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June 19, 2007

If You Teach Them, They Will Be Happy

Law students — and the lawyers they become — are notoriously unhappy, but the interests of their professors could make all the difference in helping them through law school and in preparing them to be good lawyers.

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A study published this month in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin compared recent classes at two law schools with almost identical average undergraduate grade-point averages and LSAT scores and found that students at the school that encouraged its professors to be good teachers rather than good scholars reported higher levels of well-being and competence, and scored higher on bar exams.

The study, “Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test of Self-Determination Theory,” was conducted by Kennon M. Sheldon, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and Lawrence S. Krieger, a law professor at Florida State University.

Students at both law schools entered with similar statistics: average undergraduate GPAs around 3.4 and LSAT averages near 156. The schools differed significantly, however, in overall ranking. Law School 1 (LS1), with a good reputation and an emphasis on faculty scholarship, ranked in the second tier (as defined by the study) while Law School 2 (LS2), with an emphasis on hiring and training faculty to be good teachers, ranked in the fourth tier.

Twenty-four percent of the Law School 2 graduates who took the bar exam in the summer of 2005 had “high” scores above 150, compared to 14 percent of Law School 1 graduates. Nearly half of Law School 1’s graduates, meanwhile, had “low” scores – below 130 – on the bar exam, compared with 22 percent of Law School 2’s graduates. Though the scoring statistics are representative of each law school overall, rather than just those students who participated in the study, they are “strongly suggestive that the teaching and learning at LS2 may be more effective,” the authors wrote.

Krieger, one of the authors, said in an interview that it was “almost shocking” to see “how significantly the fourth tier students outperformed the second tier law students on the bar.” But, he added, “it makes sense psychologically – the students at the fourth tier school were happier – and it makes sense that they would have learned more from better teachers.”

By the third year of law school, students at Law School 2 reported significantly higher levels of “subjective well-being,” autonomy and competence than students at Law School 1.

But Ann Althouse, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison said that though it is “intuitively right that the school that emphasizes teaching is the one with students who are happier and score better,” those students may not be better off in the long run.

She said that if all a law school expects of its faculty is to teach, then they can “put more time into teaching students to be lawyers, but not necessarily how to think like lawyers.”

In February, Althouse, a blogger on law and current events, was a month-long guest columnist for The New York Times. In one column, she wrote that while “law should connect to the real world … that doesn’t mean we ought to devote our classes to the personal expression of law students.” Rather, she said, law professors should “deny ourselves the comfort of trying to make [law students] happy and teach them what they came to learn: how to think like lawyers.”

But law schools, especially the top-ranked ones, expect for their faculty to be great scholars, rather than skilled practitioners, something that may be a problem, Krieger said, when “law students want to learn how to be lawyers – people need to be trained for what they’re going to do.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that law professors should call on students whose hands aren’t raised or otherwise be rigorously demanding, he added. “A lot of legal educators have said, ‘It’s a hard business, so let’s be hard on our students to prepare them.’ I don’t think that’s right.”

Though the study compares just two law schools, Krieger said he thinks the results can be applied more broadly. “When faculty are selected, trained and rewarded for being good teachers, as at the fourth tier school, students will learn better,” he said. “When faculty members are hired for their scholarly potential, they’re not necessarily going to be good teachers and their students may not care about their teachers’ scholarly work.”

Students at several law schools thought that faculty support was important for them and their peers.

Bill Schmedlin, who just finished his first year at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, said that “most students are at least a little nervous” during their first year of law school, but that getting support from faculty helps them “tak[e] risks they might otherwise not take” and feel comfortable throughout their three years in law school.

Daniel Satterfield, a student who has completed one year at the Hofstra University School of Law, said an “ideal” professor is “someone who is a great scholar and who can teach.” But, he added, “I do weigh scholarship over how they teach because I can always read the textbook and learn.”

— Jennifer Epstein

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Comments

I see it a different way. Outside the 1st tier, bar passage rates vary widely, and some 4th tier schools have higher bar passage rates than 2d tier schools. This might be because the 4th tier students are more scared, or it might be because many 4th tier schools have been shocked with low rates that they now make a special effort to ensure that students pass the bar (e.g. by providing students with special classes.)

NB: In theory, law schools are not supposed to offer for-credit courses that specifically concentrate on bar passage.

Larry, at 6:20 am EDT on June 19, 2007

Teaching and scholarship

Hello, in order to add ot this debate, I believe faculties in different fields have gone through the same dilemma: how to balance the amount of quality teaching and scholarship. If the School aims at qualifying good professionals (some just don’t care anymore, right?), it must be able to balance both. In the case of more professional-oriented fields, such as Law, teaching must be mainly mingled with the practice, as this is what students themselves and the society expected them to do well. Lastly, I find it interesting the comment from the last student in the story, when she or he refers to reading books as enough. In Law school, I suppose you will need to develop accurate argument abilities, which will hardly be coming from reading the pages of a book alone, without debates and discussions in class.

Aliandra, MPhil in Higher Education at Universities of Oslo, Tampere and Aveiro (joint degree), at 6:20 am EDT on June 19, 2007

standardized testing cont.

This sounds like a variation on which is more important, the factual bases of a field or getting beyond that. Perhaps there should be two sets of exams, one that is the factual bases, and a second that tests “critical thinking". The problem is getting students to learn basics and then move beyond them...today’s earlier SAT article is another part of the same conundrum, but there are no longer “basic facts” for an educated person as there once were (which may have been sociologically related to high socio-economic status). For certain fields, however, one must know certain facts before being able to do research. Some may not be interested in research even, yet able to practice at a functional level, as in any field.

LM, at 7:25 am EDT on June 19, 2007

Effect of bar association?

In her book “Learning To Think,” Dr. Janet G. Donald notes the controlling effect of state bar associations on development of law schools. The expansion of the law school market (all you need are books and faculty) has challenged that paradigm, IMHO.

Now, second-tier and third-tier law school faculty are in a squeeze — quality scholarship AND quality teaching, if they hope to advance to the next tier. Not just teaching, in the lower-tiers. Not a lot of fun, IMHO.

Bart (THX-1138), Ol’ Lar’s BFF at Lake Woebegon Community College, at 9:45 am EDT on June 19, 2007

Having completed both, my experience was that the J.D. is a vocational degree, teaching the student to practice law (not pass the bar exam, Larry). The Ph.D. is a research degree, teaching the student to be a published scholar.

Comm Prof, at 10:10 am EDT on June 19, 2007

Whoa, hoss

” .. teaching the student to practice law (not pass the bar exam, Larry) ..”

I worked in a law library, as a PhD student. From what I could tell, most were concerned about passing the bar — which is required to practice law. Not much concern about anything else (e.g., world peace, LeBron, Iraq).

Bart (THX-1138), at 10:50 am EDT on June 19, 2007

ONE MORE TIME...

Bart: Sure, the students are mostly interested in passing the bar (duh). The law curriculum (which is what we’ve been discussing) is focused on making practicing lawyers out of them, at least that’s what I got out of those three years. World peace and Iraq (but not LeBron, I hope) should be what’s taken up in doc studies.

Comm Prof, at 1:45 pm EDT on June 19, 2007

response to Bart regarding the bar exam

Bart, Well, students worry about passing the bar. There is an incredible amount of angst. Indeed, I admit that I had a lot of that angst. But, that angst doesn’t necessarily translate into 1) schools helping in their preparation; 2) the ABA encouraging the practice; or 3) students only taking class that are “on the bar.”

Personally, I think that bar exam actually is a good indicator of how one will do practicing law. But, people disagree with me.

I think the issue of whether law school teaches lawyers to practice law arouses great passions. Some of these passions are held by people that are bitter. Some are held by people that just want some tweaking of the way law school works. In general, a few years of “practical” tutelage are required before most lawyers can completely represent clients on their own. However, at bottom, law is generally about reading texts, understanding arguments, and conforming those things to your clients interests – which is something that is what is taught in law school.

Larry, at 7:50 pm EDT on June 19, 2007

This news is not surprising, but I offer an alternate explanation. I think that students at second-tier law schools are naturally going to be more stressed than those at fourth-tier schools. This is because students at second-tier schools are competing for the elite jobs in the country, but they are competing (and they know they are competing) against students from the elite schools: Harvard, Yale, Chicago, etc. These students know full well that grades are massively important—probably more important than they are to students at fourth-tier schools, who generally know that they are not competing for top jobs, but for jobs in their own neighborhoods, where grades are simply not as important. Students at second-tier schools often have to borrow lots more money, which adds to their stress levels.

And I’m not necessarily surprised that the fourth-tier students had a higher bar passage rate, because many fourth-tier schools teach specifically to the bar exam of the state in which the school is located, which is the state in which most students at that school will practice. Harvard sends students to many different states, but fourth-tier students generally stay close (they don’t usually have other options). As someone above remarked, many of those fourth-tier schools know that they’ve admitted students whose credentials make them less likely to pass the bar, and so those schools focus much more on making sure they pass.

And I’m not at all saying that’s a bad thing. I think a lot of what you learn in law school is an absolute waste of time. The phrase “we teach them to ‘think like a lawyer’” has got to be the most trite, overused phrase in the history of higher education. It’s always especially comical coming from a tenured professor who hasn’t drafted a pleading in years. Ms. Althouse isn’t interested in teaching students to think lawyers, she wants them to think like academics—Ph.D students at that.

Robby, at 1:50 pm EDT on June 20, 2007

Why would anyone think that “teachers” can only teach how to be lawyers and that “scholars", and only scholars, can and will teach how to think like lawyers? And isn’t the ability to think like lawyers required to be lawyers?

Carol L, at 10:30 am EDT on June 21, 2007

Robby, Substantively, what is taught in law school might never appear in one’s career, but the art of mastering a field of law will (unless you are a loser) be useful to a lawyer. At least this view kept me going.

I think you might be going a bit far. It is a common “insult” to accuse 4th tier schools of teaching to a particular bar exam, and teaching state law. But, most 1st tier students really have no knowledge of what is taught in 4th tier schools, and just assume that they only teach “local” law whereas their “1st tier” school teaching “global” law. In reality, most people are learning from the same casebooks, which attempt teach theory and provide examples from selected cases, and most (if not all) schools have at least one course in state “practice.” All schools have clinics of some kind or other. That said, I passed the bar in a state without knowing the first thing about its “state” law (I couldn’t even name the court of general jurisdiction at the time).

Now, on the other hand, some 4th tiers have separate non-credit programs for law students that have a demonstrated record of failure. Essentially, they give them a bit of a bar prep course for free. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Finally, some 1st tier law students are just plain arrogant.

Carol, I am a little confused by what you are saying. While it is popular to claim that law professors are teaching irrelevant material, and they don’t know “what it is like” in the “real world” most people think that some blend of theory, “legal thinking” (which is probably what is practiced on exams), and “practice” (which is what is done in clinics) produces a good lawyer. As to the proper proportion of each, reasonable minds may differ.

Finally, for those who don’t know, law school grades are massively curved. Students at “better” law schools have higher grade curves, so they don’t need to work as hard for a B or B+. Students at lower ranked law schools usually have a median of C or so. Strangely, some of those law schools will kick out students with a C average after the first year. So, one needs to view grades as more of a policy decision by the school than an objective reading of a student’s talent.

Larry, at 5:05 pm EDT on June 21, 2007

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