not centuries, of conventions regarding grading and ranking that are tailored to the needs of a majority culture representative of the Harvard Law School Class of 1880 for whom it was created.

I also suggested that these historic grading conventions encouraged the persistent lack of diversity in our profession.

Today, I look at the opportunity that the likely delay of Fall (late summer) On-Campus Recruiting provides to evaluate one of the justifications for these grading practices which is the need to support our students’ ability to compete for the most high paying post-graduate jobs: employment at a “Big Law” firm (usually defined as one of about 200 firms employing more than 200 lawyers).  I take as a starting point the foundational point of this post: we don’t have the information we need to make good decisions about the consequences of the curricular conventions common to almost every U.S. law school.

We do know, however, that despite efforts (at varying levels of success) among law schools  to diversify their student bodies, this has had little effect on the diversification of the legal profession.  There is, moreover,  persistent evidence,  that discrimination plays a role in the interviewing practices of Big Law Firms and impacts the careers of those who are hired.  This could be intensified by the Covid-19 related slowdown of the economy.

What if our current  student grading and ranking practices are both 1) not in the best interests of the education of most of our students and 2) are playing an unwitting role in the lack of diversity in the legal profession by over-emphasizing early success?

The  first hint that a nearly universally adopted grading system based on sorting students for the benefit of Big Law firms may not be in anyone’s best interests is the absolute lack of uniformity in the role that Big Law plays in the employment of law students.  Consider, for a moment,  what we would think of a medical treatment that was administered to all patients but developed to help only 20% of patients or a restaurant that served food that would be appealing to only 20% of its customers–not much probably.  Yet despite serious efforts by many smart and caring people, the basic structure of legal education is exactly that.  81% of the roughly 190 (ties play a role in the count) law schools ranked by the otherwise defunct magazine, U.S. News & World Reports, send less than 20% of their graduates to Big Law firms. Only 9 law schools (all within the top 15) had 70% or more of their graduates employed at graduation with big law firms. Stick with this list of numbers, because it may surprise you.

The next 5 law schools had 60% of its students working in Big Law, 7 had 40%, 7 had 30%,  9 had 20%, 2 had 19 %, 4 had 18%, 6 had 17%, 6 had 16%, 5 had 15%, 2 had 14%, 4 had 13%, 2 had 12%, 11 had 11%. 10  had 10% and the rest-80 more law schools,-had less than 10% of their students employed by a Big Law firm at graduation.  Of that 80, thirty had less than 5% and 14 had zero.  Yet despite the vast differences in the likelihood that any student at any class rank will be hired by a Big Law Firm, almost every one of these schools has some form of grading curve and comparative ranking.

What would happen if most law schools took a step back-and just stopped?  What if they developed a grading system best suited to their educational goals of having the most students reach the highest possible level of legal competency?

The cynical answer is that Big Law would simply by-pass them in favor of the few that continued ranking.  But not so fast.  While there’s no basis to say that Big Law is unhappy with the pool they get from this practice, they certainly are aware that their hiring practices are very inefficient, and are giving increasing thought to how they might do better. Perhaps the pyramidal business model of today’s Big Law firm is an  historic accommodation to their hiring methods,  not a desirable outcome.  Also, current hiring methods are not resulting in the kind of diversity that their clients are asking them to achieve.  Indeed, many law firms, notably Holland & Knight, are working hard to increase diversity.

They also probably know how atypical their reliance on grades is among comparable organizations hiring graduate students. Kellogg Business School Professor and Sociologist Lauren Rivera’s book Pedigree recounts her research based on “embedding” herself in the hiring practices of law firms, banks, and consulting firms.  What she finds is not surprising—all three industries are more interested in the prestige of the graduate school than in the actual ability of any individual student.  But only law firms fail to incorporate any kind of competency based evaluation in the admissions process.   At least in part, this is because prestigious business school have long refused to even release grades to employers.  Thus, employers have had to develop an interview process that involves analyzing case studies, behavior based interviewing, and answering technical questions. We see similar retreats from grade based hiring in medical residency programs.

Would the tests that law firms themselves develop be any more equitable than the ones that, cumulatively, make up a GPA?  Maybe not.  But they could be more targeted toward what students learned in law school, rather than what they brought in with them.

So, given this opportunity for a pause in the hiring cycle and a freeze, for many schools, in the first year ranking process we could partner with our university collogues who conduct research in higher education, such as that on the curricular barriers to the success of underrepresented populations in STEM education, to see if what we are doing achieves the results we want.  And if not, to start the process of working with the legal profession to achieve something we both want: a diverse and equitably recruited cohort of lawyers who provide the highest possible quality of representation for their clients.

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Let’s Take This Period of Unprecedented Change to Consider How Grading Practices Can Affect Issues of Diversity and Inclusion in Our Law Schools

Posted on June 8, 2020 by jennifersbard

Jennifer S. Bard, Visiting Professor, University of Florida, Levin College of Law

For the last half of spring semester 2020, law schools all over the country were forced to change their method of instruction, delivery of final exams, and (in many cases) grading practices because of the demands for physical isolation following the outbreak of Covid-19.  Now that the semester is over, there is a further round of disruption as many states have delayed or even cancelled their bar exams, some have granted graduates diploma privileges, while others bravely go ahead in the face of a possibility that they will have to cancel at the last minute because of ever-rising rates of infection. 

Like the opportunities that may arise when a river is drained and a ship revealed, there may never again be such an opportunity for us to consider what role we play in the glacially slow diversification of the legal profession and how we can make our law schools more equitable, inclusive, challenging, and effective for all of our students—not just those for whom it has been particularly well suited.

With many things to choose from, my starting point for looking at things we rarely question is the marrow deep belief that we owe it to our students to sort them for the benefit of large law firms—even when our employment profile shows that very few of our students will ever work at such a place.  Since the threshold for this opportunity is a top 5 or perhaps 10 percent class rank, it may seem odd, on reflection, that we have designed a curriculum designed to compare students that may have many undesirable consequences including undermining self-esteem, discouraging learning for learning’s sake, and contributing to the lack of diversity in the legal profession.  

Over the years, other justifications have been added such as the need to motivate students or assess their progress but never have we had such a good opportunity to see what law school is like without grades or, more to the point, comparative curves.

Here are some Practices We Might Question

The Primacy of First Semester Grades

One result of the decision to go pass/fail (or some variation of the words) was to “freeze” first year first semester class ranks because it was impossible to produce comparative curves. 

The resulting phenomena gives us a chance to ask ourselves  some tough questions:

  1. Do First Semester Grades Reflect What Students Bring to Law School Rather Than What We Bring to Them? OR Do Students Who Come in Knowing the Rules Get Better First Semester Grades?

Many students, very often First Generation Students, but also some facing racial or gender identity or expression based discrimination, frequently tell us (and the many researchers who study first generation college students) some version of “everyone knew the game but me and by the time I figured it out, it was too late.” And while students living with disabilities might intersect with any of these groups, they also are often using new adaptive equipment and certainly facing new challenges that they may have been able to mitigate in college.

Certainly many of our students do know the game from the start.  The recent AALS survey “Before the JD” found a disproportionate number of students who ended up going to law school had parents who were either lawyers or professionals. While students have, themselves, created organizations to support each-other usually with the enthusiastic support of the law school it may not be enough.

Our challenge going forward is that history is told by the victors.  We can see the students who were not comfortable the first semester but then continued to graduate “at the top of their class” (a vague term that usually means somewhere in the top 20%), but we don’t hear from the ones who didn’t draw attention through academic distress, but also didn’t thrive.

It would be helpful to know more–and many schools do know more about their own students.  But so little of this information is published.

Much is being done in supplemental programs- to name them is to leave many out- such as pre-first semester programs, orientation programs  and excellent pre-law institutes like the Tennessee Institute for Pre-Law , and in wonderful conferences organized by the National Black Law Students Association,  Lavender Law, the National Association of Law Students with Disabilities,  and so many others.  

But how much more effective would it be to have a curriculum that was truly equitable and inclusive – all the way through?

2. Did Pass/Fail Grading Help Learning, Hinder Learning, or None of the Above?

Across the board pass/fail grading that makes no effort to compare students to each other is so unusual as to make any observations worth considering. The expectation was a distressing list of bad results-students putting in less effort during class, performing worse on exams — but did that really happen?

3. Ditto Open Book Exams

As above, it would be interesting to test, in the fall, the content knowledge of students who took open exams.  Not so much as to compare them with past classes, but to see what how much they learned.

4. What Will Be the Long Term Effect of the Delayed or Cancelled Bar Exams–and How Might that Change Our Curriculums?

The opportunity presented by the necessary changes to the bar exam is already in very good hands, (thank you AccesLex) but it’s still worth considering what the future will look like in states which choose provisional or full licensure.  Even decisions to delay the bar exam could raise issues of an on-going, career long licensing process, much as many doctors (but not all) must take requalifying exams every ten years to retain their “Board Certificate.” What would that mean for law schools?

To Be Continued: Part II: What Can We Learn from the Delay of Fall On-Campus Interviewing?   

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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

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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.

 

 

 

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World Mental Health Day and Multicultural Awareness

Posted on October 10, 2019 by Mary A. Lynch

October 10th is World Mental Health Day, instituted by the WHO to raise “awareness of mental health issues around the world” and mobilize “efforts in support of mental health.”  Many members of our profession, are challenged by depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders.  In 2016, the ABA created the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being partly in response to the increased ubiquity and pressure of the digital age.

The ubiquity of email, text and other technological advances, all of which make the advent of the fax machine feel downright quaint, have only exacerbated our legal responsibilities. The pressure is constant. And in the midst of taking care of everyone else, we all too frequently ignore our own stressors and health in the process.  Over time, the subtle adverse effects go unnoticed and mask the existing crisis …..

The Task Force was conceptualized and initiated by the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs (CoLAP), the National Organization of Bar Counsel (NOBC), and the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers (APRL). In August 2017, the Task Force released The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change (Wellness Study).  Many state bar associations – such as New York’s – highlighted the need for lawyer health. 

Law students, too, are subject to similar ubiquitous demands of the digital age while competing, learning, interning, seeking permanent employment, representing clients under supervision, and, for many, accruing debt. My law school, like many others, takes seriously the need to educate and support law students’ well-being and has been fortunate to receive funding from a loyal alum and board member for a Wellness Initiative. This week our Dean of Students and her office have planned a series of educational and supportive events.

Mental Health Week

Another project run by students partnered with alums helps with the economic stress of having to purchase professional clothing and suits. And our Center for Excellence in Law teaching sites provide links to self-help apps for students .

This focus on well being is not simply an administrative task. It is incumbent upon law teachers to discuss these subjects in doctrinal classes, seminars and experiential learning courses while mainstreaming ethics, professional identity and multicultural awareness into the curriculum.  Wellness intersects with several of my law school’s learning outcomes  for JD students. In particular, wellness and mindfulness are important tools in mitigating implicit bias and facilitating students ability to

Demonstrate an awareness and understanding of the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to be competent and effective lawyers in a multicultural world. (Albany Law JD Learning Outcome #6)

I experimented with linking the two in class this week. I started the class by reminding students that it was Mental Health Awareness week and the reading a poem by Mary Oliver to get them to slow down.  We also meditated for about 1 minute and 30 seconds by placing a raisin on our tongue and using that time to “Uni-task” by just focusing on the  smell, taste, feel and effects of saliva on the raisin.

We discussed vicarious trauma, implicit bias and how it affects Science.  For homework students had taken implicit association tests,   acquired some new cultural knowledge, read about transgender killings and viewed Hidden Injustice: Bias on the Bench.”  We then discussed how Implicit Bias might work against victims/survivors of domestic violence or privilege abusers which led into discussions of voir dire and Batson.  Students expressed surprise that judges cared about Implicit Bias and that NYS now requires a 1 credit CLE in Diversity and Inclusion. 

We ended class with discussing how to mitigate our own implicit biases.  This is where well-being and mindfulness come in:

  1. Reflection is a tool for mitigating bias. Emphasizing the importance of reflection as a life-long lawyer habit is something we teachers can embrace. Thus mindfulness is not only an important part of well-being, it is a tool to become a more competent lawyer.
  2. When we are tired and exhausted, we are more apt to rely on unconscious patterns, which swings the door wide open to implicit bias reactions and away from thoughtful and considered responses.

The students appeared to understand the connection and to acknowledge its potential. In the final moments of class, I led the students in a LION yoga pose. This was a real treat for me.  As the days get shorter and mid-semester stress hits, there is nothing better than seeing law students laugh at themselves (and me) as they loosen up their tight facial and jaw muscles.

How are you honoring Mental Health Awareness Week at your school or organization?  Do you see the link between mitigating bias and wellness/mindfulness?

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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.

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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?

 

 

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“Teaching the Next Generation of Lawyer Leaders in a Time of Polarization” – Reflections on the AALS 2019 Conference on Clinical Education

Posted on June 16, 2019 by Mary A. Lynch

If you have never attended an AALS Conference on Clinical Education, you have missed a transforming and immersive experience that includes supportive peers, provocative learning, and meaningful scholarly discussion while celebrating student-centered community activism.   It is attended both by those who teach primarily through clinical courses and by other professors and administrators who want to learn more about clinical androgogy, experiential learning, and justice lawyering. Deans and other law school folks enjoy the intra-law school and inter-law school collaboration efforts facilitated there.  The Clinical Legal Education Association, an advocacy organization, sponsors a biannual  new clinicians workshop adjacent to the conference and supports the local community where the Clinical Conference is held through its per diem project.  The conferences are always well attended, with the 2019 conference (held last month in San Francisco, May 4-7) hosting a whopping 780 participants.

The yearly AALS Clinical Conference is not a “talking heads” conference.  The program format varies from year to year but always involves intentionally planned opportunities for mentoring and discussion in smaller groups, with ideas and resources to bring back to campus. At the end or near end of the academic year, it provides an opportunity to nurture one’s exhausted spirit and rekindle the right-brain in a community that values  fun, creativity, and play as necessary skills for long-term  survival, teaching, writing  and do-gooding. Often, cutting edge research ideas are presented here before they take hold in the rest of the legal academy or larger community.  For example, yesteryear conferences introduced legal educators to pedagogical, andragogical and curricular theories such as backward design.   In another example, I first became aware of the early research on implicit bias at a Clinical Section program, well before this concept  entered the vernacular, was discussed by the ABA, or became a CLE requirement for lawyers in New York State.

This year’s conference did not disappoint.  Its theme, Teaching the Next Generation of Lawyer Leaders in a Time of Polarization, not only was timely but was intended to suggest that, perhaps, legal educators have a role to play in decreasing polarization and advancing understanding of shared humanity.  The conference organizer’s posited the challenge this way:

Today, we and our students are confronted with threats to virtually every norm in the legal and political world –the environment we live in, a free press, election integrity, judicial independence, standards of respectful debate, facts, the rule of law. Our students appear energized and anxious to take this on, but what new tools and opportunities should clinical legal education be providing? ….

How do we build the next generation of lawyer leaders when our students have grown up in an era of strong division, attacks on institutions of government, and the frequent rejection of civil discourse? 

The conference explored how to facilitate discussion among students and others with diverse worldviews while continuing to sustain productive learning communities for all — especially including those whose identities or religious or political views are degraded by extremist or reductive narratives.  How do we continue to pronounce and support the rule of law? How do we facilitate professional engagement in civil discourse when some classrooms are sorely lacking in diversity and a few students or one individual might carry the full weight of the ignorant or degrading narrative?  The conference organizers argued “we must equip our students with creativity, judgement, and a toolbox of knowledge, skills, and values that will enable the coming generation to meet these unprecedented challenges.”

Participating in the conference was wonderfully helpful to my thinking as an educator. It made me reflect and learn from others in the small discussion group settings.  Sad to say, it was not my “transmogrifier;“ I am not now a wise and perfect facilitator of discussion of polarizing topics. Nor am I now certified as an educational designer of flawless learning environments.  However, I do have five reflections I want to weave into my preparation for and delivery of next year’s teaching as well as import into my discussions about the legal academy.

First, I need to defend higher education and law schools when unfairly attacked. In an era when the narrative touted in some circles suggests that lefty higher education professors exist only to foist their liberal views on students,  I found the themes and discussions at this conference more consistent with my experience in academia. Instead of arrogant proselytizing, most of my sister and fellow educators, at Albany Law School and beyond, try to empower learning in their students, facilitate creative ideas in the academic setting, enhance professional development of law students/budding lawyers and encourage community benefit and access to justice through our work.  Do we always succeed? Probably not. However, most of us have the same shared goals.

Second, I need to be mindful that Americans – and probably many of our overburdened students – are simply “exhausted.” By ugly, polarizing, speech. By hateful acts. By constant “breaking news” of dysfunction in our nation’s political capital. The conference’s plenary session “America Polarized: What Drives Us Apart? What Brings Us Together?” presented the results of a research report entitled, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape.” It finds an “Exhausted Majority” in the American electorate. This research has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Miami Herald, NPR, and CNN.

As I think of my students as containing both those excited about fighting for change but also those exhausted by polarizing discussions, how do I proceed?  How can I pick up on those cues during stressful times in the semester? How can I model and include less exhausting learning methods without shying away from ugly facts, cases, laws and legal history?  When is it time for private “one minute papers,” or private “on line feedback, submissions or comments” and when must something be thoroughly hashed out publicly?

To address this kind of polarized exhaustion, should I revisit classroom rules and class participation guidelines that facilitate learning for all my students?   In my Domestic Violence Seminar course which usually enrolls approximately 20 students, I have found some useful tools in creating an appropriate classroom climate for discussion of difficult issues. My Course Packet includes a modified version of Sophie Sparrow’s excellent Professional Engagement Expectations for the Classroom,   along with an  Assessment Rubric for Class Participation (which I modified from one my Academic Dean,  Connie Mayer,  created.  I am going to review these materials again with the concept of exhaustion in mind. (There are of course diverging views on the pros and cons of making a “safe” or educationally fertile classroom as well as what “safe” means. For contrasting views see Berkeley Education tools and an article about teaching “insensitive” topics in law schools in Atlantic Monthly). 

Third, I will remind myself of the research presented at the conference.  Research conducted by More in Common, a nonprofit research organization devoted to bridging political divides, suggests there is “more to the story” than a polarized populace. Those researchers found a wider spectrum of beliefs among Americans than one would realize when listening to, reading, or clicking on the news. They also found Americans are far more aligned on many critical issues than you might think.

For example, our data show that 75 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws, 82 percent believe that racism is at least a somewhat serious problem in America and 79 percent favor providing a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought here as children. In addition, 77 percent of Americans agree that our differences are not so great that we cannot come together.

Fourth, I will encourage students (and urge myself ) to dig underneath the polarization and understand individuals’ values and fears. Professor Daniel A. Yudkin, Department of Psychology, Yale University, a post-doctoral researcher who  presented the Hidden Tribes research results,  noted at the conference and in his NYT commentary here that

our report identifies a powerful explanation for political polarization. It shows how discrepancies in people’s “core beliefs” (their moral values, parenting philosophy, feelings about personal responsibility and so on) explain differences in their political views.

Yudkin recommends this research as an entryway to discussion for teachers and scholars.  Misperceptions surrounding values and fears can cause Americans to misunderstand and misjudge each other. An example Yudkin discusses concerns views of good parenting. Conservatives align good parenting with “manners” and “respect,” while liberals tend to value fostering “curiosity” and “independence.” Fostering a discussion about how we love our children and try to be good parents could help us understand each other’s goals and values,  even if we disagree with each other’s methods.

I will consider whether in the cases I teach, the examples I provide, the arguments I encourage students to form, the hypothetical [problems I create, whether I allow room for development of empathy for the other? Do I acknowledge the underlying common humanity of all actors – in my area, as it pertains to the “abuser”, the “sexual assaulter”, the “murderer”, the “misogynist”? Should I?

Do I focus too heavily on the best opposing argument? Do I encourage enough human empathy for the other side even when preparing students to zealously advocate for ours?

Finally, using the values celebrated and embraced at Clinical Conferences such as experimentation, joy, community support, and creativity, I will continue to struggle with but also make peace with the dynamic that advancing empathy, unity and civil discourse does not impede or undermine my obligation to call out injustice. Upholding the rule of law does not preclude admitting the many times the law fails and how it rarely meets its aspirations in the daily lives of so many of our sister and fellow Americans.

Thank you to the the AALS Clinical Conference organizers, presenters and participants and the CLEA workshop organizers and presenters for providing me so much to reflect and improve upon this summer.

 

Filed under: academic freedom, Catalysts For Change, Disruptive Leadership, Diversity & Social Justice, Teaching Methodology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on “Teaching the Next Generation of Lawyer Leaders in a Time of Polarization” – Reflections on the AALS 2019 Conference on Clinical Education

New Blog on Leadership for Lawyers, Law Students, and Legal Educators

Posted on May 2, 2018 by Paula Schaefer

Readers of this blog may be interested in following the new blog Leading as Lawyers. Recognizing that all lawyers are called upon to lead, the blog explores leadership and professional development topics of interest to law students, lawyers, and legal educators. The first posts on this new blog have explored topics like self awareness, leadership in developing diversity in an organization, and addressing novel situations with authenticity, competence and candor.

Filed under: Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Diversity & Social Justice, Related Blogs, Uncategorized | Tagged: | Comments Off on New Blog on Leadership for Lawyers, Law Students, and Legal Educators

The Kids Are Alright

Posted on March 29, 2018 by Ray Brescia

Regardless of your position on gun regulation, the work of the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the latest victims of yet another act of senseless gun violence, has to be inspiring, if not a little humbling.  They are putting adults to shame, literally and figuratively.  Their eloquence, passion, and even their social media smarts, are creating a moment of reckoning in this country.  The so-called “adults in the room” cannot hold a candle to these students’ capacity to mobilize, empathize, reach across difference, and move a nation to action.

Many seem surprised by this. As an educator who teaches many millennial law students, I am not.  I see my students accomplish amazing things, and am constantly inspired by their intelligence, willingness to roll up their sleeves, and go to work.  Moreover, as a former law student myself (although, admittedly, nearly three decades ago), I saw students work together in the face of resistance, and the stories I have read about the work of the Parkland students and the thousands more who have taken up this fight resonate and are reminiscent of work that has occurred and will continue to occur, carried out by eager and passionate students who won’t take no for an answer and continue to “Call BS” when necessary.

What we are seeing in action is perhaps the greatest student project ever undertaken.  From the outside looking in, it looks like the students are working collaboratively and sharing the spotlight among themselves and with others outside their immediate circle.  They appear incredibly supportive of one another, are pressing ahead in support of a cause larger than themselves though grounded in their personal experiences of tragedy, and are reaching out to others to build bridges across geographies and communities. They are accomplishing slow and steady wins that help to build momentum, sustain their energy, and create confidence to take on the next challenge. In short, they are doing all of the things that a group needs to do in order to produce meaningful change.

In academia, many fear the group project.  But it is how the world functions, and how humans have been operating for millennia.  In fact, our capacity for cooperation is probably what makes us human.

Such group activity can also can have its downsides, and not just in terms of the free rider who benefits from the work of others.  Rather groups can take on a life of their own, and distorted and harmful collective understandings can emerge as a result.  In the wake of the collective tragedies of Nazism and Stalinism, “groupthink” became a source of serious academic study. But on the brink of World War II, Hungarian sociologist Karl Mannheim wrote about how industrialization and urbanization was impacting our collective capacity for this sort of groupthink as follows: “life among the masses of a large town tends to make people much more subject to suggestion, uncontrolled outbursts of impulses and psychic regressions than those who are organically integrated and held firm in the smaller type of groups.  Thus industrialized mass society tends to produce the most self-contradictory behavior not only in society but also in the personal life of the individual.”

The students of Parkland and the many others who are emerging into the broader spotlight are organizing themselves at the local level, school-by-school and community-by-community, and helping the rest of us see the disastrous and ruinous groupthink that has captured the collective imagination around gun control.  And they are doing it in remarkable ways, sustaining their collective energy in the wake of tragedy.

Recent research into how groups can work effectively, carried out by Google in what it called “Project Aristotle,” identified a series of common components in effective groups, including the following:

  • Dependability: getting things done on time and accurately;
  • Structure and Clarity: having clear goals and clear roles;
  • Meaning: the work is personally important to the team members;
  • Impact: team members think their work matters and will bring about change;
  • Psychological Safety: team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of others.

From the outside looking in, the Parkland students and the many others who have been working for meaningful responses to gun violence who have gained greater attention because of the Parkland tragedy, appear to meet these criteria for successful groups.  They pulled off hundreds of simultaneous rallies across the country in a matter of weeks.  They could not have done so had they not had some structure and clarity to their work, did not see the importance of their work, and did not derive meaning from it.  And it would appear that they are incredibly supportive of each other, both within their own groups and in relation to each other.  For example, during Saturday’s march in Washington, when a student, Samantha Fuentes, who was wounded in Parkland, was addressing the crowd, she paused a moment, turned away from the lectern, and vomited.  Other students rushed to her side, urged her to keep going.  She emerged from being doubled over to proclaim: “I just threw up on international television and it feels great!”

The students leading this campaign should be an inspiration to everyone who wants to bring about change, and can help us understand how we can do it collectively, because it is in such group efforts that real change is possible. I have written about my own experience as a law student working on a case, brought by a law school clinic, that challenged the U.S. government’s treatment of Haitian refugees in the early 1990s, a case which ultimately went to the Supreme Court.  In ways that echo the work of the Parkland students, but by no measure on the same scale or with the same impact, the team effort there, led by students, invoked many of these themes as well, and can help show how law schools can harness the collective capacities law students have for bringing about change.

In an oft-quoted phrase, Margaret Mead said to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”  How such groups should actually go about doing that is another question, and the Parkland students and the thousands of others who have been inspired by their work, or who have finally gotten the attention they deserve, may just show us the way.

Filed under: Best Practices and Clinics, Best Practices for Institutional Effectiveness, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice | 1 Comment »

Jumpstart Outline: Ideas to Help You Make a Plan to Teach “Public Citizen” Lawyering in Any Law School Class

Posted on December 28, 2017 by Paula Schaefer

Best Practices for Legal Education and Building on Best Practices urge legal educators to help students develop their professional identities. One aspect of a lawyer’s professional identity is performing the role of “public citizen.” The Preamble of the professional conduct rules in most jurisdictions explains that lawyers are “public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”

We can help students begin to understand what it means to be a “public citizen” if we address the issue in concrete ways across the curriculum. The following outline provides some ideas for integrating public citizen lawyering into your course.  This is a long list, but there should be an idea or two that will work for your course, whatever its focus.

Use (or Adapt) Existing Course Materials, Exercises, and Activities to Make Explicit Connections Between the Course and the Lawyer’s Work as a Public Citizen

  • Find the Public Citizen Lawyers in Your Current Textbook. Are there lawyers in your textbook that are fulfilling the public citizen role? Discuss them when you see them.
  • Use Course Materials to Help Students Identify and Discuss Injustice. Help students become justice-seeking lawyers by helping them identify injustice. In the chapter Social Justice Across the Curriculum (in Building on Best Practices), Susan Bryant identifies seven questions that can be used in any class to help students explore injustice.
  • Discuss Needs for Law Reform in the Subject Area of the Course. When you encounter areas of needed law reform in course material, discuss how lawyers can play a part in making that change.
  • Use Writing Assignments to Give Students Experience Advocating for Law Reform. For writing assignments that require students to recommend or draft proposed changes to the law, make the explicit connection that this one way that lawyers fulfill the public citizen role: they advocate for improvement in the law. Provide them avenues to publish, discuss, and otherwise publicize their work.
  • Lawyer Speakers Should Be Asked to Discuss How they Serve. If you ordinarily invite lawyers to class to talk about course related topics, prompt them to talk about the things they do to serve the public and the legal profession.
  • Integrate Social Justice Issues Into a Course Exercise. Is there an exercise you currently use to develop knowledge or a skill in which you can introduce an issue of social justice? For thoughts on designing and debriefing that exercise, see Susan Bryant’s chapter Social Justice Across the Curriculum in Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World, at pp. 364-66
  • Prompt “Public Citizen” Discussion in Journaling Exercises. Prompt students to reflect upon public citizen issues in their course journals. What are areas where they see a need for law reform? What could they do to address those issues now and in practice? Suggest that students talk to lawyers (with whom they work) about how they serve the public and the profession. Ask the student to reflect on those discussions in their journal.

Create New Activities and Exercises that Integrate Course Material and the Lawyer’s Role as Public Citizen

  • Prompt Students to Create a Professional Development Plan.Particularly in classes where students may have common career goals (such as in an externship or capstone class), prompt students to write about their values, interests, and strengths, and to make a plan for the future, including a plan for service.
  • Integrate Pro Bono or Service Learning Into the Class. Find an opportunity for the class to represent a client or clients or serve a community organization or population that is connected to the subject matter of the class.
  • Create a Law Reform Activity for the Class. Engage in action as a class to reform the law in an area of need connected to course material. For suggestions see Mae Quinn’s article Teaching Public Citizen Lawyering: From Aspiration to Inspiration, 8 Seattle J. for Soc. Just. 661 (2010).
  • Require Students to Interview a Lawyer. The interview should cover course-related material as well as the lawyer’s service to the poor, the public, and the profession.
  • Organize a Book Club. Identify a non-fiction law-related book with a connection to your course material and that provides a springboard for discussing the lawyer as public citizen. A great book about pro bono service and its impact on both client and lawyer is William H Colby’s Long Goodbye, The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan. A book that prompts lawyers to think about the ingredients of a happy life – including pro bono work and “serving a larger social purpose”– is Nancy Levit and Douglas Linder’s book The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law.

Share Information about Yourself as a Public Citizen

  • Be Inspiring. Tell an inspiring story about what another lawyer’s service meant to you or about what your service may have meant to someone else – and how that made you feel.
  • Talk About Yourself as a New Lawyer. Tell stories about your experiences as a new lawyer attempting to fulfill the public citizen role. What did you learn from those activities? Did you have mentors that inspired or encouraged you?
  • Note the Times When You Struggled. Share the times in your career when you have struggled with balancing the demands of practice, your personal life, and serving the public. What worked for you and where do you continue to struggle?
  • Incorporate Examples Connected to Course Subject Matter. Weave in examples of what you currently do to serve the public and the profession and explain why you serve.
  • Revise Your Faculty Webpage to Emphasize Your Public Citizen Work. Include your pro bono service activities, service to the profession (committees, CLEs, etc), and board service on your law school profile – not just your C.V.
  • Promote Your Service to the Public and Profession on Social Media. Alert your law school communications person to stories about your service activities so that students and alumni can learn about what you do through law school social media. Also, promote these same things in your own use of social media.

Fulfill the Public Citizen Role with Students Outside of the Classroom (Not Necessarily Connected to a Course)

  • Provide Access to Justice. Participate with students in organized pro bono events or service activities.
  • Improve the Law. Enlist students to help you prepare to testify or do research about a suggested change in the law – and bring the student along when possible.
  • Serve the Profession. Ask students to help you with a CLE – from preparation to attending and presenting with you. Or invite students to participate in a bar committee or bar event with you.
  • Identify a Need and Fill It. Work with student organizations you advise to identify a group with interests related to the organization. Find out their needs and make a plan to partner with them.

 

Filed under: Best Practices, Best Practices & Curriculum, Best Practices, Diversity & Social Justice, Catalysts For Change, Diversity & Social Justice, Teaching Methodology, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on Jumpstart Outline: Ideas to Help You Make a Plan to Teach “Public Citizen” Lawyering in Any Law School Class

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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