Bar Exam Training Transfer: How a Law School Learned to Improve a System Outcome with Evidence-Based Practice
Meyer, Chance
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2023-08
Abstract
This improvement project took place at a law school whose graduates were struggling to pass the bar exam. The law school sought to redesign its bar preparation program. More broadly, the school wanted to learn how to use evidence-based, context-sensitive practice to manage complexity and improve system outcomes. The project was two-wave. First, we identified influenceable variables most closely related to bar performance among the law school’s graduates. Consistent with the literature, these proved to be individual, high-difficulty learning activities that support schema-development. Second, we evaluated the bar preparation program as a five-stage training transfer system to learn how to optimize utilization of the key learning activities. At each stage, we measured the extent to which critical program elements invited or hindered transfer of each learning activity. Resulting program changes involved metacognitive and cognitive trainings.