Preparing Students for the NextGen Bar Exam: Incorporating Formative Assessments into your Classroom

Section on Teaching Methods

Date: Friday, September 20th from 12 – 1 pm ET/11 am – 12 pm CT/10 – 11 am MT/9- 10 am PT

The NextGen Bar Exam is coming to a state near you. This Webinar will feature panelists who have developed NextGen-oriented formative assessments and provide you with ideas you can implement into your classroom this fall.

Watch the Recording Here

View Jeffrey’s Slides View Jennifer’s Slides View Melissa’s Slides

Presenters

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Megan Chaney, Co-Director, Criminal Justice Field Placement Clinic & Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern Shepard Broad College of Law

Professor Chaney joined Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law in the Summer of 2013 bringing with her formidable classroom teaching, clinical administration and criminal practice experience. In the Summer of 2015, Professor Chaney was appointed to serve as the first Director of Trial & Appellate Advocacy at the Shepard Broad College of Law to help fortify the advocacy pillar of the law school’s global initiative. At the law school, Professor Chaney co-directs the Criminal Justice Field Placement clinic, teaches Criminal Law, Trial Advocacy and Professional Responsibility while also coaching competitive trial and moot court teams.

Before joining NSU, Professor Chaney was the Director of Clinical Programs and Experiential Learning and an Associate Professor of Law at University of La Verne College of Law in Southern California where she taught Evidence, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Trial Advocacy, Lawyering Skills Practicum, and Professional Responsibility. She was also the founding faculty advisor for the award-winning La Verne Trial Team. Professor Chaney was promoted to Associate Professor of Law in 2012.Professor Chaney was appointed Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in 2006 where she taught Criminal Procedure and co-directed the Juvenile Justice Clinic. Professor Chaney was a Robert M. Cover Clinical Teaching Fellow and Clinical Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School from 2004-2006. While at Yale, she worked with Professor Ronald. S. Sullivan, Jr., former Director of Public Defender Services in Washington, D.C. She supervised students representing clients accused of felony crimes in Connecticut and co-taught Criminal Defense Theory & Ethics.

Professor Chaney’s experience includes serving as an Assistant Public Defender at the Miami-Dade County Public Defender’s Office. She is proud of the clinical education she received in both the Criminal Law and Criminal Appellate Clinics at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan. Professor Chaney has spoken at numerous academic conferences throughout the United States, including the AALS Clinical Conference, the Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, the Wells Adoption Conference at Capital Law School, and the CALI Conference for Law School Computing. In the fall of 2007, she helped develop and teach the training curriculum for the Western Juvenile Defender Center at the National Juvenile Defender Leadership Summit. Her latest articles about post-adjudicatory juvenile defense were published by the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy & Capital Law Review.

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Jennifer Gregg, Assistant Director of Academic Success; Rank of Instructor, Ohio Northern University

Jennifer Gregg joined ONU Law in 2021 and serves as Assistant Director of Academic Success. Professor Gregg graduated from Miami University with a double major in Public Relations and Journalism. She then worked as a legal secretary at a medium sized law firm in Cleveland, OH. After two years, Professor Gregg left the law firm to attend law school at Michigan State University; graduating magna cum laude in 2007. After passing the Virginia Bar Exam, she began her career as a lawyer at a small law firm in Alexandria, VA. From there, she worked at George Mason University School of Law as the Judicial Education Coordinator at the Law & Economic Center, then as Senior Associate at Keithley Law, and as an Associate at Malinowski Hubbard, PLLC

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Melissa Kidder, Associate Professor of Law; Director of Legal Clinics, Ohio Northern University

BFA ‘05, JD ‘08, graduated from Ohio Northern University in 2005 with a BFA and degrees in musical theatre and criminal justice. Rather than going into theatre, she decided to go to law school and graduated from the Pettit College of Law in 2008. She began her career as a staff attorney at the Ohio 3rd District Court of Appeals and then came to ONU as assistant director of academic support. Having an opportunity to practice law, she went to work for Eastman & Smith Ltd. as an associate attorney in the estate planning section. She was thrilled to return to ONU as director of legal research and writing, and she now serves as the director of legal clinics and externships and assistant professor of law.

Moderators

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Kelly Gamble, Assistant Professor of Law; Director of Academic Excellence, Willamette University College of Law

Kelly Gamble teaches Lawyering, Professional Responsibility, and Practical Writing for lawyers. She also directs Willamette’s Academic Excellence programming, including the Academic Excellence Fellowship.

Before coming to Willamette, Gamble had experience in both litigation and transactional practice. She was an associate in the Employment, Labor, and OSHA section at Vinson & Elkins, LLP in Houston. In addition to day-to-day client counseling, her practice included discrimination litigation, non-competition and restrictive covenant matters, employment agreements and separation agreements, and worker safety OSHA and MSHA matters. She represented clients in federal discrimination, harassment, and retaliation litigation, including both trial representation and appellate briefs, and in front of the Texas Workforce Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Gamble also has experience in an of counsel capacity with transactional practice. Her work included drafting and reviewing purchase-sale agreements, services agreements, and other business-to-business documents.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Gamble taught high school English, AP Rhetoric and Composition, and AP Literature and Composition in Sugar Land, Texas.

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Jeffrey Minneti, Assistant Dean for Academic Excellence and Bar Success and Associate Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law

Jeff Minneti has directed the Academic Resource Center (ARC) since 2015.The ARC is a team of dedicated academic support professionals whose focus is to equip students with the academic and executive function skills they need to accomplish their personal best in law school and pass the bar exam on their first attempt. As director, Professor Minneti leads the Law School’s Access Admission Program. He teaches Criminal Law to students entering through the Program, and together with the ARC Team, partners with the Access Admission students throughout their law school experience. Professor Minneti also teaches Trusts and Estates and Enhanced Analytical Skills to upper-level students. And he meets individually with students who are academically struggling, students who are seeking to enhance their academic performance, and students who are preparing for the bar exam.

Professor Minneti’s scholarship focuses on two interests: (1) the intersection of behavioral economics and environmental regulation and (2) the study of how students’ preferences, choices, and behaviors affect their academic performance. A common theme across his scholarship is the study of decision making and decision architecture. A recent paper found that law students’ work drive is an effective predictor of their academic performance, which suggests that when students modify their preferences and choices around the work associated with law school, they will improve their academic performance. In 2018, he published an article describing the theoretical framework for SU Law’s Access Admission Program, focusing on how the program is steeped in the neurobiology of learning and student motivation.

Professor Minneti previously taught at Stetson University College of Law in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he directed the school’s academic success program and taught students courses in Trusts and Estates, Remedies, and Survey of Florida Law. Prior to his work at Stetson, Professor Minneti practiced with the Tampa law firm, Murray, Morin, and Herman. His practice focused on defending the interests of London market insurers in the aviation industry. Upon graduation from law school, Professor Minneti clerked for Thomas A. Woodall, an Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. While in law school, Professor Minneti served as Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Trial Advocacy.