IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/empleg/v20y2023i1p134-165.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

JD‐Next: A valid and reliable tool to predict diverse students' success in law school

Author

Listed:
  • Jessica Findley
  • Adriana Cimetta
  • Heidi Legg Burross
  • Katherine C. Cheng
  • Matt Charles
  • Cayley Balser
  • Ran Li
  • Christopher Robertson

Abstract

Admissions tests have increasingly come under attack by those seeking to broaden access and reduce disparities in higher education. Meanwhile, in other sectors there is a movement towards “work‐sample” or “proximal” testing. Especially for underrepresented students, the goal is to measure not just the accumulated knowledge and skills that they would bring to a new academic program, but also their ability to grow and learn through the program. The JD‐Next is a fully online, noncredit, 7‐ to 10‐week course to train potential JD students in case reading and analysis skills, prior to their first year of law school. This study tests the validity and reliability of the JD‐Next exam as a potential admissions tool for juris doctor programs of education. (In a companion article, we report on the efficacy of the course for preparing students for law school.) In 2019, we recruited a national sample of potential JD students, enriched for racial/ethnic diversity, along with a sample of volunteers at one university (N = 62). In 2020, we partnered with 17 law schools around the country to recruit a cohort of their incoming law students (N = 238). At the end of the course, students were incentivized to take and perform well on an exam that we graded with a standardized methodology. We collected first‐semester grades as an outcome variable, and compared JD‐Next exam properties to legacy exams now used by law schools (the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), including converted GRE scores). We found that the JD‐Next exam was a valid and reliable predictor of law school performance, comparable to legacy exams. For schools ranked outside the Top 50, we found that the legacy exams lacked significant incremental validity in our sample, but the JD‐Next exam provided a significant advantage. We also replicated known, substantial racial and ethnic disparities on the legacy exam scores, but estimate smaller, nonsignificant score disparities on the JD‐Next exam. Together this research suggests that, as an admissions tool, the JD‐Next exam may reduce the risk that capable students will be excluded from legal education and the legal profession.

Suggested Citation

  • Jessica Findley & Adriana Cimetta & Heidi Legg Burross & Katherine C. Cheng & Matt Charles & Cayley Balser & Ran Li & Christopher Robertson, 2023. "JD‐Next: A valid and reliable tool to predict diverse students' success in law school," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(1), pages 134-165, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:20:y:2023:i:1:p:134-165
    DOI: 10.1111/jels.12342
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12342
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jels.12342?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amy N. Farley & Christopher M. Swoboda & Joel Chanvisanuruk & Keanen M. McKinley & Alicia Boards & Courtney Gilday, 2019. "A Deeper Look at Bar Success: The Relationship Between Law Student Success, Academic Performance, and Student Characteristics," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(3), pages 605-629, September.
    2. Alexia Brunet Marks & Scott A. Moss, 2016. "What Predicts Law Student Success? A Longitudinal Study Correlating Law Student Applicant Data and Law School Outcomes," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(2), pages 205-265, June.
    3. A Susan M Niessen & Rob R Meijer & Jorge N Tendeiro, 2018. "Admission testing for higher education: A multi-cohort study on the validity of high-fidelity curriculum-sampling tests," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(6), pages 1-21, June.
    4. A Susan M Niessen & Rob R Meijer & Jorge N Tendeiro, 2016. "Predicting Performance in Higher Education Using Proximal Predictors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-14, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cédric Beaulac & Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, 2019. "Predicting University Students’ Academic Success and Major Using Random Forests," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 60(7), pages 1048-1064, November.
    2. James V. Koch & Barbara Blake‐Gonzalez, 2023. "Using the LSAT as a labor market thermometer for lawyers," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 82(1), pages 29-42, January.
    3. Amy N. Farley & Christopher M. Swoboda & Joel Chanvisanuruk & Keanen M. McKinley & Alicia Boards & Courtney Gilday, 2019. "A Deeper Look at Bar Success: The Relationship Between Law Student Success, Academic Performance, and Student Characteristics," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 16(3), pages 605-629, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:empleg:v:20:y:2023:i:1:p:134-165. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1740-1461 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.