Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Baffy, Marta

Teaching Legal Analysis Through the Lens of Second Language Pedagogy: A Consciousness-Raising Approach

Franklin, Kris

LaPiana, Bill

Mikkor, Alison

Parrish, Austen

Journal of Legal Education, Volume 73, Number 2From the EditorsThis issue marks the first Journal issue published under the direction of new host schools, New York Law School and the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Our first issue together, it includes articles in each of the three areas that have long been the Journal’s focus as the journal of record for legal education—pedagogical innovation, the design of legal education and curricula, and the connections between legal education, law practice, and licensure. We are excited about publishing the thoughtful articles in this volume and encouraging scholarship in these ever more important subjects in the future.This issue begins with articles on classroom innovation and teaching pedagogy, drawn from the context of legal writing and research courses, but with implications for legal education more broadly. In the first piece, Impact Beyond the Classroom: Teaching for Transfer, Megan McAlpin explores methods of teaching that are necessary for learning transfer, i.e., when learning in the classroom affects how a person learns or performs in another course or context, and describes practical approaches to “teach for transfer.” She urges us to pay more attention to effective teaching strategies that promote transfer to ensure that our teaching, and our students’ learning, continues beyond one course or class. Next, Ezra Ross explores different ways of viewing an attorney’s role in Amorality in the Lawyering Skills Classroom. Professor Ross traces how an “undercurrent of amorality [is] often etched into” the first-year lawyering skills course. He urges faculty to have first-year students more explicitly grapple with conflicting models of the attorney’s role and be more aware of the limits and drawbacks of using only a client-centered approach. Finally, in A Research Process for the Entire World? Challenges in Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Instruction, Janet Kearney describes instructional strategies in legal research instruction. She explores how existing discussions of scaffolding can be used in the context of a Foreign, Comparative, and International Law research course to improve student retention and help with cognitive overload.The issue then shifts gears to two articles exploring curricular design. Jonathan Choi and Daniel Schwarz describe the impact of an experiment to test the impact of using artificial intelligence (GPT-4) on legal reasoning. In AI Assistance in Legal Analysis: An Empirical Study, Choi and Schwarz “explore how access to AI impacts human performance in professional work and educational settings generally and in legal contexts in particular.” They conclude with suggestions as to whether AI assistance is useful in complex legal reasoning tasks like essay-writing, and the implications for the future of lawyering. Finally, in Grade Insurance, James Fallows Tierney discusses an alternative method of assessment, designed to relieve the pressure of a traditional end-Journal of Legal Educationof-term exams. Drawing on learning theory focused on how adult students learn, Tierney suggests that “specifications grading” might lead to increased student motivation and ultimately deeper understanding and describes a way to implement specifications grading in the law school classroom.This issue concludes with three studies focused the bar exam and bar exam pass rates that provide insight into student success and licensing. In Breaking Down Bar Passage, Danielle Graham, Christopher Swoboda, and Amy Farley describe the results of a study that seeks to better understand law student success on the various components of the bar exam. The results of the study, according to the authors, provide further support that “legal education matters” and that “what students accomplish after matriculating through law school is much more indicative of their future bar success than their incoming credentials or demographic characteristics.” Next is Paolo Cecchi Dimeglio’s article An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Student-Faculty Demographics on Law School Graduate Attrition, Attrition Rates, J.D.s Awarded, and Bar Passage. In her article, Dimeglio delves into the question of whether the “interplay between student and faculty demographics impact law students’ sense of belonging” and, in turn, rates of attrition, graduation rates, and bar exam success. Her study suggests that a faculty’s gender and racial diversity can impact attrition and bar pass rates. The issue’s final article is by Morris Ratner, Stephen Goggin, Stefano Moscato, Margaret Greer, and Elizabeth McGriff. In Determinants of Success on the Bar Exam: One Law School’s Experience 2010-2023, the authors describe the experience at the UC Law San Francisco and explore which of the law school’s academic reforms and interventions made a difference in improving the law school’s overall bar pass rate. Kris FranklinBill LaPianaAlison MikkorAusten Parrish

English

From the Editors

Lanni, Adriaan

Seeing is Believing: Restorative Justice at Harvard Law School

Cohen, Amy J.

Gobbo, Daniel Del

Pedagogies in the Meantime: Reflections on ADR and Restorative Justice in U.S. and Canadian Legal Education

Hopkins, C. Quince

Graham, Laurie M.

Cavaletto, April

Magic or Morass?: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Restorative Practices for Sexual Harm Prevention and Program Evaluation

Kuehn, Robert R.

Joy, Peter A.

Measuring the Impacts of Experiential Legal Education

Young, Dawn

Visible Learning: Adapting Primary and Secondary Pedagogical Approaches to Legal Education

Kearney, Janet

A Research Process for the Entire World? Challenges in Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Instruction

Dimeglio, Paola Cecchi

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Student-Faculty Demographics on Law School Graduate Attrition, Attrition Rates, J.D.s Awarded, and Bar Passage

Robinson-Dorn, Trilby

A Road Map for Law Schools: Changing Problematic Faculty Compensation Practices that Perpetuate the Gender Pay Gap

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