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
Dillard University
This grant supports the Foundation to Legal Education Advancing Diversity (LEAD) program. The program will provide rising college juniors with analytical and logical reasoning skills to ensure their success on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and in law school.
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Indiana University received a grant to support the analysis of LSSSE data to determine in which ways social belonging influences law students’ engagement and success. In addition, this grant will support the development, implementation, and evaluation of a productive mindset intervention for final-semester law students and recent law school graduates who are sitting, for the July 2018 California bar exam.
The Association of American Law Schools (AALS)
The Before the JD project will study (1) the opinions held by students at, and recent graduates from, four-year colleges and universities in the United States about legal education and the legal profession; (2) their sources of information about legal education; and (3) the factors that influence their postgraduate choices.
American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation received a grant for the Emerging and Visiting Scholars Fellowship Program in Legal and Higher Education project. Doctoral fellows and visiting scholars will have access to an interdisciplinary scholarly community and benefit from mentoring provided by the ABF’s research faculty. This professional network of scholars will produce innovative, objective, empirical, and interdisciplinary research in legal and higher education.
Elon University School of Law
This grant studies the impact and benefits of its innovative new curriculum. Major components include shortening the general course of study to two and a half years, reducing cost by nearly 25 percent and enhancing the educational experience by requiring that all students complete substantial experiential learning components.
To read more, please visit Study: Lower debt, stronger diversity & improved outcomes at Elon Law
Washington University School of Law
The Washington University School of Law received a grant to support a multi-school examination of the relationship between experiential coursework, bar subject coursework, outcomes on the bar examination, and securing an initial post-graduation legal job.
To read more, please visit A Study of the Relationship between Law School Coursework and Bar Exam Outcomes
University of Pennsylvania
The Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education received a grant to analyze the law school admissions market. A set of regression models were estimated for predicting the prices charged by law schools reporting data to the American Bar Association. Similarly, institutional characteristics such as LSAT scores, bar passage rates and employment outcomes were mapped.
University of South Carolina School of Law
The University of South Carolina School of Law received a grant to assess the viability of race-neutral alternatives in law school admissions. The study surveyed first-year law students on race-neutral aspects of their identity to determine the relationship, if any, between race and identity factors.
To read more, please visit Assessing the Viability of Race-Neutral Alternatives in Law School Admissions
American Bar Foundation
The American Bar Foundation received a grant award to follow up on the work of the American Bar Association Task Force on the Financing of Legal Education. The data that was collected as part of the Task Force’s work, in combination with other data and materials, will be fully analyzed in order to address challenges facing legal education.