Law School GPA, Not LSAT Or Undergrad GPA, Predicts Bar Passage

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In a recent article by Nicholas Georgakoplous, “Bar Passage: GPA and LSAT, not Bar Reviews,” law school GPA was found to have a very strong relation to bar passage compared to LSAT and undergraduate GPA. Further, the learning in small and elective courses seemed to be significant for bar passage compared to mandatory 1L courses, legal education itself was more significant than innate skill level measured by LSAT, and training in legal analysis more significant than memorization. The study found that the bar preparation provider was not statistically significant compared to law school GPA and LSAT.

 

What The Best Law Teachers Do

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Even at a time when the value and quality of legal education is being heavily criticized, a new book showcases what some of the best and brightest law teachers are doing and what is actually working in legal education.

What the Best Law Teachers Do by Michael Hunter Schwartz, Gerald Hess, and Sophie Sparrow, renowned legal scholars on teaching and learning, is based on a national study of 26 law professors nominated as “the best” by other professors and students.

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Teach a student to learn and they will be able to learn for a lifetime

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The “teaching” paradigm is shifting. “Learning” is the new “teaching.” Recent scholarship on teaching and learning focuses on developing learners, not producing learners.

Teach a person to fish, and they will eat for a lifetime. Teach a person to learn, and they will be able to do just about whatever they need to do in a lifetime.

How to Know if You DON’T Know

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We are not good at judging the effectiveness of our own learning. When information seems easy to recall, we develop “illusions of competence” or “illusions of learning” which hamper our true ability to learn. Over-confidence in our learning leads to early termination of studying,  resulting in poor academic performance.

Ways to avoid overconfidence from Annie Murphy Paul’s post at The Creativity Post:

1. Wait a while - hold off a day or two and then check how well you actually know the information by testing yourself after a meaningful delay

2. Put notes and books away – re-reading & reviewing breeds overconfidence; when material seems familiar, we assume we have learned it. Put your notes & books away and recall the information from memory

3. Mix it up - in the real world, we aren’t tested in convenient chunks. Everything comes at you at once. Interleave (mix up your studying) to replicate realistic conditions, to look for patterns, and to better identify information correctly.

4. Gain expertise - beginners are at a disadvantage as knowledge grows more quickly when linked or connected to prior knowledge. Beginners have to learn AND construct prior knowledge at the same time. Beginners also don’t have the expertise to know what they don’t know. What if you can’t gain expertise or do so in a reasonable time frame? Find a mentor.