Cat Moon Profile picture
Sep 15, 2020 13 tweets 3 min read Read on X
We're steeped in racist and classist exclusion and perhaps those who now insist the exam must be protected at all costs don't realize this.

Well, you do now. The truth is being told.

With this truth comes power and incentive to make change NOW.

No reason exists to wait.

1/
"South Carolina offered diploma privilege until 1950. When the first class of African Americans was set to graduate from law school, a bill was proposed in the South Carolina General Assembly to require bar passage for the purpose

2/
of blocking 'negroes and some undesirable whites' from entering the profession. This was not unique. The creation of the bar exam coincides with the first Civil Rights Act in 1875. After three Black lawyers were unintentionally granted membership in the ABA in 1914,

3/
their membership was revoked and a meeting was convened to discuss keeping the profession 'pure.' That’s when the push for the bar exam to be mandatory for all took off, as did change to the standards for bar passage."

4/
"'While a person’s race cannot predict whether he will pass the bar, his race may expose him to conditions that make passing the bar less likely.' Conditions like working while studying or caring for family members that disproportionately affect people of color and women

5/
are correlated with lower pass rates. Even accounting for these factors, however, we shouldn’t forget that racial bias was intentionally built into many of the tests we consider 'standardized.'"

6/
"We assume that the bar exam ensures effective lawyers because every year people fail it, and those people must therefore not be qualified to practice law. But the failure rate fails to prove that, unless the bar exam is effective at measuring a lawyer’s abilities."

7/
What do we know?

•11.3 percent of malpractice claims are related to substantive law.

•1 percent of ethics violations relate to competence.

•94.8 percent of test takers eventually pass the bar exam.

8/
•Zero: correlation between test results and success as a lawyer.

"Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation among LSAT scores, law school GPA, and bar exam results."

AND

9/
"The study found no meaningful correlation between LSAT scores or GPA and effective lawyering. It did, however, confirm that LSAT scores and GPA as predictors do disproportionately harm women and people of color."

10/
"If the goal and purpose of the bar exam is to protect the public and ensure effective lawyers by excluding those who aren’t effective, then it is, in my opinion, a failure.

11/
Alternatively, I propose that we achieve those goals by helping new lawyers identify their strengths and growth areas. Let’s make all prospective admittees take these personality assessments,

12/
not so that we can exclude them, but so they and the mentors they choose to share the results with will have valuable insight on how to become a better lawyer."

YES 👊

Thank you for your insight and advocacy, @jordanlcouch!

#makelawbetter

13/end

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More from @inspiredcat

Jan 23, 2023
Yes, some people who go to law school would like to practice in the public interest.

But instead, they end up going into corporate law because they have big loans to pay or other financial obligations.

What I see and hear from students more often is not this, however.
What I see and hear is that law students want a wider range of options for using their law degree in ways that support their goals, values, aspirations, the quality of life they seek.

This may be serving the public.

Or not. Folks want to do good with their degree, yes.

But,
that doesn't necessarily mean following the traditional public interest paths, either.

Corporate law is not the only sector of the profession that suffers from being stuck in the Second Industrial Revolution (a time that ended 100+ years ago but still dictates our profession).
Read 17 tweets
Jan 20, 2023
Powerful to see @edgeofempty and colleagues taking about how to build a strong data culture in legal aid orgs at @LSCtweets#LSCITC!

We will revisit this topic in the closing session #TalkJustice podcast recording.
If you’re curious about the elements of a strong data culture:

- Commitment

- Quality data

- Staffing

#LSCITC Image of a presentation sli...
How to encourage contribution of quality data?

@edgeofempty rewarded data contributors in small but powerful ways.

Make staff feel good about caring and contributing.
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Nov 28, 2021
This article by @kathrynemyoung considers the upstream causes of the decline in mental health that starts in law school.

Prof. Young talked to law students to discover and document the changes they experienced in motivation, happiness, hopefulness & overall mental health 👇
during 1L in law school.

"Students enter law school with unexceptional psychological profiles: on average, they are no more or no less happy or healthy than demographically similar peers who are not in law school."

👇
"But by graduation, they emerge less intrinsically motivated, less hopeful, and less happy. On top of this, they carry new mental health problems."

👇
Read 27 tweets
Nov 27, 2021
AND, given the current HIGH rate of high stress/anxiety amongst law students, should we not be considering upstream causes as well?

Apparently, we've known since the 1960s that the way we educate lawyers is fraught.

Yet, here we are. Educating lawyers like it's the 1960s.
"The study of mental health of law students can be traced back to the late 1960s when research published in the Wisconsin Law Review found that 'failure anxiety' has been a serious impediment for first-year law students’ ability to study.

👇
Research from the 1980s all the way to 2016 has shown that the stress and anxiety is not only a problem found among 1Ls, but also one that continues throughout the law school journey."

👇
Read 5 tweets
Jan 11, 2021
Yes, I'm laser focused on how lawyers lead—how we *learn* to lead—as I prep to teach just this to @vanderbiltlaw students, and . . .

As I read @jaesunum's post on @Legal_Ev, all I can think: we are failing to train lawyers to make these important moral (yes, moral) decisions.👇
I genuinely question whether we train law students and lawyers to operate in the way Jae urges us to.

Note, I agree with Jae: "Big business and their legal counsel have the opportunity to steer capitalism to a gentler and fairer recovery, but the clock is ticking.
👇
The reckoning we face in the post-pandemic reality is not one of cancel culture but widespread calamity and increasing risk to our lives and livelihoods."

Both the opportunity and obligation (yes, I believe it is an obligation) we in law face are enormous.

And,
Read 15 tweets
Nov 19, 2019
#thread on the perils of workplace knowledge-hiding:

"firms with a high-trust environment, where employees can collaboratively and transparently share knowledge, gain stock returns two to three times higher than the industry average and have 50% lower turnover rates"
"When we deliberately withhold or conceal information from each other, we are doing something called 'knowledge hiding,' an action that can take several different forms."
"We may pretend to be uninformed, provide inaccurate information to those who ask us, promise to share information but never intend to, or find excuses to tell people that we can’t share when we actually can."
Read 18 tweets

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