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A Way Forward: Transparency in 2018
No full textWe recommend that the ABA and law schools take the following steps to improve legal education for the benefit of students, the legal profession, and the public.
Young Lawyer Representation in Accreditation The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar should add two young lawyers to its Council in 2018. The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar should change its bylaws to designate two of 15 at-large Council positions to young lawyers.
Increased Data Transparency The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, using authority it already has under the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, should require schools to report as part of the Section’s annual questionnaire, and for the Section and schools to provide on their websites, (1) disaggregated borrowing data, including subcategories by race and gender; (2) disaggregated data on the amount of tuition paid by class year (1L or upper-level), race/ethnicity, and gender; (3) data on applicants and scholarships by gender and, to the extent the Section does not do so already, by race/ethnicity; (4) data on J.D. program completion and bar passage success.
User-Friendly Data Presentation The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar should simplify the Employment Summary Report, which includes graduate employment data. The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar should simplify and reorganize the Standard 509 Information Report, which includes data related to admissions, attrition, bar passage, price, curricular offerings, diversity, faculty, refunds, and scholarships.
Disclosures at Time of Admission The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar should require law schools to provide every admitted law student a copy of the Standard 509 Information Report and Employment Summary Report as part of each student’s admissions offer.
Voluntary Disclosures by Law School Every ABA-approved law school should voluntarily publish its school-specific NALP Report each year
The Effect of Title IX on Gender Disparity in Graduate Education
No full textIn 1960, 4% of U.S. lawyers and 7% of U.S. physicians were women. One potential explanation for few women in high-skilled occupations is informal graduate-school quotas for women. This paper examines whether Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which banned sex discrimination in admissions, was successful in reducing gender disparity in graduate education. I find a sharp and dramatic convergence of female and male graduate-degree fields coincident with Title IX\u27s passage. This distributional change occurred as females predominantly moved into male-dominated fields and does not seem to be driven by gender-specific preferences
Equality at the Starting Line? Gender- and Race-Based Differences at the Transition from Law School to the Legal Profession
No full textData from a longitudinal national survey, After the JD (AJD) Study, are used to investigate how the number of job offers law school graduates received from private and public employers are influenced by individuals’ social, cultural, human and economic capitals, and how job offers as an outcome of law education influence individuals’ income after controlling for other-income generating factors. The results indicated that women and minorities received significantly lower numbers of job offers than men from private employers after controlling for factors such as law school ranking, foreign-born parent(s), and personal finance of law education. In addition, the number of job offers from private employers had a positive impact on annual income two years after graduation for both male and female lawyers that was even stronger than the ranking of law school attended. The significant differences between genders and among individuals of different racial backgrounds are a clear indication of inequality and against the commitment to diversity in the legal system
Assessments All the Way Down
No full textThe role of assessments is getting attention throughout legal education. A growing acceptance of the Graduate Record Examination (“GRE”) as an alternative to the Law School Aptitude Test (“LSAT”) and its incorporation into the U.S. News & World Report (“USN&WR”) law school rankings opened the door to changes in who is going to law school and how they are recruited. At the other end of students’ journey through legal education, the discussion of recent graduates’ bar exam performance – linked by some to declining LSAT scores of entering students – raised questions about the design of bar exams as well as about law schools’ preparation of graduates for the bar. In between, the American Bar Association’s incorporation of assessment into its accreditation process spurred growing interest in how law schools conduct assessments and is prompting changes in how legal educators evaluate students. In this article, we begin with the issues raised by the GRE’s appearance as an alternate pathway. Next, we set out assessment principles likely to influence future conversations in the legal academy. Then we look at how the bar results discussion connects to improving assessment strategies. Finally, we conclude with speculation about what this all means
Employment Summary Reports
No full textThis source includes data on the employment outcomes and practice settings of law school graduates
Bottled at the Source: Recapturing the Essence of Academic Support as a Primary Tool of Education Equity for Minority Law Students
No full textPart I of this paper focuses on the history of academic support programs, exploring (i) their origins in law school integration efforts and their connection to a desire to improve the academic performance of African-Americans and other students of color, and (ii) the drift away from a race/ethnicity-based focus toward a race-neutral (i.e., low performance) model. Part II identifies the weaknesses in a race-neutral approach—namely, the failure to address the impact of implicit bias and stereotype threat, psychological dynamics that can have a dramatic effect on academic performance. Part III sets forth a proposal for an academic support program that includes an explicit focus on minority performance, accounting for the existence of stereotype threat and implicit bias
Robin Hood, In Reverse: How Law School Scholarships Compound Inequality
No full textThis article explains how law school merit scholarship policies, driven in large part by Law School Admission Test (LSAT) scores, ensure that law school scholarships flow most lucratively to students who tend to come from privileged backgrounds, contributing, most notably, to increased student loan debt among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The result is a cascade of negative outcomes, including a reverse Robin Hood cost-shifting strategy through which disadvantaged students subsidize the tuition of their peers from privileged backgrounds. These trends are illustrated using data from more than 16,000 law students who responded to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) in 2016
The Contracting Market for Law School Admissions in the United States
Get PDFThis report summarizes the analysis of legal education market data, compiled by the American Bar Association and presented on the AccessLex website, by a research team from the University of Pennsylvania\u27s Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy (AHEAD). Robert Zemsky served as principal investigator and Richard Morgan as principal analyst. The research was conducted over two years and yielded two PowerPoint presentations to AccessLex\u27s annual research symposium
Debt to Income Ratio
No full textOne common-sense rule in student lending, expressed through a debt-to-income ratio, provides that students should not borrow more than they expect to earn after their first year. Law schools of all types make observing that rule difficult. According to data released by the U.S. Department of Education in 2019, the median amount borrowed exceeds the median earnings at 11 law schools (i.e. 94.% of law schools exceeded a ratio of 1.00) for 2015 and 2016 graduates in the first full year after graduation. The median school ratio was 1.86, which means that the median amount borrowed exceeded the median earnings by 86%.
A few caveats: First, the earnings median reflects only gradutes who borrowed. Second, the amount borrowed is not the same as the amount of debt. Interest accumulates during law school, even though loan payments are not yet due. Accordingly, debt-to-income ratio is a misnomer with this dataset, although it has already become convention. Finally, debt:income is only one metric. Because loan terms extend beyond one year, it is also helpful to look at the percentage of income devoted to debt service.
School-specific borrowing and earnings data on this page come from the United States Department of Education
The Jury Is In: Law Schools Foster Students\u27 Fixed Mindsets
No full textThe legal education community remains concerned with the resiliency of law students and lawyers. In other fields, a growing body of research suggests that students\u27 mindsets are linked to their resilience, and it is assumed that the findings will hold in legal education. However, to date, there has been no empirical research to support these assumptions. This article describes an empirical study of law students\u27 mindsets based on responses from 425 students at six law schools across the United States. Our results unveil a troubling trend in law students\u27 mindsets at different stages of the law school experience