A Critical Perspective on Formative Assessment Mandates

Formative assessment is a hot topic in legal education. Numerous commentators maintain that such assessment improves student learning of legal skills and content. Many law schools have adopted formative assessment requirements. And the American Bar Association recently proposed changing law school accreditation standards to mandate formative assessment in the first year. This essay challenges these trends. There is a paucity of evidence that formative assessment enhances learning among law students. Much of the broader assessment literature has limited relevance in legal education. And conducting formative assessment entails serious costs that are frequently overlooked by its proponents. In sum, the evidence supporting the use of formative assessment is plainly not sufficient to override the default rule of professor autonomy with respect to pedagogy. Accordingly, formative assessment mandates at the accreditation or institutional level are unjustified

Self-Compassion and Law Student Professional Identity Formation

The American Bar Association’s Standards for Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar require law schools to provide students with “substantial opportunities” for “[t]he development of a professional identity.” The Standards do not require a particular curriculum or mode of instruction but offer two guideposts for legal educators: one, that “professional identity focuses on what it means to be a lawyer and the special obligations lawyers have to their clients and society,” and two, that professional formation “should involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” The guidance and concomitant flexibility afforded by the Standards offer law schools remarkable challenges and opportunities, notably that law students be invited to intentionally explore the contours of their vocation. This essay adds to the discourse on professional identity formation by asserting that self-compassion ought to number among the “values, guiding principles, and well-being practices” to which law students are formally introduced and invited to internalize as essential to their professional identity formation