Journal of Legal Education (Association of American Law Schools)

Neumann, Richard K., Jr.

English

Violations During the Pandemic of Law School Faculties’ Authority to Decide Methods of Instruction

Testy, Kellye Y.

Advancing an Evidence-Based Approach to Improving Legal Education

Romero, Camilo A.

May It Please the Soul: On the Practice of Law and Vulnerability’

Little, Laura E.

Book Review of How to Do Things with Legal Doctrine

Deo, Meera E.

396 
LSSSE at Fifteen: Celebrating Our 
Success and Planning Our Future
Meera E. Deo
It brings me tremendous pride and enormous pleasure to introduce this 
issue of the Journal of Legal Education, which celebrates the fifteenth anniversary 
of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE). As the current 
director of LSSSE (pronounced as “LESS-see”), I appreciate this unique 
opportunity to reflect on the origins and development of the project, give 
thanks to those who guided LSSSE before me, and contemplate how we can 
be most effective in the future. The LSSSE project originated in 2004 with 
a modest survey offered at forty-two law schools across the country; over 
the subsequent decade and a half, the project has grown to collect and share 
perspectives from over 380,000 law students at 203 law schools throughout the 
United States, Canada, and Australia.
The objectives and basic design of LSSSE remain relatively unchanged from 
its origins. We seek to understand and enhance the law student experience, 
thereby improving legal education. For fifteen years, LSSSE has conducted 
an annual survey of law students in partnership with participating schools. 
Given our robust response rate, schools know they will get valid, reliable data 
about their students’ behaviors, attitudes, and experiences. Because dozens 
of institutions partner with us every year, each one also receives valuable 
aggregate comparative data from those identified as “peer schools” as well as 
national averages. Whether a school wants to evaluate the effectiveness of its 
career services office, investigate the level of student engagement by gender, 
or track trends of preferred employment over time, the LSSSE data reveal 
important information on the student experience. 
Meera E. Deo JD, PhD; Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School; Director, Law School 
Survey of Student Engagement; William H. Neukom Fellows Research Chair in Diversity and 
Law, American Bar Foundation. The author thanks LSSSE staff members Chad Christensen and 
Jakki Petzold for outstanding assistance. Thanks are due as well to LSSSE Board Member and 
Dean Camille Nelson and Dean Tony Varona for facilitating this publication as well as Robert 
Dinerstein, Jeremy Paul, and Ezra Rosser for editing this issue. The AALS Section on Law and the 
Social Sciences Annual Meeting in 2020 also provided a presentation venue to share the empirical 
articles published here. Thanks above all to the authors of the articles and essays contained in this 
issue and the schools that have partnered with LSSSE for the past fifteen years, working together 
to improve legal education. 
LSSSE at Fifteen 397
In addition to sharing data with partner schools, LSSSE staff also analyze 
the data to document, contribute to, and influence broad trends in legal 
education. Over the years, LSSSE reports have highlighted racial debt 
disparities, the successes of women students, and the ways in which students’ 
relationships with faculty, staff, and peers promote academic and professional 
success.1 The LSSSE Insights Blog offers opportunities for LSSSE staff and 
guest authors to share perspectives on current aspects of legal education, which 
have included the experience of LL.M. students, preparation for leadership, 
law library satisfaction, and tips for improving online teaching and learning.2
Over fifteen years, LSSSE has been a key player in discussing and shaping 
critical conversations in legal education. Our 2015 and 2016 Annual Reports—
revealing that 61% of Black and 56% of Latinx respondents expected to 
graduate owing over $100,000, compared with 40% of whites—spurred 
national discussions about the cost of law school, revealing how financial 
burdens are borne disproportionately by students of color.3 Our 2019 Report 
on The Cost of Women’s Success spurred the media and policymakers to 
consider the sacrifices of women students on the path to reaching academic 
and professional achievements—including a majority (51%) who sleep less than 
five hours per night.4 Our 2020 Annual Report, Diversity & Exclusion, adds 
a legal education dimension to the ongoing national conversation on anti-
racism revealing that while most privileged students are satisfied with diversity 
efforts on campus, 21% of Black, Latinx, and Native American students are 
not comfortable being themselves on campus, and 38% of students with the 
highest levels of educational debt believe their schools do not value them.5 
The LSSSE data provide us with an opportunity to celebrate successes in legal 
education while striving for a better, more equitable future.
As LSSSE director it has been my great honor to inspire change in legal 
education, analyze data collected through our annual survey administration, 
and publish reports to broaden conversation through the media, in academic 
1. LSSSE Annual Reports and Special Reports are available at Annual Results, Law School 
Survey of Student Engagement, https://lssse.indiana.edu/annual-results (last visited Apr. 
2, 2021). 
2. LSSSE Insights Blog, Law School Survey of Student Engagement, https://lssse.indiana.edu/
insights/ (last visited Apr. 2, 2021). 
3. Aaron N. Taylor et al., 2015 Annual Survey Results: How a Decade of Debt Changed the Law Student 
Experience, Law School Survey of Student Engagement (2016), https://lssse.indiana.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2016/01/LSSSE-Annual-Report-2015-Update-FINAL-revised-web.pdf.
 Aaron N. Taylor & Chad Christensen, 2016 Annual Survey Results: Law School Scholarship Policies: 
Engines of Inequity, Law School Survey of Student Engagement (2017), https://lssse.indiana.
edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/LSSSE-2016-Annual-Report-1.pdf. 
4. Meera E. Deo & Chad Christensen, 2019 Annual Survey Results: The Cost of Women’s Success, 
Law School Survey of Student Engagement (2019), https://lssse.indiana.edu/wp-content/
uploads/2015/12/LSSSE-AnnualSurvey-Gender-Final.pdf. 
5. Meera E. Deo & Chad Christensen, 2020 Annual Survey Results: Diversity & Exclusion, Law 
School Survey of Student Engagement (2020), https://lssse.indiana.edu/wp-content/
uploads/2020/09/Diversity-and-Exclusion-Final-9.29.20.pdf. 
398 Journal of Legal Education
circles, and with various legal education institutions. Before joining, I had 
been an admirer of LSSSE for many years, while working as an empirical 
scholar to document the student experience and improve legal education. 
As a law student, I was a named intervening defendant and member of the 
legal team in Grutter v. Bollinger, supporting affirmative action and pushing for 
greater racial equality through educational advancement.6 While I worked on 
the legal arguments, our social science experts crafted a consistent message 
that affirmative action was necessary not only to support educational diversity 
but also to promote racial justice. 
And what experts they were! The intervenors’ team included John Hope 
Franklin, Eric Foner, Walter Allen, Gary Orfield, Frank Wu, and Richard 
Lempert. My vacation from my first job as a lawyer—as the ACLU National 
Legal Department William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow—was spent 
in snowy Detroit learning from these experts during the Grutter trial. Seeing 
experts of this caliber in action, it is perhaps no surprise that after a few more 
years of practicing law I entered graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology. 
The training in both theory and methods that I received at UCLA under the 
tutelage of Walter Allen, Min Zhou, Devon Carbado, and others, set the stage 
for the empirical work I continue now almost two decades later with dozens of 
published articles revealing challenges facing law students of color, proposals 
for alternative compelling state interests to support affirmative action, and 
blueprints to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in legal education. 
In spite of this background demonstrating my commitment to empirical 
research in legal education, I was truly surprised to receive an e-mail from Aaron 
Taylor (then-director of LSSSE) in 2017 inviting me to apply for the position 
he was leaving. Through the interview process I met a small but mighty team 
of dedicated personnel—each one devoted to making higher education better 
for students, faculty, and staff. When I joined as director in January 2018, I 
knew I had a legacy to protect as well as the flexibility to craft a vision to guide 
us forward. From the start, I emphasized two priorities: encouraging partner 
schools to get comfortable with the data so they could maximize usage to help 
their own students, and collaborating with academics who could use the data 
to further scholarly projects and publications. 
This issue of the Journal of Legal Education includes many key academic 
partners who have utilized LSSSE data in their own work. Various themes 
infuse the issue. Three of the scholarly articles focus directly on the importance 
of assessment, which has been at the forefront of changes in legal education in 
the past decade. In “Writing Like a Lawyer,” Kirsten Winek utilizes blocked 
stepwise multiple regression to consider how various “involvement activities” 
lead to improvements in student writing over time. Victor Quintanilla and 
Sam Erman share insights from their groundbreaking partnership with the 
6. 539 U.S. 306 (2003). For more on the Grutter intervenors, see Meera E. Deo, The Promise of 
Grutter: Diverse Interactions at the University of Michigan Law School, 17 Mich. J. Race & L. 63, 70 n.35 
(2011) and Rachel F. Moran, The Heirs of Brown: The Story of Grutter v. Bollinger, in Race Law 
StoRieS 451 (Rachel F. Moran & Devon W. Carbado eds., 2008).
LSSSE at Fifteen 399
State Bar of California suggesting new directions in the psychological study 
of the student experience and how these influence bar passage. In his piece on 
the development of professional competencies, LSSSE Project Manager Chad 
Christensen shares findings on how future success as a lawyer can be shaped 
in law school by emphasizing teamwork, initiative, and cultural competency. 
Together, these authors demonstrate that increased engagement, as measured 
by LSSSE, can have significant positive results for both academic achievement 
and professional success. 
Another current running through the issue involves intersectional analyses, 
considering how compound identity characteristics affect student experiences 
and outcomes.7 In this issue, authors take advantage of the robust LSSSE sample 
to run analyses by race, gender, first-gen status, socioeconomic background, 
and more. I have written previously about how the combination of raceXgender 
(the multiplicative effect of having two devalued identity characteristics) 
creates unique challenges for women of color in legal education.8 The LSSSE 
data provide opportunities to examine and compare various intersectional 
perspectives including the effects of raceXgender and resulting disparities. For 
instance, the collaborative article by Shih-Chun Chien, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and 
George Wang shares how research from the American Bar Foundation (ABF) 
draws from LSSSE data in various projects; in “Portrait Project 2.0” they 
investigate clerkship disparities (among other phenomena), finding that white 
women drive an alleged “women’s preference” for clerkships, with 8.0% of 
white women reporting interest in clerkships as compared with 6.5% of Latinas, 
5.5% of Asian American women, and only 4.9% of African American women. 
Quintanilla and Erman also delve into intersectional analysis, meticulously 
tracking the interaction of personal identity characteristics (including race/
ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic background) with “societal stereotypes 
and environmental cues [that] shape thoughts, feelings, and behavior.” Finally, 
Elizabeth Bodamer’s fascinating dissertation research reveals that women of 
color experience not only a lower sense of belonging than other groups, but also 
the highest rates of bias; she notes: “The significant raceXgender differences 
found throughout this study highlight the vulnerability and marginalization 
of women of color in legal education.” 
This issue’s emphasis on intersectional analysis is a testament to the 
commitment of many authors toward pursuing anti-racism far beyond bland 
references to diversity. Especially now, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing 
and mass protests supporting Black Lives Matter and opposing police and 
vigilante violence, an increasing number of law schools have taken up the 
mantle, committing themselves to infuse race into the first-year curriculum, 
purposefully promote greater diversity in hiring, and increase efforts at 
7. The term “intersectionality” refers to the ways in which those with multiple devalued 
identity characteristics (i.e., women of color, lesbians) face unique challenges based on the 
full spectrum of their background. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, 
Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, 43 Stan. L. Rev. 1241, 1241–44 (1991).
8. MeeRa e. Deo, UneqUaL PRofeSSion: Race anD GenDeR in LeGaL acaDeMia (2019).
400 Journal of Legal Education
inclusion and thereby retention for faculty, staff, and students.9 As a consultant 
to dozens of law schools, I have seen firsthand their commitment to change 
and the ability of LSSSE and other empirical data to reveal hard truths about 
diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
Interspersed with the academic articles illustrating these themes using 
empirical data are more personal essays from former LSSSE directors and 
current board members highlighting their own involvement with the project 
over fifteen years. These narratives share a powerful story of the evolution of 
LSSSE from its origins as a nascent outgrowth of an ongoing “big-sister” study 
to its current standing as a powerful national voice on legal education. George 
Kuh and Patrick O’Day unveil how the project began—from the graduate 
student who sparked the initial extension of a national undergraduate survey 
to the center director who brought the project to life in the law school arena. 
When Carole Silver took over as director in 2012, she quickly recognized that 
she had to prioritize “explaining why LSSSE could and should matter to law 
schools.” She continues that explanation in her essay, thoughtfully reflecting 
on the ways in which LSSSE reveals far more than what U.S. News & World 
Report measures and reminding us to place the power and inequities of legal 
education in the context of ongoing national racial disparities. As the third 
LSSSE director, Aaron Taylor used his influence to center and highlight student 
priorities, drawing from student perspectives to emphasize not only ongoing 
trends but necessary changes to legal education. Though legal education was 
in the midst of a national crisis, he recognized an opportunity to make LSSSE 
even more relevant and accessible—creating visualizations, conducting special 
analyses, and educating law school professionals on how they could use the 
data to improve the experience for their students. I will always be grateful to 
the three visionary former directors of LSSSE for laying the foundation that 
allowed me to pursue a broader vision for the project. 
Key contributors have joined with LSSSE staff to guide the project over 
the past fifteen years. Dean Bryant Garth has been the chair of the advisory 
board since LSSSE’s inception; his written reflections reveal the importance 
of LSSSE data for deans and other administrators responsive to the changing 
needs of their students; his remarks also address how crises, including the 
murder of George Floyd and the global pandemic, can refocus our attention 
on particular data points to make even greater changes to legal education. 
LSAC President and CEO (and former law school Dean) Kellye Testy, one 
of the newest LSSSE board members, instantly recognized the importance 
of institutional collaboration. Believing that “strong educational programs 
are made stronger by reliable evidence-based longitudinal assessments of 
9. The Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project, spearheaded by five Black women law 
deans in summer 2020, provides a blueprint of sorts for institutions seeking to become 
truly anti-racist, suggesting five phases on the path toward anti-racism. More information is 
available at Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project, The Association of American Law Schools, 
https://www.aals.org/antiracist-clearinghouse (last visited Apr. 2, 2021). 
LSSSE at Fifteen 401
student learning and engagement,” she urges schools to partner with LSSSE, 
track students throughout legal education, and work to create “a data-sharing 
consortium for legal education.” Finally, the afterword is written by Indiana 
University Provost Lauren Robel, who participated in the creation of LSSSE 
and shares her vision for the future of the project. 
I am confident that readers will enjoy reviewing and reflecting on each piece 
in this issue. The scholarly articles offer insights on how we can use data to 
enhance the academic and professional lives of students. The personal essays 
reflect on LSSSE’s fifteen-year track record of working to advance student 
perspectives and improve legal education. I would venture that the most 
important takeaway from the issue as a whole is this: Working in partnership 
with LSSSE, whether you are an individual or an institution, offers enormous 
benefits for those planning a better future for legal education, whether as law 
school staff, faculty members, administrators, or institutional leaders. I look 
forward to continuing this journey together. 


LSSSE at Fifteen: Celebrating Our Success and Planning Our Future

Saula, Morenike

Crisis Induced Innovation in U.S. Legal Education

Gadson, Marcus

Afterword

Van Praagh, Shauna

Bateman, Eliza

Becoming a University Educator: Teaching Tomorrow’s Law Teachers

Conway, Danielle M.

Embracing and Making Change in Legal Education: Serving the Law Students of Today and Tomorrow

Cummings, Scott L.

Book Review of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

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