Scott Johns serves of Law as a Professor of the Practice of Law and Director of the Bar Passage Program at the University of Denver Sturm College. Twice per year during the bar exam seasons, Scott runs a post-graduate Bar Success Program helping graduates develop the confidence and the competence to pass the bar exam. The program’s focus is on active learning through substantive problem-solving workshops and mock bar exams to include individual feedback for numerous writing projects. During the academic terms, Scott teaches primarily in the field of Legal Analysis Strategies with additional periodic courses on Constitutional Law Individual Rights, the First Amendment Religion Clauses, and Immigration and Asylum Law. Previous to the University of Denver, Scott got his start in academic support in Southern California teaching first at Whittier Law School as an Associate Professor and Interim Director of Academic Support and Bar Passage and then at Chapman School of Law as Director of Academic Achievement.
Prior to academics, Scott served as a law clerk in federal court and then worked as an immigration litigator and national security attorney within the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Prior to law school, Scott served as a pilot and flight safety officer in both the U.S. Air Force and the airline industry. Surprisingly, Scott’s formal pedagogical training about active learning occurred in preparation for his assignment as a military instructor pilot teaching undergraduate pilot training for aspiring Air Force aviators with coursework in educational psychology, curriculum and design.
Outside teaching, Scott has dabbled in empirical scholarship with a recent article evaluating whether bar passage interventions were statistically beneficial and a second article examining whether the bar examiner’s claim, namely, that bar exam rates are historically down, was in fact empirically due to declines in LSAT scores. Empirical Reflections: A Statistical Evaluation of Bar Exam Program Interventions, available at http://louisvillelawreview.org/printcontent/54/1/35/scott_johns-empirical_reflections_statistical_evaluation_bar_exam_program_interventions; Testing the Testers: The National Conference of Bar Examiner’s Claim and a Roller Coaster Bar Exam Ride, available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=284241
Outside law school activities, Scott enjoys hiking, mountain biking, and participating in church activities with his family.
