Interpreting the Score Report:
The score report consists of two sections that evaluate the test taker. In the first section, there are two bar graphs showing percentiles of how the test taker performed relative to two comparison groups. The first comparison group (see the graph on the left) consists of those who took the JD-Next final exam in December 2023, after the American Bar Association began granting variances to law schools allowing them to use JD-Next for admissions. The second comparison group (see the graph on the right) will be based on students over a three-year increment. The advantage of reporting for this larger group is a larger sample on which to base a student’s performance. Larger samples can provide more statistically stable estimates. The percentiles for the two graphs usually will be close to each other, but they might necessarily differ at least slightly. Each group has its advantages in terms of making comparisons. As a rule of thumb, we advise taking an average of the two percentiles.
Below the graphs are the means (averages) and medians (50th percentile scores) of the comparison groups. Medians can be helpful when there are extremely high or extremely low scores that can result in a misleading sense of how the prototypical test taker is performing. In most cases, the mean and median will be very close to each other, if not the same. The “Current Term” refers to those who took the JD-Next final exam in December 2023. The “Rolling Three Year” refers to everyone who will take the JD-Next final exam over the next three years. The Confidence Intervals reflect the fact that a person’s performance on any test can vary somewhat, and you can be 95% confident that the means and medians fall within the reported confidence intervals. The “Actual” means and medians are the best estimates. Test performance above the means and medians is above-average performance in comparison to others in the groups for which we reported.
In the next section are indications of preparedness for specific topic areas. There are legal doctrinal topic areas (in the top half of this section) and non-doctrinal topic areas (in the bottom half of this section). These ratings can be used to inform students about areas which they should consider strengthening to improve their law school performance. We have not yet conducted extensive validation or fairness research to determine the extent to which these ratings predict academic performance at your law school in an accurate and fair manner. Therefore, we advise you to use only the total test score to make admissions, financial award, or other high-stakes decisions.
The remainder of the report provides helpful descriptions of the topic areas, the exam, and interpretation of this report.