Good morning,
Another installment of ABSSS:
Scott, Jason M., et al (AccessLex), Putting the Bar Exam to the Test: An Examination of the Predictive Validity of Bar Exam Outcomes on Lawyering Effectiveness, AccessLex Institute Research Paper No. 23-03 (2023).
From the abstract:
How well does bar exam performance, on the whole, predict lawyering effectiveness? Is performance on some components of the bar exam more predictive? The current study, the first of its kind to measure the relationship between bar exam scores and a new lawyer’s effectiveness, evaluates these questions by combining three unique datasets—bar results from the State Bar of Nevada, a survey of recently admitted lawyers, and a survey of supervisors, peers, and judges who were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of recently-admitted lawyers. We find that performance on both the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and essay components of the Nevada Bar have little relationship with the assessed lawyering effectiveness of new lawyers, calling into question the usefulness of these tests.
H.A. Lloyd (Wake Forest), Langdell and the Eclipse of Character, 85 Pitt. L. Rev. __ (forthcoming 2023):
From the abstract:
Christopher Columbus Langdell has not only damaged the study of law with his three follies: his legal formalism, his redacted appellate case method, and his notion that legal practice taints the professor of law. His three follies have also impaired character development critical for legal actors. This Article focuses on four such critical character traits and virtues impaired by Langdell: (i) imagination, (ii) empathy, (ii) balance, and (iv) integrity. Readers wishing to explore virtues beyond those addressed in this Article might note my earlier examination of the role of virtue in good legal analysis found here.
This Article also calls out potential character issues with two professor types inspired by Langdell: (v) the hazing professor who confuses intellectual rigor with intense discomfort and who uses the redacted appellate case method to inflict such discomfort at the expense of better pedagogy, and (vi) the professor without substantial practice experience who is substantially paid to teach what she has never practiced.
[h/t TaxProfBlog]
[Posted by Louis Schulze. FIU Law]
