Jessica Findley
Associate Dean of Bar Studies and Academic Success
Biography
Jessica D. Findley, J.D., Ph.D., is the Associate Dean of Bar Studies and Academic Success at Rutgers Law School. She brings more than seven years of experience building and evaluating scalable programs that improve law student success and expand access to legal education. Dr. Findley earned her B.A. in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and both her J.D. and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Arizona.
Previously, as Director of Bar & Academic Success at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, Dr. Findley helped launch JD-Next, a law school preparation course and admissions examination designed to predict student success. Sixty-seven ABA-accredited law schools have requested Standard 503 variances to use JD-Next as an admissions exam. Participation in the program has been associated with a 0.20-point increase in first-year law school GPA and a 9.7% increase in bar passage.
In collaboration with the University of Arizona’s B.A. in Law program and Hispanic-Serving Institution initiatives, Dr. Findley also created the LAWtina Mentoring Program. Named a finalist by Excelencia in Education, the program produced a 22% increase in interest in legal careers among participating Latina undergraduates compared with matched peers. Approximately 30% of participants have subsequently enrolled in additional higher education programs. In partnership with the Arizona Supreme Court, Dr. Findley also helped develop the Arizona Lawyer Apprentice Program, a supervised pathway to attorney licensure in the state.
Dr. Findley’s research has appeared in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, the Journal of Educational Research and Practice, and PLOS Digital Health. She has presented at the Association of American Law Schools Annual Meeting, the AccessLex Institute, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the Court Leadership Conference. She is also the author of The Science of Attorney Advocacy: How Courtroom Behavior Affects Jury Decision Making, published by the American Psychological Association.