Research to Reform: IAALS Sets the Standard in CLEAR’s National Blueprint for Change
The Committee on Legal Education and Admissions Reform (CLEAR) recently released a high-profile report exploring why the legal profession is struggling to meet the needs of the majority of Americans. In this report, CLEAR points to four IAALS projects—Building a Better Bar, Foundations for Practice, Think Like a Client, and our former Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers initiative—to support their recommendations, underscoring IAALS’ role in shaping national reform.
CLEAR’s report is one of the most visible, influential documents in the legal education and licensure space in recent years. By drawing extensively on IAALS’ research and models, the committee has effectively placed our work at the center of the national conversation on how to prepare lawyers and expand access to justice. This is both a validation of IAALS’ approach and a call to action for stakeholders nationwide.
The recommendations focus on removing barriers to legal services and better preparing new lawyers to meet client needs. One way they recommend doing that is by reforming the bar admissions process, encouraging state supreme courts to explore innovative routes to licensure that increase readiness. CLEAR references IAALS’ Building a Better Bar work to explain how to do just that. Our research shows that traditional multiple-choice testing is a poor measure of the complex skills lawyers need to practice effectively. Using written performance tests and supervised practice experience creates a more authentic replication of the work law students will encounter once they graduate, helping ensure first-year lawyers are prepared to begin serving clients while maintaining the integrity of the profession.
Another recommendation CLEAR makes in the report is for all stakeholders to reduce reliance on external law school rankings. Through Foundations for Practice, which is referenced throughout CLEAR’s report, IAALS researched the competencies, professional skills, and characteristics that matter most to employers when hiring new lawyers. When hiring is based on these evidence-based attributes rather than prestige metrics, more capable lawyers enter practice, client service improves, and public trust in the justice system grows.
CLEAR’s report also draws from IAALS’ Think Like a Client project, which emphasizes the importance of understanding and responding to client needs and expectations, and from our former Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers initiative, which helped law schools and employers bridge the gap between legal education and practice. Both reinforce the report’s call for a profession that is more responsive, relevant, and effective.
These recommendations, along with many others in CLEAR’s report, lay out steps institutions can take to make justice more accessible to everyone. IAALS is encouraged to see its research not just cited but embedded in these recommendations—and stands ready to work with courts, law schools, and the profession to move them from ideas into action.