Building an Ethos of Self-Directedness Among First-Year Law Students

Posted on October 15, 2019 by Jessica N. Haller

By: Mary Walsh Fitzpatrick, Assistant Dean for the Career and Professional Development Center at Albany Law School

Background

I attended a workshop on professional identity formation sponsored by the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions last June. In preparation for the workshop, I read a number of articles on professional identity formation, including “Self-Directedness and Professional Formation: Connecting Two Critical Concepts in Legal Education.” The article posits “[f]or law students to move towards real professional identity formation in their career, they must be self-directed.” Self-directedness, some of the hallmarks of which are self-reflection, goal setting, seeking and receiving feedback, and using sound judgment, is integral to finding meaningful employment and career satisfaction. I know from first-hand experience working within law school career development for the past 13 years, students who are most successful in gaining meaningful employment take ownership of their experiences and make intentional choices early in law school. I believe self-directedness more than any other factor, including grades, leads to meaningful careers for law school graduates. The challenge is to cultivate self-directedness in all law students by creating an ethos of self-directedness with regard to career development beginning in the first year.     

While at the Holloran Center workshop, I devised a career development program to introduce first-year students to professional identity formation with emphasis on self-directedness. I subsequently shared the proposed program with my team at the Albany Law School Career and Professional Development Center and we collaborated on the program presentation and exercises. At Albany Law School, students are assigned an individual career counselor with whom they work one-on-one over the entire course of law school. Thus, in planning and implementing the program my colleagues and I chose to each lead the program for our sections separately, beginning individual relationships with our students and setting expectations.     

We decided upon a method of teaching that would allow students to practice self-reflection, seeking and receiving feedback, and using good judgment in the context of career development. The overarching goal of the program was to help students recognize self-directedness as a key component for successful professional identity formation leading to meaningful careers.

The Program – Setting the Stage

We communicated the program as a mandatory one-hour program and emailed to first-year students several weeks before the program the Individual Career Plan (ICP), a self-assessment tool we created several years ago, and our handbook for developing a legal resume. The students were asked to complete their ICPs and draft their legal resumes in preparation for the program. 

  • Reflection

We began the program by introducing professional identity formation and self-directed learning, emphasizing curiosity, initiative, feedback, self-reflection, resilience, judgment and ethics. We provided students with the Holloran Competency Milestones Assessment of Student’s Ownership of Continuous Professional Development (Self-Directedness) and asked them to take a moment to reflect upon and identify their current stage of development on the continuum. Recognizing each student comes to law school at a different stage of self-directedness we did not ask students to share their findings with the group, rather we called attention to law school providing students with the opportunity to move along the continuum with the goal of graduating competent learners who take full ownership over their careers by setting goals and seeking resources to meet those goals.

Next, we asked students to form small groups and to reflect upon and share with each other why they chose to attend law school, skills they hope to build, and experiences they hope to gain during law school. After this breakout session we asked one student from each group to report back some of the group’s findings. Two distinct motivations for attending law school emerged from this exercise, students: wanting to utilize existing strengths they identify as befitting a legal career; and wanting to acquire the skills necessary to be catalysts for change. Notably, both motivations evidence students’ strong desire to align their skills and values with meaningful employment.

  • Seeking and Receiving Feedback

In the second portion of the program we focused on seeking and receiving feedback in the context of career development. We began by educating students on critical thinking skills sought by legal employers, such as analyzing, evaluating, reasoning, and problem solving. We then asked students to provide peer-to-peer feedback on their resumes utilizing the resume handbook we provided before the program and tools we discussed during the program. Students worked in couples or groups of three to seek and provide each other with constructive feedback on how to better formulate existing resume descriptions for a legal audience. After the exercise we asked students to contribute one piece of valuable feedback they received.    

  • Judgment

In the final portion of the program students were divided into groups and provided three different hypotheticals related to career development decisions. Each group was asked to analyze the issues and report back how they would address the situation presented. The hypotheticals included issues of reneging on a job offer, misrepresenting grade point average on a resume, and failing to follow up with a professional connection. Through dialogue following the exercise we emphasized the importance of reputation, impact of reputational damage, building professional relationships, and the imperative of follow-through.  Many students acknowledged although no single hypothetical scenario would necessarily determine success in finding meaningful employment, the decisions made with regard to these issues could impact one’s professional reputation and future opportunities.   

Conclusion

We hope to have initiated student appreciation for the impact of self-directedness on professional identity formation that is integral to beginning meaningful careers after law school. The next step is for each student to take the initiative to complete an online strengths assessment, the VIA Character Strengths Survey, make a first career counseling appointment where they will receive individualized feedback on the ICP and legal resume and identify next steps in planning their careers.  

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Save the Date!

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Jessica N. Haller

Emory’s Center for Transactional Law and Practice is excited to announce the date for its seventh biennial conference on the teaching of transactional law and skills.  The conference will be held at Emory Law, on Friday, June 5, 2020, and Saturday, June 6, 2020.

More information will be forthcoming on the Call for Proposals, the Call for Nominations for the Tina L. Stark Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Transactional Law and Skills, open registration, and travel accommodations.  We are looking forward to seeing all of you on June 5 and 6, 2020!

Thank you to the Conference Coordinator, Kelli Pittman, for sending us this information!

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The Legal Interviewing and Language Access Film Project (LILA)

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Jessica N. Haller

By: Laila L. Hlass and Lindsay M. Harris

Teaching effective interviewing skills is a perennial problem. Although there are excellent texts on the subject, few examples of real or model interviews exist, particularly ones which incorporate collaboration issues between student partners, language access issues with the client, and how to address issues of bias when they arise in the interview.

In 2018, we designed, screen-wrote, produced and released The Legal Interviewing and Language Access Film Project (LILA), two instructional videos and a teaching guide featuring a law student clinic pair representing two different immigrant clients, in two different introductory meetings, one of which is conducted with interpretation.

Our goal was to better teach interviewing in our own experiential courses, but we also hoped to share this resource with our colleagues. Since the videos were launched, law school clinics and experiential learning programs across the country have adopted the use of the videos. At the time of writing, more than 100 educators at nearly 75 law schools have requested use of the teacher’s guide for these videos. This includes more than 30 immigration clinics, but also educators teaching in a variety of other clinics, purely doctrinal courses, as well as courses focused on client counseling and interviewing skills.

The videos raise a multitude of issues within interviewing including client-centered lawyering, collaboration, interpretation, and addressing bias. Our films enliven and deepen the learning environment by utilizing modeling, as well as stimulating classroom discussion, reflection and role play. 

In Interviewing Victor: The Initial Meeting, two law students Lisa and Max interview a teenage asylum-seeker in removal proceedings, Victor, raising a number of issues relating to initial client interviewing, including: Road mapping and organization of the interview; Building rapport; Confidentiality; Role description, including representation at later stages, and explaining the arc of case; Verbal and nonverbal cues; Tone; Answering client questions or ethical issues that are difficult and unexpected; Recording the interview and seeking permission; Taking notes; Form of questions; Word choice; Approaches to sensitive topics and response to client’s distress; Client-centered lawyering; and Working with a co-interviewer.

In Josefina: Using an Interpreter, two law students Lisa and Max working with interpreters to interview a monolingual Spanish-speaking client seeking a U visa as a victim of a crime in the United States. This video raises questions regarding: Using third person; Pacing of speech; Summarization and  expansion of interpretation; Challenges when one student speaks the client’s language but partner does not; Confidentiality; Use of interested parties, such as family members; Approaches to changing interpreters; and Use of common language words where the interpreter doesn’t know the intended meaning.

For faculty who hope to adopt the videos in a course, pro bono orientation or other training, please email either Laila Hlass lhlass@tulane.edu or Lindsay Harris Lindsay.harris@udc.edu for the teacher’s guide, indicating in which course(s) you are considering using the films.

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An Overview of “A Study of the Relationship Between Law School Coursework and Bar Exam Outcomes”

Posted on September 26, 2019 by Jessica N. Haller

Robert Kuehn, Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, and David Moss, Associate Clinical Professor at Wayne State University Law School, recently conducted a large-scale study looking at the relationship between clinical/experiential or bar subject-matter courses and bar passage success in a paper entitled, “A Study of the Relationship Between Law School Coursework and Bar Exam Outcomes.” As a law student currently enrolled in a clinic, this study immediately piqued my interest.

This study was in response to fear that bar passage rates were down because of rising enrollment in “experiential courses” as opposed to “bar-subject courses.” Law schools began pushing students to enroll in more of these bar-subject courses to correct this so-called issue. However, Professor Kuehn and Professor Moss observed that there was no evidence to suggest that taking more bar-subject courses was appropriate advice for all students. Their study looked at this missing evidence between bar-subject courses and experiential learning and bar exam outcomes for ten years between two law schools: Washington University School of Law (WashU) and Wayne State University Law School (Wayne State). Both schools only require the designed first year courses and the upper-level writing courses mandated by ABA accreditation standards.

Previous studies performed in states like Texas, Colorado, and California looked at the effects of coursework and bar passage rates. These studies did not support the claim that taking more bar-tested law school course improve chances of passing on the first attempt. Notably, a study done in Indiana concluded, “simply forcing lower-performing students to take more upper division bar-subject courses will not solve the bar examination failure problem.”

The first goal of the present study was to determine whether a graduate’s enrollment in elective experiential courses was related to first-time bar passage success. Next, it was to assess whether enrollment in elective courses that cover bar subjects was related to bar success.

Data was collected from law school graduates from 2006-2015. The following table outlines the number of graduates with LSAT scores and bar passage rates between the two schools:

The next table looked at graduate characteristics such as undergraduate GPA, LSAT score, 1L GPA, and law GPA and their correlation with bar passage:

It wasn’t until 2005 that the ABA began requiring graduates to receive professional skills instruction with as little as one credit satisfying the requirement. In 2014, the ABA changed this to require six credits beginning with 2019 graduates. The study authors decided to track enrollment in skills courses versus bar passage over this time period.

The table above reveals a solid line depicting that average bar passage percentages were steady from 2006-2013 (this is when experiential course enrollment increased by over 50%). During the significant rise in experiential enrollment, bar passage percentages were largely steady. “Therefore, efforts to link declining nationwide bar passage rates to the rise in experiential course enrollment are not supported by national statistics.” A more likely contributing cause for bar passage declines since 2014 is weaker credentials of incoming 1Ls.

At WashU, it was found that while taking at least the average number of bar courses is associated with increased likelihood of passing the bar, there was no statistically significant increase in bar passage associated with bottom-quartile LGPA graduates who took more than the school’s average. This was similar with graduates in the bottom half of their class at Wayne State. Results for both schools indicate that graduates in bottom quartile who take fewer than the average number of bar courses at their school were associated with a significant increase in bar failure. Further, at both schools, students entering with scores lower than 150 were associated with pass rates significantly below the school’s average.

This study concluded that the claim that the dramatic decline in bar passage rates is due to law students taking more experiential courses or fewer bar-related courses is not supported. It characterized efforts to cap experiential credits in order to improve bar passages rates are “misguided,” warning that schools should not expect that “mere exposure” to more bar courses will significantly improve bar passage rates.

Also see “Legal Skills Prof Blog” and “TaxProf Blog” for more posts on this study

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Building A Solid Foundation Before Week 1

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Jessica N. Haller

By Louis Jim, Assistant Professor, Albany Law School

One year ago, I began teaching Introduction to Lawyering, which is the required 1L course on legal analysis, communication, and research at Albany Law School. The textbook I used, like many “legal writing” textbooks, provided information about the types of legal authorities (primary or secondary) and weight of those authorities (mandatory or persuasive). And any textbook about legal authorities would, of course, also provide information about this nation’s three-tiered court structure. In class, I discussed those concepts, showed flow charts illustrating the structure, and distributed a map of the circuit courts of appeals. But I failed to assess whether my students truly understood the significance of the three-tiered structure and how that significance related to their other first-year classes.

This past summer, I attended the AALS New Law Teachers Workshop, where a number of presenters inspired me to think about new methods to assess whether my students understand the foundational needed to succeed in the first year and beyond. In response, I made two significant changes to my course design this semester. First, I required my students to complete weekly reflections in the last ten minutes of our Friday class.[1] The students must tell me two things they learned in my class and two things they want to learn more about in class. Students may then leave comments or ask questions on any topic even if the comments or questions are not related to law school.

Second, rather than simply discussing court structure with them, I created an in-class activity to assess whether students understood the significance of that structure. The students completed this activity at our first Friday session, which was the last day of their first week of law school. I rewrote a hypothetical that was originally written by my colleague at Albany Law School, David Walker, Assistant Professor and Director of the Schaffer Law Library, for a quiz in his advanced legal research class. A copy of the hypothetical can be found here:

attachment-1-federal-court-hierarchy-exerciseDownload

The students spent the first ten to fifteen minutes of class reading the hypothetical. I then asked a series of multiple choice and short answer questions using Poll Everywhere based off the hypothetical. A copy of those questions can be found here:

attachment-2-questions-for-exerciseDownload

I provided a link to the webpage where students would respond the poll’s questions, and students answered the questions using their laptops. Their anonymous responses were displayed on the large monitors at the front of the classroom. As we worked through the questions and hypothetical, I defined common terms that students would encounter in the cases they read for their doctrinal classes (e.g., motion, ruling, opinion, holding, judgment, etc.). I also distributed an outline that allowed the students to write the definitions and take other notes. A copy of that outline can be found here:

attachment-3-structure-and-authority-class-outlineDownload

I hid the responses until at least three-quarters of the class had responded as I did not want a student’s response to be influenced by their classmates’ responses. By displaying their answers anonymously, every student could participate without fear of embarrassment, a fear prevalent in the first few weeks of law school. By using Poll Everywhere, the students who did not choose the right answer also saw that they were not alone. For each question, we also discussed each of the answer choices and why a particular choice was correct and the other ones were incorrect. Because everyone had to answer the questions, everyone—and not just the victim of the cold call—stayed engaged.

Because we completed this activity on the first Friday that we met, the students also completed their first reflection on that day. One student had commented in her reflection that she wished that we had completed that activity before the first week of classes began because it gave her a better understanding of the assigned case law in her doctrinal classes. I met with this student that following Monday, and she said she had a better understanding of her Week 2 reading assignments in her doctrinal classes after having completed the activity. Another student added that the activity filled many gaps in his understanding of the material in his doctrinal classes. Later that week, another student told me in person that she also wished we had completed the activity before the first week of classes.

As attorneys and/or professors, we often take for granted our understanding of the hierarchy of authority of the court system and our understanding of the terminology common in case law. Those just starting law school, however, may have never read a case before. But more often than not, the new law students’ first law school assignment requires them to read a case (likely more than one) and be prepared to discuss the case (or cases) on the first day of class. Those readings contain terms and concepts that new law students may have heard on television or read in a newspaper, but most new law students lack an understanding of how those terms and those concepts relate to the substantive law. Students may then feel discouraged in the first week because they don’t understand the concepts that seasoned attorneys take for granted. Although law students should and must develop skills in synthesizing rules and applying them, as educators, we must provide a solid foundation so that students can start developing those skills. With that in mind, next year, I hope to complete this activity even earlier so that students begin Week 1 with a solid foundation.

[1] This semester, I teach two sections of Lawyering, and each section meets once on Wednesday and once on Friday. On weeks in which we don’t have time to complete the weekly reflection in class, the reflection becomes an optional assignment that students can email to me. Much to my surprise and delight, some students completed the optional reflections too.

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Getting to Know Your Students

Posted on September 11, 2019 by Jessica N. Haller

By Sandra Simpson, Gonzaga University School of Law

This post can be found on the “Law Teaching” section of the Institute for Law Teaching and Learning website.

“I had some time today to post a blog post with a teaching idea on getting to know your students and starting to build a learning community in your classroom.  At the beginning of the semester, I sent my students a “Getting to Know You” form which contained the following questions:

  1. Tell me anything you would like me to know about you.
  2. How comfortable are you with writing and research? Please give me as much information as you can so I can gauge your experience.
  3. Why did you decide to go to law school?
  4. Why did you choose Gonzaga?
  5. What study methods work best for you?
  6. How do you learn best in the classroom?
  7. Think of your favorite teacher; what qualities made that teacher your favorite?
  8. Think of your least favorite teacher; what qualities made that teacher your least favorite?

These simple questions gave me insights into who is sitting in front of me.  I stapled a picture to each of their information sheets so that I could put a face to the information.  I am only one week into the semester but the information has already helped me.  For instance, when I am forming working groups for the day, I was able to pair students who are comfortable with writing and research with students who are less sure.  Also, knowing what study methods work for the students in front of me, helps me shape how I teach each group of students.  Because each group of students is so different, it is good to have information about those students rather than creating lesson plans without that information.”

Thank you to Sandra Simpson for allowing us to re-blog this!

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Fostering Student Success: Part I Challenges Posed by Changing Times and Changing Culture

Posted on September 3, 2019 by Jessica N. Haller

The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author.

By Sara J. Berman, Director of Academic and Bar Success Programs at the AccessLex Institute’s Center for Legal Education Excellence; SSRN author page https://ssrn.com/author=2846291

Law school culture is shifting; the days of the hundred percent final exam are giving way to a culture that emphasizes routine midterms, quizzes, polling, and other formative assessment.  This is in part because of ABA requirements under Standard 314[1] and in part because of the now ample evidence that wise feedback helps law students succeed.[2], [3], [4]  

The shift toward integration of more thoughtful feedback into the curriculum dovetails with a movement of many of today’s leading legal educators to encourage growth mindsets.[5] But voices urging adoption of such positive mindsets ring hollow when set into a greater legal education backdrop that still too often fosters a fixed mindset.  Students who “get it” right away are handsomely rewarded, with the most prestigious jobs,[6] law review, and other opportunities. Those who persevere and overcome struggles are barely acknowledged or, more often, stigmatized because of their early low performance –some never regaining full confidence, even if they later dramatically improve. 

Empirical studies confirm that 1L GPA often correlates with bar passage.[7] Acknowledging high performers is appropriate, even laudable; but should we continue to perpetuate a zero-sum environment where initially-lower performers are not encouraged to improve in consistent and meaningful ways? Are we even aware of the extent to which our system expressly and impliedly communicates to certain students that they are “fated” to fail?  Let’s become collectively more aware and pilot studies to determine whether different faculty and institutional responses to 1L grades might alter what appears to be a “failure trajectory” for lower-performing students. Let’s find ways to truly encourage grit, rather than just giving it lip service all the while rewarding only those who catch on most quickly.  Let’s create a system that “normalizes struggle,” as Professor Christopher argues,[8] and celebrates learning from early mistakes. 

Much learning occurs after 1L. We must study how much more learning might take place if we rewarded, valued, and encouraged law students who engage in continuous improvement and, by graduation, become far more skilled, experienced, and knowledgeable than their first-year grades would indicate. This is not to suggest an “A for effort” or “everyone gets a trophy.” Rather, this is a call for pilot programs and careful study of how initially-lower-performing law students would fare (on the bar exam and in practice) if given true and un-stigmatized opportunities to improve, and be rewarded for improving, during law school.  Such opportunities may come in the form of the suggestions noted in Part II of this post, and by seeding the law school curriculum with formative assessment and thoughtful feedback.

Employers will surely still find ways to determine which graduates are the best fits for which jobs. In the meantime, we are wasting precious resources trying to get lower-performing students to thrive in cultures that do not encourage them to do the extra work required to outperform their early indicators.  Let’s at least study how bar passage (not to mention, job satisfaction and dedicated commitment to using the rule of law to make the world a better place) might improve if law school culture stressed deep, slow, and steady learning, and truly rewarded persistence, resilience, and continuous improvement.

Part II of this post explores some of the many possibilities for “simple” changes that might help advance the ongoing culture shift toward a true growth mindset.  Stay tuned!

[1] Section of Legal Educ. and Admissions to the Bar, Am. Bar Ass’n, ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools § 314 (2019),https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/misc/legal_education/Standards/2017-2018ABAStandardsforApprovalofLawSchools/2017_2018_standards_chapter3.authcheckdam.pdf.

[2] Paula J. Manning, Understanding the Impact of Inadequate Feedback: A Means to Reduce Law Student Psychological Distress, Increase Motivation, and Improve Learning Outcomes, 43 Cumb. L. Rev. 225 (2012).

[3] Daniel Schwarcz & Dion Farganis, The Impact of Individualized Feedback on Law Student Performance, 67 J. Legal Educ. 139 (2017).

[4] Carol Springer Sargent & Andrea A. Curcio, Empirical Evidence That Formative Assessments Improve Final Exams, 61 J. Legal Educ. 379, 405 (2012).

[5] The concept of a growth mindset was developed by psychologist Carol Dweck and popularized in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006); see also Sarah J. Adams-Schoen, Of Old Dogs and New Tricks—Can Law Schools Really Fix Students’ Fixed Mindsets?, 19 Legal Writing: J. Legal Writing Inst. 3, 48 (2014); Kaci Bishop, Framing Failure in the Legal Classroom: Techniques for Encouraging Growth and Resilience, 70 Ark. L. Rev. 959, 1006 (2018); Eduardo Briceño & Dawn Young, A Growth Mindset for Law School Success Before the Bar Blog (September 12, 2017); Olympia Duhart, Growing Grit in the LRW Classroom: Practices that Promote Passion and Perseverance (2019) (on file with the author).

[6] See Roger C. Cramton, The Current State of the Law Curriculum, 32 J. Legal Educ. 321, 335 (1982) (arguing that “[f]irst-year grades control the distribution of goodies: honors, law review, job placement, and, because of the importance placed on these matters by the law school culture, even the student’s sense of personal worth.”)

[7] Amy Farley et al., Law Student Success and Supports: Examining Bar Passage and Factors That Contribute to Student Performance (2018) (on file with the author).

[8] Catherine Martin Christopher’s recent article, Normalizing Struggle, Ark. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2019) provides many possibilities for precisely these different sorts of responses and actions.

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