Legal Education Data Deck

AccessLex prepares the Legal Education Data Deck for the use of the legal education community, policymakers, and others interested in the latest law student trends organized around our three driving principles: access, affordability, and value

2023 Report on Diversity in U.S. Law Firms

Overall, women, people of color, and LGBTQ lawyers continued to see incremental improvements in representation at major U.S. law firms in 2023 as compared with 2022, according to the latest demographic findings from the analyses of the 2023 NALP Directory of Legal Employers (NDLE) — the annual compendium of legal employer data published by NALP. For the first time ever, women made up the majority of associates in 2023, with that percentage likely to grow in the coming years. Another bright spot in this year’s report is the largest ever year-over-year increase in the percentage of associates of color — growing by 1.8 percentage points to 30.15%. Additionally, women saw record annual growth at the partnership level — where they now comprise 27.76% of all partners (a 1.1 percentage point increase) and Black and Latina women each finally accounted for 1% of all partners for the first time in 2023. Despite these improvements, both women and people of color are particularly underrepresented within the partner ranks, with women of color accounting for less than 5% of partners overall. While progress was made at the associate and partnership levels in 2023, for the first time since 2017 the percentage of summer associates of color declined. However, by both gender and race/ethnicity, summer associates are more diverse when compared to the demographics of recent law school graduates. After a large increase in the percentage of Black and multiracial summer associates in 2022, these were the only racial/ethnic groups to see a decline in representation at the summer associate level in 2023 — driving the overall decline in summer associates of color. The share of LGBTQ summer associates continued to grow at a much higher rate when compared to lawyers overall — with now almost 12% identifying as LGBTQ. The tables and charts that follow provide an in-depth analysis of the state of diversity in U.S. law firms in 2023 and how these figures have changed over time

2023 Profile of the Legal Profession

The American Bar Association, in its steadfast commitment to charting the course of the legal profession, presents the 2023 Profile of the Legal Profession report. This endeavor, now in its fifth year, provides a detailed overview of the current landscape of our profession, ensuring transparency and driving change where it is most needed. This comprehensive report outlines the demographics of lawyers, judges and law students, painting a clear picture of both our achievements in diversifying the legal landscape and the challenges that lie ahead. Over the past decade, the number of diverse lawyers has nearly doubled from 11% to 21%. Despite this commendable growth, our profession still lags in mirroring the nation’s demographics, where 41% of the population is non-white. Gender representation too, though progressing, has room for improvement. A decade ago, women constituted 34% of the legal workforce; today, they make up 39%. Law schools have seen a surge with women now comprising 56% of their student population, yet, there remains a palpable gap in the number of women in senior law firm positions, indicative of the persistent ceilings yet to be shattered. The 2023 report not only serves as an authoritative resource for legal practitioners, students and researchers but also as a beacon for DEI professionals. It provides indispensable data that can aid in structuring initiatives and pipeline programs designed to enrich and diversify our profession. We also introduce a new pivotal chapter focusing on legal aid attorneys in this edition. Legal Services Corporation reports that a staggering 92% of low-income Americans face their civil legal issues without adequate legal counsel. This sheds light on their distribution nationwide and scarcity, the profound impact of their role, and the urgent need to increase their presence in many communities

Report on the Survey of Perspectives on Being a Lawyer

Over the last several years, there has been a significant growth across law schools in the number of required first-year courses/programs focused law student professional development. We do not know very much, however, about which of these approaches to fostering professional formation is the most effective. To a large extent these courses/programs have been designed based on convenience/motivation. Within a given law school, someone who wants to champion this effort to promote professional development/formation takes the initiative and within the particular curricular ecosystem and political economy of the faculty of that law school designs something they think is interesting and beneficial that also is palatable to enough faculty to get approved as an addition to the curriculum. As a result, these professional development courses/programs come in a variety of stripes with a variety of points of emphasis. These courses/programs have not necessarily been designed with a specific set of learning objectives or a plan for assessment of whether those learning objectives have been accomplished. There has not been much assessment (or at least, not any published assessment) of the effectiveness of these courses/programs. With the addition in 2022 of ABA Standards 303(b)(3) and Standard 303(c), law schools will now have to generate more opportunities for students to reflect upon their professional identity as a lawyer and to become more cognizant of bias and racism within the legal system as well as the need for cultural competence to provide meaningful access to justice for people from different cultural backgrounds. Over the last two decades, there has been a growing awareness that the first-year of law school functions as a formation/socialization experience as law students begin their journey into the profession. Starting with the research work of Larry Krieger and Ken Sheldon, the first-year has been shown to facilitate a decline in well-being among law students along with a shift from intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation. This research endeavor was designed to try to begin the process of developing methods for assessing the effectiveness of professional formation/development courses while also providing further insights into the consequences of the first-year socialization experience (and whether the professional formation/development courses ameliorated or changed some of the socialization experience)

The Law Professor and the Therapist: Beyond Belonging There’s a Place (and Need) for Group Solidarity Among First Generation and Low-Income Students in the Law School Setting

As a greater portion of American society has been afforded entrée to colleges and graduate schools, this well-educated segment of society has come to rely on advanced education and the rituals of lengthy training for the professions to reproduce itself and its privileges. It is in this reality that the conditions for first-generation and low-income background students in law schools must be examined. Young people growing up in households where neither parent has a four-year degree disproportionately enroll in less-selective colleges, complete college at lower rates than their continuing-generation peers, and comprise only 22.5% of law school graduating classes. Outcomes for this demographic continue to lag in relation to their continuing generation peers even after graduation: their rate of employment in bar passage required or anticipated jobs was more than 11 points lower (84.3% vs. 73.2%). Concrete steps can and should be taken at the law school level to support these students. Providing first-generation and low-income law students with supportive group sessions facilitated by a law professor and a therapist can heighten the visibility of this student cohort, promote their wellbeing, and enable the formation of a robust class consciousness around their identity. ... In this article, an inexpensive intervention grounded in principles of liberation psychology—peer support group sessions facilitated by a law professor and a therapist—is put forth as a first step in creating a critical space for marginalized student voices. The author’s own experience implementing this initiative is discussed and practical recommendations are made for law school faculty and support professionals interested in pursuing a similar approach at their institutions. Even small changes to legal education’s role in the reproduction of hierarchy can yield sizeable benefits—a practical embrace of liberation psychology within a small corner of the law school space has transformative potential. The lawyer and therapist intervention represents one small step that can modify the law school space to liberate a group of first-generation and low-income background students to remain true to their initial reasons for pursuing a law degree: with the simple act of claiming a space for their voices in the larger law school community. Part I of this article examines the primary obstacles blocking the formation of a class-conscious first-generation and low-income lawyer identity, which includes culture shock, pressure to assimilate, traditional legal education’s repression of emotion, the invisibility of the first-generation and low-income identity, and the relentless focus on climbing the proverbial ladder. Part II outlines the origin story of this article by providing a brief description of the author’s experience implementing the law professor and therapist intervention. Part III highlights the benefits of peer supports for first-generation and low-income background students and introduces the liberation psychology framework guiding the law professor and therapist intervention. Part IV urges adoption of this intervention by other law schools and highlights important next steps. (pp. 163-64, 168-69

Building Belonging: Proven Methods to Decrease Attrition and Best Serve Law Students

A crucial task for legal educators is to determine how to retain our students, especially those who may be most vulnerable to attrition – first-generation students and students of color. This article looks at nine similarly situated ABA-accredited law schools and assesses these schools’ success at retaining their students. The nine schools are all public, operate both part-time and full-time programs, generally enjoy above average diversity, and have somewhat similar national rankings. The nine schools also report similar median LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs of recent incoming classes. The overall attrition rates and attrition rates for students of color vary somewhat among these schools; however, taken as a whole, the schools show a downward trend in attrition over the last eleven years. They have also enjoyed a general upward trend in median LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs for their incoming 1L classes, a shift which may partially explain the simultaneous decrease in attrition. However, the reduction in attrition can also be tied to the schools\u27 increased, intentional efforts to retain students. Because these efforts are essential to retaining law students who may be particularly vulnerable to attrition, interviews were conducted with the nine schools’ academic success directors, administrators, faculty, and alumni to determine the schools’ most effective methods of retention. From this study of successful institutions and from the guidance of experienced and successful law school educators and alumni, a practical, hands-on model of best practices was developed

Law School in a Pandemic Ungrouped: How Online J.D. Experiences Varied Across Students

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, law schools and students resiliently forged ahead, endeavoring — many for the first time — to pursue their J.D. programs online. AccessLex Institute® and Gallup partnered to survey law students about their experiences with online J.D. courses during this time, releasing two Law School in a Pandemic reports in 2021 and 2022 to discuss each year’s findings. This third and final report in the series examines the extent to which student perceptions of their J.D. programs during the pandemic differed by various characteristics — namely race/ethnicity, age, enrollment status, caregiver status, and law school tier. Generally, we find that part-time students, caregivers, students ages 30 and older, and those attending tier-four (T4) ranked law schools were most receptive to online J.D. courses and reported more favorable experiences compared to their counterparts. And while there were few differences by race/ethnicity, we find that underrepresented students of color were more likely than White and Asian students to perceive that online courses allow more time to gain legal work experience and work to earn money. However, underrepresented students were less likely to report easy access to career services and to agree their J.D. program is worth the cost. These findings suggest that the appeal of online J.D. courses varies across student demographics. Law schools seeking to broaden distance learning opportunities can leverage these results to design equitable, quality online experiences for their students

The Influence of Metacognitive Skills on Bar Passage: An Empirical Study

Working Paper This article builds on our prior research about metacognition and its importance for law students’ learning. We hypothesized that given our past findings about the relationship between metacognition and academic performance in law school, it was possible that metacognition might also play an important role in success on the bar exam. Our current study documents law students’ metacognitive skills during a final semester bar prep course and examines the relationship between those students’ metacognitive skills and bar passage. We found that students are capable of gaining metacognitive knowledge and regulation skills during law school and even as late as the last semester of law school. We also found evidence that instruction and prompts to practice metacognitive regulation during the first year of law school had a long-term impact on students’ continued use of those skills. This evidence is important because we also found, as we have in prior studies, that students’ success in a final semester 3L bar preparation course, as well as their cumulative law school GPA, are associated with their level of metacognitive knowledge and regulation skills. While we did not find evidence of a direct relationship between metacognitive skills and bar passage, there was a relationship between bar passage and both course performance and cumulative GPA. Accordingly, we contend that metacognitive skills are an indirect support of bar passage given that they contribute to success in law school, which in turn supports success on the bar exam. We conclude that, based on the relationship between metacognitive skills, academic success in law school, and bar passage, law schools have an ethical obligation to support law faculty in explicitly and intentionally incorporating metacognitive skills instruction into the law curriculum

Investigating the Benefits of Live Remote Proctoring

This research project evaluated the Live Remote Proctoring (LRP) for the First-Year Law Students’ Examination (FYLSX) in terms of test performance, examinee experience, and exam violation incidents. Utilizing LRP in the October 2022 FYLSX, the study compared this session to 20 previous exams spanning from 2012 to 2022 and analyzed post-exam feedback and violation reports. The findings indicate that LRP did not conclusively outperform previous remote testing modalities in terms of exam performance. While there was a modest improvement in pass rates, it fell within the expected range of historical fluctuations, suggesting that LRP may not have been the influencing factor. Furthermore, gender disparities in performance raise concerns, suggesting potential disadvantages for female examinees under the LRP modality. While LRP showed promise in reducing the rate of exam violations, the benefits observed from a single session\u27s data are not sufficient to establish a conclusion. The most notable concern with LRP was the overwhelmingly negative examinee feedback regarding the testing experience, mainly due to the live monitoring aspect. Given these mixed results, if LRP continues to be used, exploring alternative providers might be necessary to enhance the testing experience

Protecting Diversity: Can We Afford to Throw Out Grutter Before Its Expiration Date?

With landmark affirmative action decisions pending from the United States Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, this paper examines whether the educational benefits that flow from diversity acknowledged in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) persist twenty years later in a law school context. Using data from the American Bar Association (ABA), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), we model law school campus diversity as a predictor of attrition, predicted law school GPA, and first-time bar passage among underrepresented law students of color. Campus diversity is operationalized as both a U.S. News-style index and as a factor derived from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE). Our findings demonstrate benefits for Black law students across the range of outcomes, likely without concomitant harm to other groups