Enhancing Law School Success: A Study of Goal Orientations, Academic Achievement and the Declining Self-Efficacy of Our Law Students‪.‬

I. INTRODUCTION I have long been interested in how the most successful law students learn. For the top law students, do they innately possess superior skills or can we teach law students the skills and strategies that will contribute to their success? What motivates law students to learn? During the last two decades, psychologists have been using achievement goal theory as a framework with which to examine the relationship between achievement goals and student success. (1) Achievement goal theory examines the goals that students pursue in an academic setting. (2) The current psychological research suggests that there is a correlation between achievement goal motivation (i.e., why a student wants to learn) and a student's overall success. (3) Dr. Carol Dweck, an expert in achievement goal theory, describes the differences in goal orientations as follows: