Legal Profession Commons^™

Are Law Schools Cream-Skimming To Bolster Their Bar Exam Pass Rates?, Jason M. Scott, Josh Jackson

AccessLex Institute Research

Law schools are held accountable on many fronts to achieve and maintain high bar passage rates. ABA Standard 316 is likely the strongest accountability measure. While the course of legal education itself, along with academic and bar success interventions, is a key driver of bar exam performance, Bahadur et al. suggests that other, obscure institutional practices can serve to inflate institutional bar passage performance. Such practices could include recruitment and admission of transfer students and academic attrition. We examine this hypothesis to assess the influence of both attrition and transfer on law schools’ bar passage rates.

It's Not Where You Start, It's How You Finish: Predicting Law School And Bar Success, Aaron N. Taylor, Jason M. Scott, Josh Jackson

AccessLex Institute Research

In this study, we examine the extent to which academic and student engagement factors explain law school grades and first-time bar exam performance. Applying fixed effects linear and logit modeling, our analysis leverages law student transcript data and responses to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) among students from a diverse group of 20 law schools to estimate academic performance and odds of bar passage. Most notably, we find that GPA improvement during law school is associated with greater odds of passing the bar exam, particularly among students who struggle the most during the first semester. Furthermore, while …

Approaching The Bar: An Analysis Of Post-Graduation Bar Exam Study Habits, Joshua L. Jackson, Tiffane Cochran

AccessLex Institute Research

For most law graduates, passing the bar exam is the culmination and most critical outcome of their legal education. The typical two months spent preparing after law school graduation are essential to success. However, empirical understanding of post-graduation bar preparation is limited; only a few studies in the legal academy have examined this period. Generally, law graduates are advised to treat bar preparation like a full-time job. But we lack research and data on the specific time management strategies and tactics that are correlated with bar passage. Given impending changes to the bar exam, such inquiries are critical to determining …

Analyzing First-Time Bar Exam Passage On The Ube In New York State, New York State Board Of Law Examiners, Accesslex Institute

AccessLex Institute Research

This report is the culmination of three years of work to collect, analyze, summarize, and interpret data on the experiences and outcomes of first-time and second-time New York State Bar candidates. After careful collaboration and review between AccessLex Institute and the New York State Board of Law Examiners to finalize this publication, a release date was anticipated for Spring 2020 to share its findings publicly and to provide recommendations for how the legal education community could build on efforts to equitably and effectively prepare law school graduates for first-time bar exam passage. Of course, at the time nobody had any …

Future In Law? A Profile Of Graduating College Seniors Interested In Legal Education And Careers, Accesslex Institute

AccessLex Institute Research

The recent decline in law school applicants is well-documented. Despite a slight increase in 2018, the number of law school applicants remains substantially lower than levels observed prior to 2011. This decrease in the demand for legal education presents an opportunity to better understand the pathway to law school and the formation of interest in pursuing a law degree or career.

The American Association of Law Schools pioneered inquiry in this area with their groundbreaking study, Before the JD: Undergraduate Views on Law School, which surveyed undergraduates from 25 four-year institutions and first-year law students from 44 law schools, …