A study was conducted to examine patterns of test preparation for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) during the 1990-1991 testing year. This represented an extension of an earlier study that examined self-report test preparation methods for the June and October 1989 test administrations. In this study, five types of analysis were performed: (1)…

This study examined legal writing as it was represented in legal memoranda prepared by first-semester law students at 12 different law schools. The study was based on the cumulative judgments of the instructors and professors of law in those institutions, humanities specialists at the Educational Testing Service, and two legal consultants. A…

Used survey data to assess the third-year experience of law students. Found that most students were disengaged but satisfied and optimistic; a much smaller group felt alienated. Proposes some legal education reforms. (EV)

Describes some of the major pressures and challenges facing law schools today and their responses. Explores trends in the areas of student body composition, affirmative action, finances, student debt, technology, internationalization of the curriculum, and faculty scholarship. (EV)

Whole tasks for acquiring complex skills are often too difficult for novices. To solve this problem, "process support" divides the problem solving into phases, offers driving questions, and provides feedback. A multimedia program was used to teach sophomore law students ("N"=82) to prepare and carry out a plea. In a randomised 2x2 design with the…

Depression is a problem in the student population and may impact students of any age, gender and ethnicity. Previous studies have indicated student demographic characteristics are associated with depression; however, these studies have not utilised scales specifically designed to measure depression in the student population. The aim of the present…

Advocates for a more inclusive legal profession are worried about the recent decline in enrollment of Black students in law school. According to the American Bar Association (ABA), Blacks were 7.4 percent of all law students in 1994. By 2005, that percentage had fallen to just 6.6. Several law journal articles have suggested that the schools…

In a study of the organizational socialization of law school interns, the authors observed that some of the students were assimilated quickly and completely into the role of prosecutor, while others were less socialized. The authors believe that the organizational structure and level of control exercised over the interns accounted for these…

Shows some of the problems encountered in a skills-oriented course and focuses on methods of dealing with them. Though a law program is discussed, the philosophy of teaching skill development rather than task performance is applicable to other cooperative education enterprises. (JOW)

The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) Skills Analysis Survey identifies the skills that are important for success in law school. This information provides validity evidence for the current Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and guides the development of new test items and test specifications. The key question of the survey is "what academic…

Troy Johnson was a devoted reader and library user even as a teen living in Alaska. His experiences with librarians there and at the University of Nebraska College of Law made law librarianship an appealing career choice when he received his law degree and realized he had no idea what he wanted to do with it. Now, as Electronic Services and…

The author suggests that interviewing is a skill that can be learned, and describes a program designed especially for law students that is based on the fundamentals of assertiveness training. (Author/HMV)

This study investigated the overall prevalence of discrepant Law School Admission Test (LSAT) subscores, their differential incidence for subgroups of examinees, and the psychometric properties of alternative measures of discrepant performance. The sample consisted of 39,350 examinees who took the LSAT in December 1991. Subscore differences, often…

In item calibration using LOGIST (M. Wingersky, R. Patrick, and F. Lord, 1987), when the program determines that it cannot accurately estimate the c-parameter for a particular item due to insufficient information at the lower levels of ability, an estimate of the c-parameters, called COMC, is obtained by combining all such items. The purpose of…

Four different groups of respondents completed a set of simulation exercises intended to reflect lawyering skills involved in client interviews. Results suggest the appropriateness of simulation exercises as measures of clinical skills in legal education and the effectiveness of clinical programs in promoting development of such skills in law…