1. Jones, Joshua (Cal Western), Implementing Aba Standard 303(B)(3): Positive Legal Education Through A Community Of Inquiry (SSRN, September 01, 2023).
From the abstract:
This Article builds on previous scholarship and offers an andragogy option for delivering PID at the classroom level. Adopting the Foundational Competencies Model (FCM) and Four Foundational Professional Development and Formation Goals (PD&F Goals), this Article revisits Professor Debra S. Austin’s call for a Positive Legal Education (PLE) movement. The Article suggests that, when combined with the Community of Inquiry (CoI) teaching framework and andragogy methods, positive legal education provides an ideal philosophy for meeting the PD&F Goals to achieve the FCM. The discussion includes suggestions for law schools to employ positive psychology in a CoI so that students can learn, grow, and flourish while in law school, on the bar exam, and in the profession. The appendices provide a timeline of major developments in legal education, a lesson plan template, and an example of the template in use. With a PLE/CoI andragogy model, the academy can improve law student well-being and help develop professional identities through achieving the PD&F Goals that establish FCM. Those professional strengths can trickle into law practice for a healthier profession with thriving attorneys who flourish.
2. Foster, Steven (Oklahoma City) and Gutowski, Nachman (UNLV), Breaking the Cycle: Rethinking Bar Exam Scoring and Portability for NextGen Examinees, UNT Dallas L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024).
From the abstract:
The development of the NextGen Bar Exam presents a crucial opportunity to address longstanding challenges in both bar exam scoring and portability concerns. The reliance on recent graduates' performance on the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) as a baseline for setting future standards is flawed due to relative scoring and scaling. In addition to concerns regarding how the future bar exam is scored, there are also concerns regarding how the new scoring metric on the NextGen bar exam will be used for portability and, more specifically, what will happen between 2026 and 2028 as the NextGen bar exam is progressively adopted by jurisdictions. This paper argues for a shift from score-based models to a standards-based, rubric-driven assessment that would better reflect minimum competence. This paper also advocates for one national score to qualify for legal practice to realize true score portability between jurisdictions finally.
