Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm looking at Harvard Law School's new Zero-L program, which gives incoming students a sneak peek at what's on their horizon. Next, I'm checking in on the latest bar exam statistics from the American Bar Association to see how the Class of 2016 fared two years after graduating. Read on!

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ

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An On Ramp for Harvard 1Ls

Harvard Law School's incoming class of students will get a head start on their legal studies this summer. The school will soon launch the second iteration of its Zero-L program—a first-of-its kind curriculum of online courses designed to give new students some legal basics and a roadmap of what to expect once they arrive on campus.

I caught up with professor Glenn Cohen, who developed Zero-L with associate dean for strategic initiatives Jessica Soban at the direction of dean John Manning, to talk about the program and how it's evolving after the pilot last summer. What initially struck me was that Zero-L has a very different focus than the existing pre-1L programs that I'm familiar with. Those tend to target admitted students with relatively low LSAT scores who may benefit from a legal foundation before they begin. Cohen confirmed my hunch that Zero-L didn't come about because Harvard was worried that its new 1Ls wouldn't be able to keep up. (Its median LSAT this year was 173. They'll be fine.) Rather, the school hopes that the program will give new students a smoother transition into law school life. Here's Cohen:

“I always tell my students there is an optimal level of anxiety in law school. It's not zero, but it's also not 100. My own sense is that most law students come in with an anxiety level in the first week that's much higher than I think is productive for them. A big part of my goal for [Zero-L] is to get people to relax a little bit. To realize it will take a little while to get used to this. Another metaphor one of my students told me once was, 'Law school is little bit like a race where you're not racing against other people. You're racing in the dark and you have no idea where you're supposed to be, what you're supposed to be doing, and how this is supposed to work.' I want to shine as much light on the front end as I can.”

Moreover, a growing percentage of Harvard Law students don't come in with the traditional political science major or from middle and upper-class backgrounds. The increasing number of STEM majors and first-generation college students coming to law school may benefit from some legal basics and an introduction to the legal profession, Cohen said. 

Here's how the program works:

➤➤ Last year's pilot began with 10 hours of online modules covering a swath of legal topics and introductions to law school life. The school has since expanded those offerings to 14 hours, and is deciding whether or not to whittle that down.

➤➤ Modules include common law, civil procedure, checks and balances, and federalism, as well as topics such as how to read and brief a case and the purpose of the Socratic Method. The expanded offerings this summer include law and economics and legal history.

➤➤ The modules are not graded, though there are built-in assessments that help students gauge their grasp of the material.

➤➤ At this point, the program is not mandatory, though administrators told last year's incoming students that their professors would teach with the expectation that they had completed the online program.

Different professors appear in different modules, which has the added bonus of introducing new students to the faculty, Cohen said. The early results have been positive. Surveys of this year's 1Ls found that the program helped them feel better prepared and excited for law school. Harvard plans to roll out Zero-L a month earlier this summer to give students more time to complete the program.

My Take: I like this idea. On the one hand, you don't want to overwhelm incoming students with work in their last summer before their life is basically taken over by law school. On the other hand, Zero-L is an acknowledgment that law school really is a whole new world and that even highly qualified students can use a little help when it comes to navigating the unfamiliar landscape. (This ain't The Paper Chase, folks.) In fact, this seems like a pretty cost effective way to give incoming students a smoother on-ramp. Once you develop the videos, it shouldn't cost much to make them available to each year of new 1Ls.

Unsurprisingly, Cohen told me that Harvard has already been approached by other law schools with inquiries about sharing Zero-L. It's an idea the school is open to, he said. (Interested parties should reach out to him directly.)

Very tangentially related: According to this story in Variety, Scott Turow's 1977 book One-L—a non-fiction account of his first year at Harvard Law School—is in the early stages of being developed as a television show for the Freeform channel. The pitch? The show follows “five uniquely gifted students who bond as they navigate the perils of their first year of law school and come to terms with who they want to be, while grappling with their complicated pasts.” But will it feature Zero-L? I'm guessing not.

Bar Exam Breakdowns

The final installment of my four-part series on falling bar pass rates, The Big Fail, came out earlier today.

As luck would have it, late last month the American Bar Association also released its annual report on bar pass rates, which showed that the nationwide first-time pass rate in 2018 fell from 77 to 75%. Ouch. The ABA also provided the so-called “ultimate bar pass rate” for the class of 2016, which is the percentage of those graduates who passed the bar within two years. That figure held steady at 88 percent.

I don't want to rehash that earlier coverage, but I do want to point to a couple of helpful posts over on the Faculty Lounge blog that take a close look at the latest numbers.

➤ First, South Texas College of Law Houston professor Gary Rosin wrote a post  highlighting the schools with ultimate bar pass rates below 75 percent in either 2015 or 2016, identifying them as at risk.

— Fourteen schools made the list in both years, including two of Puerto Rico's three law schools and three that are closed or in the process of closing. So no major surprises there.

— But Rosin highlights some interesting changes. American University Washington College of Law's ultimate pass rate shot up to 83 percent in 2016 after landing at 75% the previous year. Howard University School of Law's ultimate pass rate fell 18% in 2016 to 55%. And Syracuse University College of Law went from an ultimate pass rate of 71% in 2015 to 90% in 2016.

➤ Meanwhile attorney David Frakt breaks down the numbers in a separate post that ties first-time pass rates in 2018 to weak LSAT scores for the incoming 2015 class. Here's Frakt:

“The key takeaway from the 2018 first-time bar pass rates is this: VERY LOW LSATS = VERY LOW BAR PASS RATES. No law school has cracked the code on how to turn very low LSAT scorers into first-time bar passers on a consistent basis. Responsible law schools should be extremely cautious in admitting any students with an LSAT at 146 or below, taking only those students with substantially better than average grades, and should follow North Carolina Central's decision to never admit anyone with an LSAT below 142.”

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Extra Credit Reading

● The Class of 2018 had a pretty good year on the employment front. The percentage of grads in fulltime, long-term jobs that require a law degree was the highest in a decade, ABA data shows.

● More than half the recent law school graduates polled by Kaplan Test Prep say their schools did not provide enough mental health support.

● U.S. News & World Report sought to reassure law school deans who are worried about its planned introduction this year of a scholarly impact ranking using law review citations and other sources.

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I'll be back next week with more news and updates on the future of legal education. Until then, keep in touch at [email protected]