Area-of-law-specific and general exam practice contribute about equally and independently to performance development¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2013 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? The marginal effects of practicing law exams in general and practicing exams in the specific area of law are about equally sized (test for differences between coefficients: p = 0.67). → Glöckner 2013

Evidence¶

Glöckner 2013¶

Glöckner, A., Towfigh, E., & Traxler, C. (2013). Development of legal expertise. Instructional Science, 41, 989–1007. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-013-9266-5

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Regression analysis with fixed effects on 71,405 exams showing students "profit about equally from area- of-law specific practice and from general practice". The authors note that "exams in different areas of law have only little (if any) overlap in legal content since they concern completely different legal codes," making it "quite remarkable that practicing exams outside the specific area of law has such a huge effect."

"law students profit about equally from area- of-law specific practice and from general practice of exams (test for differences between coefficients: p = 0.67)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Performance increases monotonically with the number of practice exams following a slightly concave learning curve without considerable kinks
• Students with high initial performance profit more from area-specific practice while students with low initial performance profit more from general practice — related
• A pronounced drop in performance occurs at week 8 after the first exam in an area of law, which is attributed to cyclic drops in motivation — related