Off-The-Shelf Formative Assessments to Help Each Student Develop Toward a Professional Formation/Ethical Professional Identity Learning Outcome of an Internalized Commitment to the Student's Own Professional Development

With the shift in American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation standards to emphasize learning outcomes, all law schools will be slowly moving away from structure-and-process based legal education (exposure to specific content for specified periods of time, such as a four credit one semester contracts course) to competency-based legal education (focus on the ultimate competencies needed for excellent service to the clients and the legal system, such as competence in career-long professional development). A large number of law schools are adopting what the next section of this Article defines as competency-based professional-formation or ethical- professional-identity learning outcomes. The specific focus of this Article is on versions of the professional-formation learning outcome that each student should demonstrate understanding and integration of responsibility for continually self-evaluating the student's own professional development toward excellence. These professional -formation learning outcomes will require a law school to design a curriculum, including assessments, to help each student develop toward the learning outcomes.

ABA Accreditation Standard 314 requires: A law school shall [use] both formative and summative assessment methods in its curriculum to measure and improve student learning and provide meaningful feedback to students . . . . Formative assessment methods are measurements at different points during a particular course or at different points over the span of a student's education that provide meaningful feedback to improve student learning. Summative assessment methods are measurements at the culmination of a particular course or at the culmination of any part of a student's legal education that measure the degree of student learning. This Article analyzes "off-the-shelf' formative assessments that provide meaningful feedback to improve student learning on a professionalformation learning outcome that each student should demonstrate understanding and integration of responsibility for continually self-evaluating the student's own professional development toward excellence.

"Off-the-shelf' refers to ready-made, standardized formative assessments that a professor could use with respect to these learning outcomes.