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Student-Faculty Ratio, 1978-2013
No full textThis source includes data on the student-faculty ratio at ABA-approved law schools for academic years beginning in 1978 to 2013
Enrollment, 2013
No full textThis source includes data on full-time, part-time, and non-J.D. enrollment at ABA-approved law schools for the 2013-14 academic year
Empowering Tomorrow\u27s Leaders: Best Practices for Supporting Diverse Students During Law School and Into Employment
No full textThis is a post conference report for The New York City Bar. Attendees were tasked with identifying effective academic and professional programs and resources needed to support and prepare minority law students for the rigors of legal education and the legal profession. The attendees focused on two key areas of effective pipeline programs: those that promote academic success in law school; and programs that effectively prepare minority law students for entry into the profession. This report outlines the specific strategies that were discussed and serves as a guide for law schools, law firms, corporations and other legal employers to generate opportunities for continued support of minority law school students
Part-Time Enrollment by Gender and Race/Ethnicity, 2009-2013
No full textThis source includes data on part-time enrollment by gender and race/ethnicity at ABA-approved law schools for the academic years beginning in 2009 to 2013
Legal Education at a Crossroads: Innovation, Integration, and Pluralism Required!
No full textAlthough historically slow to change, law schools are now facing enormous pressure from educators, students, lawyers, judges, clients, and the public to rethink legal education and the lawyer‘s role in society. Now more than ever, there is robust national debate on the threshold contributions law schools should make to the preparation of law graduates for entry into practice. The clamor for reform in legal education is precipitated by a confluence of factors, including new insights about lawyering competencies and experiential legal education; the shifting nature of legal practice in the United States; a decrease in law jobs; changes in the economics of the legal profession that challenge the current cost of legal education; a dramatic drop in law school applications and admittees; increased competition for students among law schools; increased market demand for ― practice-ready‖ law graduates; and increased numbers of law grads going into solo and small firm practice.
Economic, social, and political conditions make it impossible to ignore the clamor for reform. Today‘s climate invites a deeper examination of law school curricula and pedagogy, with a focus on the sequencing of doctrine, skills and values across the curriculum designed to prepare students for practice . . . . Legal education is at a crossroads, uniquely ripe for innovative curricular and pedagogical change.
Some suggest abandoning the third year of law school; others urge law schools to accept the challenge from educators, the profession, and the market to impart more educational value throughout the curriculum, including the third year. Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, the influential study produced by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2007 (commonly referred to as the Carnegie Report ), endorses a three-year curriculum that develops the three lawyering apprenticeships of knowledge/understanding, practice expertise, and professional identity/judgment. In this Article, we recommend an innovative, integrated, pluralistic law school curriculum with expanded experiential education (where students learn in the role of attorney with simulated clients and cases) and required clinical education (where students learn in the role of attorney with real clients and cases)
Gaining from the System: Lessons from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement About Student Development in Law School
No full textThis paper considers the factors that influence law students’ assessment of their professional and academic development during law school. It uses responses of 5,612 third- and fourth-year law students to the Law School Survey of Student Engagement to identify student activities and behaviors that relate to professional and academic gains; individual and law school characteristics also are examined. Four aspects of the law school experience emerge as integral parts of students’ professional and academic development
Racial Diversity and Judicial Influence on Appellate Courts
No full textThis article evaluates the substantive consequences of judicial diversity on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Due to the small percentage of racial minorities on the federal bench, the key question in evaluating these consequences is not whether minority judges vote differently from nonminority judges, but whether their presence on appellate courts influences their colleagues and affects case outcomes. Using matching methods, I show that black judges are significantly more likely than nonblack judges to support affirmative action programs. This individual‐level difference translates into a substantial causal effect of adding a black judge to an otherwise all‐nonblack panel. Randomly assigning a black counterjudge—a black judge sitting with two nonblack judges—to a three‐judge panel of the Courts of Appeals nearly ensures that the panel will vote in favor of an affirmative action program. These results have important implications for assessing the relationship between diversity and representation on federal courts
Painting Beyond the Numbers: The Art of Providing Access in Law School Admissions to Ensure Full Representation in the Profession
No full textAfrican-American\u27 and Mexican-American enrollment in law schools has declined sharply since 1993. Disconcertingly, this decline occurred during a time when both groups applied at a relatively constant rate, saw their numerical entry indicators increase, and saw the number of seats in law schools grow by over 3,000. This decrease in enrollment occurred because law schools place an unwarranted premium on numerical criteria to predict success in law school and increase minimum levels for qualification to improve school rankings.
By relying primarily on numerical criteria and adopting less comprehensive admission practices, law schools disregard the fact that numerical criteria are poor measures of merit and predictors of success in school and in practice. Moreover, law schools disregard the importance of students\u27 experiences prior to law school. These experiences often enhance a student\u27s potential for success in law practice because they reflect more than specific cognitive and practice skills, and they encompass professional skills and ethical values. Thus, by relying solely on numerical criteria, law schools disproportionately disqualify otherwise meritorious candidates from underrepresented populations and deprive the public of the opportunity to be represented by those aspiring lawyers.
Law schools can, and should, address concerns about their ranking and accreditation, as well as the anti-race-conscious legal climate, by modifying by-the-numbers admission decisions, and not by abandoning access admission practices. To do so, schools should shift their current paradigm in three ways. First, they need to recognize that the numbers by themselves do not accurately reflect the merit or potential for success of the underrepresented. Second, law schools need to move away from the heavily charged discourse of affirmative-action and race-conscious practices.\u27 Instead, the goal of law school admission should be to ensure that all applicants receive a fair, accurate, and holistic review, especially for those applicants whose numerical criteria are unreliable, inaccurate, or non-predictive. Finally, law schools need to broaden their pedagogy and expand their curriculum to be responsive to a more diverse student body and to better serve the profession and public
Enrollment by Gender, 2012
No full textThis source includes data on full-time and part-time enrollment by gender at ABA-approved law schools in the 2012-2013 academic year
Empirical Evidence that Legal Education Can Foster Student Professionalism/Professional Formation to Become an Effective Lawyer
No full textLegal education should move toward much more effective educational engagements to foster each student’s professional formation and thus improve each student’s ultimate effectiveness as a lawyer. Part I reviews and analyzes the empirical evidence that convincingly points toward the importance of a law student’s or practicing lawyer’s capacities and skills of professional formation for legal employers and clients. Part II reviews and analyzes the empirical evidence about the most effective curriculum, culture and pedagogies to foster each student’s professional formation. Part III explains the professional formation curriculum, culture and pedagogies of University of St. Thomas School of Law (the empirical evidence in Part II aided in the design of this curriculum, culture, and pedagogy). Part IV analyzes empirical data demonstrating that the UST law students experience growth in moral development and professional formation over their three years of law school in a manner different from that which might be anticipated from law school generally.The data from this study reasonably support the link between the overall UST Law educational program and an increase in both student moral reasoning and ethical professional identity. Our findings add to the research presented in Part II that education to foster professional formation must engage each student at the student’s current developmental stage. The UST Law curriculum, culture, and pedagogies reflect and incorporate the earlier research analyzed in Part II. Future studies will evaluate which specific elements of the curriculum, culture or pedagogies are most effective. The challenge at its core is to help each student internalize deep responsibilities both for others, especially the client, and for the student’s own development toward excellence at all the competencies that a practicing lawyer must have to fulfill his or her responsibilities for others