John was the initiator of this radical bar program (running since 2005) in New Hampshire, working with the Supreme Court of NH to produce what has been a sigificant innovation in US legal education. The graduates of the program achieve admission to the New Hampshire bar based upon demonstrated mastery of practical legal skills and substantive legal knowledge. Students create electronic portfolios of their work and meet repeatedly with bar examiners in what is a two-year, rather than two-day, bar examination. It is the only bar examination in the United States that uses standardized clients to test basic interview competency prior to becoming a lawyer. It was the subject of an independent two-year study by the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System published in 2015 called Ahead of the Curve – Turning Law Students into Lawyers. In that study, DWS was called “…a landmark innovation in the preparation of lawyers.” The program was a 2015 recipient of the ABA’s prestigious E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award because it “…stands as a national model of committed collaboration between law institutions, with the active involvement of [the law school, Supreme Court, Bar Examiners and Bar Association.]”
Courtney and John described in detail how the program works, how assessment is carried out and whether it works to enhance student learning. Which it most definitely does. I have to cite the IAALS study summary:
- In focus groups, members of the profession and alumni said they believe that students who graduate from the program are a step ahead of new law school graduates;
- When evaluated based on standardized client interviews, students in the program outperformed lawyers who had been admitted to practice within the last two years; and
- The only significant predictor of standardized client interview performance was whether or not the interviewer participated in the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program. Neither LSAT scores nor class rank was significantly predictive of interview performance. (p.1)
The third result ought to be sent to every Bar Association in the US (and Canada), and every law school.
John ended by saying that with all the observation of the work of the Daniel Webster program, it did feel like being a Petri dish. I love that analogy; it so spoke to my condition throughout my working life. But I’d extend it and say that legal education innovators need to be simultaneously the Petri dish and the investigator. I think that without that exposure, and without the noting of results and disseminating them, it’s a pretty pointless experiment. Great to hear from Courtney and John.