Senior Data and Research Analyst
Research and Analytical Projects
I'll be honest, I've worked on many projects that I'm proud of and very few of the details make it onto a resume. This is a space where I can elaborate and provide some of that detail. Here's what I've been working on lately!
AccessLex Institute
Admission Innovation Project
2025 - 2026
The central goal of the project is to increase knowledge about the impacts of deemphasizing standardized tests (e.g., GRE, LSAT) in the context of law school admissions. Standardized tests in the law school admissions context are often associated with racial bias, resulting in disproportionately lower numbers of underrepresented people of color being admitted to law schools. Some law schools have created alternative admissions options to counteract this or other equity issues. Law schools work directly with AccessLex researchers to design a rigorous study of the effects of novel admission approaches on the composition and performance of their entering classes.
Process: Law schools are invited to apply to the Admission Innovation Project with a brief letter of intent (LOI). Approved LOIs then submit a full application, which are approved or rejected by the Executive Director of Research. The project was then handed off to me to determine the scope of the project, create a research protocol with research questions, request the necessary data from the law school, clean the data, analyze the data according to the research questions and protocol, and deliver the report to the law school. Each project involves gathering data from the law school itself and joining that data with any other secondary datasets (e.g., American Bar Association Standard 509 data) for analytic purposes. The specific statistical analyses used vary by the available sample size and desired research questions, but have thus far included linear and logistic regression, covariate balancing propensity score matching, latent growth curve analysis, and basic descriptive analysis.
Output: A written report with findings for each research question, clean and informative data visualizations, and data segments that evaluate whether the law school's innovative admissions approach has successfully admitted and graduated law students who might not otherwise get a chance to attend law school due to their initial application credentials. Each report is 8-30 pages, and includes appendices with all relevant statistical information.
My role:
On three separate projects for three different law schools, I met with the client (i.e., the grant applicant/awardee) to understand their unique and innovative admission process. I then served as project owner on each individual grant project, tackling the process from approval to report dissemination, including debrief meetings. To complete data cleaning and analyses I used R Studio and github. To produce the written report I used R with Pandoc to convert the R script into a Microsoft Word document that is a fully reproducible research report. Working on these projects required efficient and effective collaboration with executive leaderships, the C-suite, and external clients.
3L Bar Review Study and Marketing Survey
2025 - 2026
This project had two overarching goals: determine how graduating law students prepared for the July 2025 bar exam, and gather customer experience data with our bar review product Helix. Specifically, our CEO questioned whether students were following bar review course instructions and completing the entire course as assigned, or whether students were combining different courses with supplemental resources to maximize their likelihood of passing the bar. Our marketing team wanted to know how Helix stacked up against other bar review courses in terms of satisfaction and likelihood of recommending our course compared to the others to future takers of the bar exam.
Process: The CEO approved funds for the Vice President of Research to conduct this specific longitudinal study. I worked with the VP of Research, the VP of Marketing and Strategic Engagement, and the VP of Strategic Growth to design three surveys. The unique surveys were deployed in April 2025, August 2025 (post-bar exam), and January 2026 (post-exam result receipt), and re-sampled 3L law students from our Salesforce groups. Participants received $75, $75, and $50 for completing the surveys, respective of the deployment dates. The first survey collected data on students' anticipated studying habits. The second asked students whether they followed their plans and their bar review course guidelines. The third and final survey asked how students performed on the July 2025 bar exam. After the completion of each survey, I drafted a new research findings memorandum for our CEO and VPs with the initial descriptive and inferential statistics. After the completion of the final survey in January 2026, I produced an internal report and an external report for the CEO's consideration.
Output: Aside from the three Qualtrics surveys, this project resulted in three individual research memorandums based on each survey, an internal report that detailed descriptive and inferential statistics to answer the relevant research questions and provide marketing data on Helix, and finally an external research report for the CEO's consideration for public release (format TBD).
My role:
I collaborated with the VP of Research to design the survey items and enter our surveys into Qualtrics. I tracked participant completion of the surveys, paid research participants, and answered any questions regarding the surveys. I negotiated between our research and marketing goals for this survey during survey item development with the three involved VPs. After survey completion, I created and produced each research memorandum independently. I planned our specific research questions, the research protocol, and the outline for both the internal and external reports. Finally, I completed all of the data cleaning, data analysis, and data visualization for this project using R Studio, github, and excel.
Selected Written Research Reports
2022 - 2026
Protecting Diversity: Can We Afford to Throw Out Grutter Before Its Expiration Date?
My role:
I collaborated with a junior colleague to complete data cleaning, data analysis, and the written, peer-reviewed report to analyze the benefits of racial diversity in law school.
My role:
I completed additional training on the econometrics method differences-in-differences to analyze how state-level bans on race-conscious admissions affected the enrollment of underrepresented people of color in law schools. I carried out data integration, collecting data from different public sources and joining diversely structured data together. I carried out the differences-in-differences analysis, and collaborated with a junior colleague to complete the written, peer-reviewed report.
Predicting Bar Success: The Mediating Effects of Law School GPA
My role:
This project examined how performance in law school partially mediates the relationship between pre-admission metrics (like LSAT score) and bar exam passage, in the interest of lessening the reliance on static metrics in law school admissions. I conceptualized this project from start to finish, joined our institutional data with secondary publicly available data, completed data cleaning, analysis, and report production. I carried out the statistical mediation analyses using PROCESS for R, submitted the report for peer-reviewed publication, and broadly presented the findings at three professional events nationally.
Measuring 'Up': The Promise of Undergraduate GPA Growth in Law School Admissions
My role:
We used undergraduate GPA information to examine how GPA growth predicts success in law school. I assisted a junior colleague and the Director of Research in completing the statistical analyses, producing the full written report, and submitting the manuscript to journals for peer-review. Additionally, I presented the findings from this presentation at five professional and academic events.
From Prestige to Performance: Evaluating Law School Outcomes Using Value-Added Modeling
My role:
This project uses value-added modeling to demonstrate how law school rankings like those of U.S. News are disconnected from the realistic value that each law school is providing toward their students' academic and career success. I assisted with data joining and cleaning, and conducted the primary analyses for this report. I developed the written research report and report tables. Finally, I presented the findings at two professional events.
Bar Exam Success Analyses Project
2022 - 2026
This project supports law schools by analyzing institutional data to assess the extent to which their students’ academic performance, before and during law school, predicts their likelihood of first-time bar exam passage.
These analyses have been used to help schools:
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Understand the extent to which preadmission factors correlate with their students’ academic and bar success;
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Develop interventions for bar success and when to apply such interventions;
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Target interventions appropriately, especially given limited time and resources;
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Build empirical evidence for what they have observed after years of experience and daily interactions with law students; and
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Leverage data to advance new or ongoing student success initiatives.
Process: Law schools complete a form on the AccessLex website to request information on this free report offering. The Director of Research works with schools to determine in which bi-annual report cycle they will participate. The law school gathers the raw data requested for each report: student demographics (race, gender, birth year, first generation student status), undergraduate GPA, highest and average Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) scores, number of LSAT attempts, first-semester law school GPA, first-year law school GPA, final law school GPA, and bar exam information (both bar passage and exam administration information). Data is frequently segmented to represent students with different levels of risk for failing the bar exam. Data cleaning and reports are completed via R script templates, which lay out the proper process for data cleaning, the research questions asked for each law school, the appropriate analytic steps to follow, data visualizations, and instructions for converting the script into a Word report.
Output: A full written research report that details which preadmission factors and law school academic factors predict success on the bar exam. Data is segmented based on which performance factors offer the highest risk or reward of passing the bar. Each report is 8-15 pages, including appendices with all relevant statistical information, and explanations on how to interpret certain numbers (e.g., standard deviations).
My role:
I created the R script templates used by a six person research team to complete data cleaning, analysis, and report production from 2022 onward. I assisted junior and senior colleagues on over 20 written BESA reports, and produced six reports independently. Additionally, I served as the point person cross-departmentally with Marketing and Strategic Engagement to approve final report design and disseminate all reports to each law school after completion. Finally, I attended debrief meetings with law school professors and deans to summarize the report findings and answer any further questions.
LSSSE–AccessLex Bar Exam Success Initiative
2022-2024 (Project ended)
Similar to the Bar Exam Success Analyses Project described above, this project supported law schools in analyzing the same institutional data, but with the added analysis of student engagement and attitude data from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement overseen by Indiana University Bloomington. Each school received a series of three reports that analyzed academic performance and student engagement drivers of bar success using logistic and linear regression. Each report utilized 1-3 waves of survey data.
Process: In addition to the process described in the BESA project above, this report series joins data from the law school survey of student engagement (LSSSE) to determine how students' self-reported engagement affects their bar passage odds.
Output: A full written research report that details which preadmission factors, law school academic factors, and engagement measures predict success on the bar exam. Data is segmented based on which factors offer the highest risk or reward of passing the bar. Each report is 8-20 pages, including appendices with all relevant statistical information, and explanations on how to interpret certain numbers (e.g., standard deviations).
My role:
While LSSSE has pre-determined engagement factors that they report on, I used exploratory factor analysis to determine which survey items loaded onto the same latent factors. This breakdown of variance was used across all reports completed by all analysts on the research team. I individually completed three reports, and assisted junior and senior colleagues in the completion of more than 10 reports. Similar to the BESA project, I served as the point person cross-departmentally with Marketing and Strategic Engagement to approve final report design and disseminate all reports to each law school after completion.