Since launching our grantmaking activities in 2014, we have awarded over $21 million in support of our research priorities: access, affordability, and the value of legal education.
Awarded Grants
Grant Program
Grant Status
University of Wisconsin Law School
The project is intended to increase our understanding of how a Financial Life Skills (FLS) course can potentially improve undergraduate students' financial knowledge, capability, and well-being. There are three critical aspects related to college students that we wish to explore in this study: financial knowledge, financial attitudes, and financial behavior.
University of Georgia Research Foundation
The project will evaluate the impact of financial education course features on student financial literacy (i.e., financial knowledge, financial skill and financial self-efficacy) and financial well-being. The goal is to examine the effectiveness of collegiate financial education in improving the preparedness of college students to make financial decisions as students and after graduation.
Touro College
The study seeks to explore whether remediation of reading disfluency at the law school level will have a positive impact on reading comprehension ability – particularly in “at risk” students. For purposes of this study, the definition of “at risk” students are students with weak LSAT scores. This project builds on their 2017 empirical study examining a possible link between oral reading disfluency and reading comprehension ability in first-year law students.
Elon University School of Law
The project will assess interventions aimed at improving student success and first-time bar passage through a two-phase project funded by AccessLex. The data collected and reported to AccessLex through this grant project will help determine the impact and success of interventions in overcoming barriers to student success and first-time bar exam passage.
Roger Williams University
The project seeks to identify law schools that consistently overperform—and underperform—on their expected bar exam passage rates, controlling for the quality of the students they accept. The project plans to examine which state bar exams law graduates take and the difficulty of those bar exams. The project will also determine the school-specific characteristics leading to overperformance among law schools that consistently beat their estimated bar passage rate by interviewing deans at these law schools.
St. John's University School of Law
The Weekend Prep Program will support college graduates of diverse and/or disadvantaged backgrounds in their pursuit of a law degree. Participants will receive resources on the law school admissions process, including a comprehensively designed LSAT Prep course, motivational and informational workshops, and individualized advisement. The program will last 24 weekends specifically targeting college graduates who work full-time and/or have family obligations, plus college seniors.
Syracuse University College of Law
The Summer Jump-Start Program (SJSP) is a 3+3 program that will target undergraduate students from Spelman College, Morehouse College, and Clark Atlanta University to connect them to the Syracuse University College of Law, offering them a direct path to and through law school. Program participants will have early access to, and information from, law students, alumni, professors, administrators, and staff, all while introducing and strengthening key analytical and logical reasoning skills through LSAT prep, first-year law school basics (briefing cases, writing skills), and education on law admissions requirements.
Read more about The Summer Jump-Start Program.
American Bar Foundation
This grant builds on the existing Emerging Scholars Fellowship Program in Legal and Higher Education program originally funded by AccessLex Institute in 2016. The expanded initiative will be comprised of three parts: A Doctoral Fellowship Program (supporting two, two-year fellows), an innovative Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (supporting two, two-year fellows), and annual Alumni Workshops.
University of Pennsylvania
This grant will comprehensively evaluate whether the adoption of rgw Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) has positively influenced enrollment and Bar passage rates of underrepresented and minority students in law schools located in participating states. It will also measure the extent to which (a) tuition and fees costs and costs of living, (b) interstate employment mobility, and (c) overall employment prospects of graduates from participating schools and states varied given the adoption of UBE.