ABA Consultant: JD-Next Is Reliable Predictor Of Law School Performance And Can Be Used In Lieu Of LSAT/GRE

Law.com, JD-Next Found Reliable With 'Multiple Cautions and Caveats,' ABA Council Seeks Comment:

The American Bar Association is seeking comments after its commissioned study found that JD-Next, a fully online admissions test that law schools can use in lieu of the Law School Admission Test and the Graduate Record Exam, is a reliable predictor of law school performance, but it’s not without certain limitations.

The Office of the Managing Director of ABA Accreditation and Legal Education released the report, created by Nathan Kuncel, a professor of industrial-organizational psychology and a McKnight presidential fellow at the University of Minnesota, for public comment on Tuesday.

“I conclude that the JD-Next exam is a reliable and valid predictor of early law school grades but with multiple cautions and caveats that cannot be evaluated with the present data and may represent threats to its validity if used operationally for high stakes decisions,” Kuncel wrote in his report.

While the report noted that the JD-Next exam will still likely be a predictive measure of student success, it continued to state that “this is an inference and there is currently no direct empirical evidence that indicates that the JD-Next exam predicts these outcomes.” ...

Nearly 25% of ABA-accredited law schools have been granted a variance from Standard 503 to use JD-Next as an admission test, including Arizona, The George Washington University Law School, the University of San Diego School of Law, and Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, along with 43 other law schools.

“We are pleased with the conclusions herein and excited about the interest and response from students and law schools to date regarding the JD-Next program,” said Gregg Chalk, head of marketing for Aspen Publishing, which acquired the exclusive license to administer the JD-Next last year.