Academic and Bar Support Scholarship Spotlight

Erica Lux (Texas Tech), Put Me in Coach: Enhancing Foundational Skills Across the Curriculum with Neurodivergent Law Students in Mind Ahead of the NextGen Bar Exam (forthcoming 2024).

From the abstract:

As more adults discover that they are neurodivergent, the law student population is likely to be no different, and legal education must adapt to support the support the skill development needs of these students as they seek to enter the profession. Neurodivergence is a non-medical term that refers to a variety of conditions resulting from changes to a person’s brain structure and function. More commonly, academic discussions around law student neurodivergence focus on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—both of which have not been properly diagnosed over the past several decades. However, neurodivergence also incorporates anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and learning disabilities (each of which are often co-morbid with other neurodivergent conditions)—and several of which will also be discussed in this Article. Neurodivergent law students process, synthesize, and impact the legal world differently from their neurotypical peers. This in turn influences neurodivergent law students’ foundational skills in studying, testing, and professional interactions, including those with peers, professors, clients, and colleagues in law school and in practice. Further, now that the bar exam is changing to incorporate assessment of several foundational lawyering skills, neurodivergent law students will likely need additional support in developing relevant skills to meet their needs in testing and in practice. This Article identifies educational, communication, professional, and interrelationship skills and support mechanisms that law schools can implement to help neurodivergent law students develop skills they may struggle to develop through traditional law school pedagogy and curriculum. This Article further proposes ways that legal education can adapt current curriculum with neurodivergent law students in mind in a way that helps all law students develop and improve their foundational skills for the NextGen bar exam and future practice.

Campbell, Donald E. (Mississippi College), Get Your Head in the Game:  Gamifying the Bar Examination, 40 Miss. College L. Rev. 223 (2022).

From the abstract:

During a recent administration of the bar examination, I observed the following: a student who had a child ten days before the exam passed; a student on law review failed; a student whose predictors indicated he should fail the bar exam passed; two students who were in the library every day studying failed. Even though these folks were all taking the same exam, their outcomes varied dramatically, and there did not seem to be a common variable that predicted whether they would pass or fail. My first inclination was to throw up my hands in frustration and chalk it up to the fact that every student’s situation is unique.

I was satisfied to shrug and mutter, “what can you do?,” until I came across a podcast on Coach Nick Saban. Saban is a successful college football coach at the University of Alabama. As I listened to the podcast, I realized that the bar exam experience is very similar to a football team’s preparation for a championship game. The stakes are high, the preparation is intense and condensed, each individual bar taker will either win (pass) or lose (fail), and there are points assigned based on how well the performer does.

[Posted by Louis Schulze, FIU Law]