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Putting the Bar to the Test: An Examination of the Predictive Validity of Bar Exam Outcomes on Lawyering Effectiveness
Abstract
How well does bar exam performance predict lawyering effectiveness? Is performance on some components of the bar exam more predictive? The current study, the first of its kind to measure the relationship between bar exam scores and a new lawyer’s effectiveness, evaluates these questions by combining three unique datasets—bar results from the State Bar of Nevada, a survey of recently admitted lawyers, and a survey of supervisors, peers, and judges who were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of recently-admitted lawyers. We find that performance on both the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and essay components of the Nevada Bar have little relationship with the assessed lawyering effectiveness of new lawyers, calling into question the usefulness of these tests.
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A century after the first twin and adoption studies of behavior in the 1920s, this review looks back on the journey and celebrates milestones in behavioral genetic research. After a whistle-stop tour of early quantitative genetic research and the parallel journey of molecular genetics, the travelogue focuses on the last fifty years. Just as quantitative genetic discoveries were beginning to slow down in the 1990s, molecular genetics made it possible to assess DNA variation directly. From a rocky start with candidate gene association research, by 2005 the technological advance of DNA microarrays enabled genome-wide association studies, which have successfully identified some of the DNA variants that contribute to the ubiquitous heritability of behavioral traits. The ability to aggregate the effects of thousands of DNA variants in polygenic scores has created a DNA revolution in the behavioral sciences by making it possible to use DNA to predict individual differences in behavior from early in life.
Rather than investigating the extent to which training can improve performance under experimental conditions (‘what could be’), we ask about the origins of expertise as it exists in the world (‘what is’). We used the twin method to investigate the genetic and environmental origins of exceptional performance in reading, a skill that is a major focus of educational training in the early school years. Selecting reading experts as the top 5% from a sample of 10,000 12-year-old twins assessed on a battery of reading tests, three findings stand out. First, we found that genetic factors account for more than half of the difference in performance between expert and normal readers. Second, our results suggest that reading expertise is the quantitative extreme of the same genetic and environmental factors that affect reading performance for normal readers. Third, growing up in the same family and attending the same schools account for less than a fifth of the difference between expert and normal readers. We discuss implications and interpretations (‘what is inherited is DNA sequence variation’; ‘the abnormal is normal’). Finally, although there is no necessary relationship between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’, the most far-reaching issues about the acquisition of expertise lie at the interface between them (‘the nature of nurture: from a passive model of imposed environments to an active model of shaped experience’).
The research reported here uses information from the admissions files of lawyers admitted to the Connecticut bar from 1989 to 1992 to compare those who were disciplined with those who were not disciplined. It analyzes information reported during the bar admissions process that may predict later lawyer misconduct including, inter alia, prior criminal history, problem credit history, prior employment history, academic misconduct, substance abuse, and psychological history. The study reveals that many of the responses on the admissions application are statistically associated with an elevated risk of future discipline. Nevertheless, these variables nevertheless make very poor predictors of subsequent misconduct. The explanation for this seeming paradox is that the overall baseline likelihood of discipline is so low (only about 2.5% of the 6,159 lawyers in our cohort). Thus, even if some variable (e.g., having defaulted on a student loan) doubles the likelihood of subsequent disciplinary action — a very strong effect — the probability of subsequent discipline for someone with a student loan default is still only 5%. It seems highly unlikely that any regulator would be comfortable denying admission to an applicant who had only a 5% chance of subsequent discipline. Put differently, even knowing that an applicant has a substantially elevated risk of future discipline is probably not sufficient to justify some kind of corrective or preventative action, given the low baseline risk.
Law school admission decisions are heavily influenced by a student's undergraduate grade point average (UGPA) and Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score. These measures, although predictive of first-year law school grades, make no effort to predict professional competence and, for the most part, they do not. These measures also create adverse impact on applicants from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This article describes the rationale for and process by which we explored new tests to predict lawyer effectiveness rather than law school grades and reports results of a multiyear empirical study involving over 3,000 graduates from Berkeley Law School and Hastings College of the Law. Tests measuring personality constructs, interests, values, and judgment predicted lawyering competency but had little or no adverse impact on underrepresented minority applicants. Combined with the LSAT and UGPA, these broader tests could assess law applicants on the basis both of projected professional effectiveness and academic indicators.
The study aimed to conduct the first analysis of CAP parent-offspring resemblance for reading performance in children aged 7, 12 and 16 years, and to assess the etiology of individual differences in reading performance of children at 16 years of age.
The Reading Recognition subtest of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test was administered to children in the Colorado Adoption Project (CAP) at 7, 12 and 16 years of age, and to their adoptive and nonadoptive parents when the children were 7 years of age.
Resulting parent-offspring correlations in adoptive families were not significant at any age, but correlations between scores of nonadoptive control parents and their offspring were significant at all three ages.
Results obtained from behavioral genetic model-fitting analyses of data from parents and their children tested at age 16 are consistent with results of studies of twins and siblings indicating that individual differences in reading performance are due substantially to genetic influences. In contrast, environmental transmission from parents to offspring was negligible, suggesting that environmental influences on individual differences in the reading performance of children are largely independent of parental reading performance.