Awarded Grants

Pathways to Legal Licensure: Individualized and Comparative Outcomes 

The purpose of this research is to gain an empirically grounded understanding of the degree to which both exam-based and performance-based approaches to legal licensure are valid, reliable, fair, aligned with curriculum, and feasible — as well as the degree to which these pathways achieve their own stated goals. Findings of this study will support development of robust legal licensure ecosystems across the country.

Expanding Bar Admission Pathways to Fill Access to Justice Gaps in Arizona  

The Arizona Supreme Court has recently adopted the Arizona Lawyer Apprentice Program as a supplemental bar licensure pathway that will address general state needs for more lawyers and respond to the pervasive challenges of access to justice, including legal deserts in rural Arizona. This approach, combining alternative licensure and advanced training, could become a model for other states and builds on Arizona’s long tradition of legal innovation, including access to justice reforms.

2023 Bar Success Research Grant Program

This study seeks to examine the effects of undergraduate institution type on Bar Exam passage rates. The insights that may be gained from this study can serve to assist HBCUs in designing their pre-law offerings and allocating their resources accordingly. Additionally, these findings may better inform and empower HBCUs and their collaborative partners (e.g., law schools, law firms, and other business/professional entities) seeking to positively impact diversity in the legal profession.

Grant Title: The Relationship Between Curriculum Selections and Bar Exam Sub-scores 

This project analyzes the impact of taking courses in bar-tested areas and performance in those areas on the bar exam, helping law schools to better understand factors contributing to bar success. Florida is an ideal state for this work as the Florida bar reports sub-scores in topics allowing us to compare taking specific courses (e.g., wills) and performance on that subset of bar questions (e.g., wills scores). Additional items will also be studied (GPA, LSAT, transfer status, etc.). 

The project will estimate the causal effect of participating in legal-career-related extracurricular activities while in law school on the chances of passing the Bar exam on the first attempt together with how racial, ethnic, or gender differences in extracurricular participation contribute to corresponding gaps in Bar success rates. View grant outcomes.

This grant will support the study of teaching reforms and academic and bar success interventions implemented at UC Hastings College of the Law.

View grant outcomes.

Research grant awarded to Krista Soria, Director of Student Affairs Assessment at the University of Minnesota, to better understand the roles of financial factors (e.g., funding sources, debt, financial stress, and food and housing insecurity) in graduate, professional, and law students’ mental health, time to degree completion, and career interests.

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.

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.