Since the inception of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) in 2003, Indiana Law has been a regular participant. For those readers unfamiliar with LSSSE, it is the law school version of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which has been widely adopted by undergraduate institutions. In the spring of each year, LSSSE sends out a questionnaire to students at participating law school to elicit information on their law school experiences, including:
- Classroom environment and interactions with faculty (20 variables)
- Self-reported gains on important constructs related to effective lawyering (5 variables)
- Type and volume of writing within law school (3 variables)
- Participation in extracurricular or c0-curricular activities (9 variables)
- Satisfaction with law school experience (7 variables)
- Time allocation during law school (e.g., studying for class, socializing, exercising, volunteering) (12 variables)
- Collegial and supportive atmosphere (3 variables)
- Self-reported gains on various occupational and interpersonal skills (16 variables)
- Total satisfaction with law school and willingness to attend the same law school again (2 variables)
- Demographic attributes, debt loads, law school grades, entering credentials and career goals, etc. (note that it is possible to match and add in additional information).
After the jump, I explain why law professors and deans should care about LSSSE benchmarking–or, more accurately, the perils of dismissing it in favor of pet ideas that lack similar empirical support.
- 4 out of 5 law schools participating in LSSSE have response rates greater than 50%;
- Demographically, the samples are virtually always representative of the school as a whole;
- 1Ls are more likely to respond than 2Ls or 3Ls (at Indiana, 70% for 1Ls, 55% for 2Ls and 3Ls); fortunately, law school year is a variable in the dataset.
For those law faculty who would dismiss such detailed market intel in
favor of their own vision of a great law school, typically without any empirical data to assess actual progress, that path is fraught with problems. As the price of legal education rises faster than the earning power of most law school graduates, law school applicants are declining. Further, we can expect those students who do apply to be more discriminating consumers.
Here at Indiana Law, we have a plan to systematically use LSSSE data to
leverage our strengths and focus and correct our weaknesses. In the years
to come, we want to our successes to snowball, thus establishing our distinctive brand through a relentless focus on substance rather than marketing hype. To give you a taste of what this data look like, here are some graphics drawn from Indiana data and posted with my dean’s permission.
1. The chart below shows that Indiana law excels in its administrative and support services.
These strong scores are corroborated by comparable scores for our law school technology, library service, student counseling, academic counseling, and financial aid.
2. Career services is the Achilles Heal of virtually all non-elite law schools. Here at Indiana, this office has been a target for a lot of restructuring and additional resources during the last several years. And as the below chart illustrates, our trend lines are moving in the right direction:
3. In terms of classroom dynamics, we are pleased that our students, relative to other law schools, tend to come to class prepared. This is a dynamic that is partially a function of being a Tier 1 public law schools–our students move to Bloomington and don’t have part-time jobs. (Indeed, the LSSSE data shows very low commute times for our students.) But this higher modal level of preparation improves the classroom atmosphere for everyone.
I am happy to talk more about LSSSE with faculty at other law schools. (Disclosure: I am a research associate with LSSSE, though I get no financial or research support through this affiliation.) If you want information on participating in the LSSSE survey, contact the LSSSE Project Manager, .
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