Page 28 - Delaware Lawyer - Summer 2022

FEATURE | WHAT MAKES A GOOD LAWYER?
large and statistically significant dif- ference.35 When evaluated on their ability to absorb substantive “rela- tive information points,” the differ- ential was equally striking. Daniel Webster Scholars achieved an average learned information score of 89%. In comparison, non-Daniel Webster Scholars averaged 69%. The study considered the entering academic credentials of students, such as LSAT scores and class rank, and determined that neither correlated to success. Rather, “the only significant predic- tor of standardized client interview performance is whether or not the interviewer participated in the DWS program.”36
Focus groups conducted under the study, which included all con- stituencies of the New Hampshire bench and bar, overwhelmingly con- cluded that graduates of the Daniel Webster Scholar program were ahead of their contemporaries who gained admission to the bar through the traditional bar exam pathway. They uniformly expressed the view that “DWS graduates are a step ahead of new law school graduates, with some claiming DWS graduates are up to two years ahead.”37 Real-world law- yers and judges considered the Dan- iel Webster Scholars admittees better equipped to engage in the real world. In short, “compared with new law- yers who spend their first few years learning to practice, DWS graduates are able to hit the ground running, working with clients and taking a lead role on cases immediately.”38
Justice Louis Brandeis famously obser ved that states in our federal system often serve constructively as laboratories for experiment. As Jus- tice Brandeis wrote, we are prone to naturally regard the current order of things as the natural order of things. Yet the progress of science teaches other wise:
There are many men now living who were in the habit of using the age-old expression: ‘It is as impossible as flying.’ The discoveries in physical science, the triumphs in invention, attest
the value of the process of trial and error. In large measure, these advances have been due to experimentation. In those fields experimentation has, for two centuries, been not only free but encouraged.39
As with physical science, so with gov- ernment. As an 1821 Supreme Court opinion put it, “The science of govern- ment ... is the science of experiment.”40
To again quote Justice Brandeis, “[i]t is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experi- ments.”41 As two thoughtful researchers have admonished, “[h]owever the experi- menting is done, the resulting research and findings from this laboratory have the potential to be historic and long-lasting, making access to the legal profession more equitable for those that have been historically underrepresented and result- ing in a new, more diverse generation of lawyers.”42
NOTES
1. An Open Letter from Public Interest Legal Organizations Supporting Diploma Privilege, Public Rights Project, August 11, 2020, available at: https://publicrightsproject. medium.com/an-open-letter-from-public- interest-legal-organizations-supporting- diploma-privilege-20390dd50a8e
2. Deborah Jones Merritt, Carol L. Chomsky, Claudia Angelos, Joan W. How- arth, Racial Disparities in Bar Exam Results — Causes and Remedies, Bloomberg Law, July 20, 2021, available at: https://news. bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-secu- rity/racial-disparities-in-bar-exam-results- causes-and-remedies.
3. Id.
4. Id.
5. Id.
6. Id.
7. Id., citing Analyzing First-Time Bar Exam Passage on the UBE in New York State, AccessLex Institute, May 19, 2021, available at: https://www.accesslex.org/NYBOLE.
8. Id.
9. Examining the California Cut Score: An Empirical Analysis of Minimum Competency, Public Protection, Disparate Impact, and National Standards, AccessLex, October 13, 2020, available at: https://www.accesslex. org/grant-research-and-data-tools-and- resources/examining-california-cut-score- empirical-analysis.
10. See About IAALS, IAALS.DU, at https://iaals.du.edu/about.
11. Id.
12. Joan W. Howarth, Attorney Licensing Principles & Pathways (handout prepared for California Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of the Bar Exam), September 1, 2021 (to be included in Dean Howarth’s forth- coming book, Shaping the Bar: The Future of
26 DELAWARE LAWYER SUMMER 2022