Since launching our grantmaking activities in 2014, we have awarded over $21 million in support of our research priorities: access, affordability, and the value of legal education.
Awarded Grants
Grant Program
Grant Status
Pennsylvania State University
Research grant awarded to Kelly Rosinger, Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University’s College of Education, to examine how LSAT-optional admissions policies impact diversity (e.g., the share and number of Black, Latinx, and Native American students enrolled) and selectivity (e.g., the number of applicants, acceptance rate, and the LSAT scores of enrollees) at adopting U.S. law schools.
University of Kentucky
Research grant awarded to Willis Jones, Associate Professor at University of Kentucky’s College of Education, to study variation in cost of living estimates among U.S. law schools.
University of Iowa
Research grant awarded to Nicholas Bowman, Professor at University of Iowa’s College of Education, to examine factors that predict changes in enrollment and graduation of students from marginalized racial groups at U.S. law schools.
University of Pennsylvania
Dissertation grant awarded to Chad Losee, Ed.D. candidate in Higher Education Management at University of Pennsylvania, to better understand factors related to the aspirations to pursue a top-ranked graduate degree (e.g., MBA).
University of San Diego
The University of San Diego School of Law’s (USD) Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL), in partnership with the School of Business Department of Economics, plans to research inequality with respect to access to legal services. USD will investigate whether the lack of diversity in the attorney workforce directly impacts access to legal services by low-income, disadvantaged consumers, and whether the existing cut score of California’s Bar Exam is contributing to the justice gap in California.
View grant outcomes.
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
The project seeks to...
- Evaluate a replication on the State Bar of California’s July 2019 Bar exam of a Productive Mindset intervention that improved passage rates on its July 2018 exam.
- Examine predictors of bar passage in a data set compiled with over 7,000 takers across three years of California’s exams.
- Scale the Productive Mindset program to three new jurisdictions and examine predictors of passage in a multi-jurisdictional data set of over 10,000 takers of the July 2021 bar exam.
Hofstra University
The project will develop metacognitive teaching materials to be used within the law school curriculum and study the impact of this instructional intervention on bar passage. The project will use a mixed methods approach, using both qualitative and quantitative data, to examine whether students who are taught and prompted to engage in metacognitive skills develop stronger skills over time.
View grant outcomes.
Roger Williams University
The project seeks to identify law schools that consistently overperform—and underperform—on their expected bar exam passage rates, controlling for the quality of the students they accept. The project plans to examine which state bar exams law graduates take and the difficulty of those bar exams. The project will also determine the school-specific characteristics leading to overperformance among law schools that consistently beat their estimated bar passage rate by interviewing deans at these law schools.
University of Pennsylvania
This grant will comprehensively evaluate whether the adoption of rgw Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) has positively influenced enrollment and Bar passage rates of underrepresented and minority students in law schools located in participating states. It will also measure the extent to which (a) tuition and fees costs and costs of living, (b) interstate employment mobility, and (c) overall employment prospects of graduates from participating schools and states varied given the adoption of UBE.