How One Law School Rebuilt Bar Prep from Day One
For generations, colleges and universities have measured success by how many students they enroll, retain, and graduate. But in professions like law, psychology, teaching, and medicine, a degree alone is not enough. Students still face a high stakes licensure exam that determines whether they can begin the career they trained for, and for many of them, commencement is not the finish line at all. It is the beginning of the hardest stretch.
In this episode of Radical Cooperation, Dr. Michael Horowitz is joined by three leaders from the Colleges of Law: Brandy Price, J.D., Dean and Chief Academic Officer, April Vincent, J.D., Dean of Student Success and Bar Preparation and Jen Louie, Director of Student Success and Bar Preparation. Together they explain how the school moved bar preparation from an optional resource students bought and rarely used into an integrated strategy that begins at orientation and continues past graduation. That meant extending bar prep from three months to six, building a data-driven success formula around study hours and practice questions, and supporting the working adults, parents, and caregivers who make up much of the student body. The results have followed, with the school’s multi-year bar pass rate now well above the state minimum.
Rather than treating licensure as something that happens after the education ends, this conversation makes the case that it belongs inside the education itself. It is a candid look at what changes when an institution decides that no student should be allowed to struggle quietly.
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