From the Law Library Blog

The following appeared on the Law Librarian Blog. It's quite interesting and worth reading during the first few weeks of law school.

Student Tendencies to Self-handicap in Law School
Self-handicapping is a set of behavioral strategies employed before a performance that permits the individual to avoid receiving information that threatens self-esteem. Catherine Ross Dunham (Elon University School of Law) reports her findings on self-handicapping law school student behavior in Hidden Obstacles in the Mass Culture of American Legal Education: An Empirical Analysis, 32 Okla. City U. L. Rev. 237 (2007) [Westlaw]. The results of Dunham's study suggest that "an individual student's self-attributed achiever type correlates to the student's year in law school and GPA. Most significantly, the results of the study suggest that a law student's GPA correlates with the student's self-handicapping score and, further, that GPA is predictive of his self-handicapping score." [JH]