Part of being a good lawyer is pattern recognition. We see patterns in case law, patterns in legal procedure, patterns in
Figure 1 above uses data from the 2020 Law School Survey of Student of Engagement (LSSSE) to visualize 10 average score “distributions” based on responses from 12,969 law students at 68 participating U.S. law schools. The distributions are at the law school level. Thus, for all ten measures, each participating law school’s average score exists somewhere within the orange-yellow-grey-blue-green distribution. The grey is the fat part of the underlying bell curve (25-75th percentiles). In addition, each Figure 1 measure maps to one or more of the ABA’s Accreditation Standards (see references in brackets).
Continue Reading What is an excellent legal education? Answers based on data (193)
If you work in the legal industry, the above graph from Thomson Reuters’ 2020 Report on the State of the Legal Market should terrify you. What it shows is an industry steadily sliding towards obsolescence, not because the need for legal services is declining but because hiring a lawyer is becoming
My fundraising work for the Institute for the Future of Law Practice has required me to delve into the equities of modern legal education, particularly around the debt loads and employment prospects of historically underrepresented groups. This is because virtually all potential benefactors want diversity
The title of this article is based on an open-ended question presented to more than 3,800 professionals who responded to ALM Intelligence’s recent Mental Health and Substance Abuse Survey (ALM Survey).
Granted, this is a population of very busy people, so not everyone took the time to
Today’s post covers two topics: (1) current best practices in legal matter management based upon various deployments we see in the industry today, and (2) how legal matter management systems and processes are destined to evolve over the next decade or so.
Before we begin, however, I’d be remiss if I
This post will be something of an anomaly. It is more personal in nature than my usual content and (at least for me) rather short.
I am a single Asian American woman living alone in Manhattan. As of the time of this writing, NYC has just tipped
Imagine a legal sector neatly divided into two groups: the Rule Makers and the Risk Takers. With evidence piling up that the legal market is not working for ordinary citizens, the Rule Makers come together to evaluate possible changes. After the new rules are enacted, the burden shifts
The graphic above provides a breakdown of 2018 law school graduates with diverse race/ethnicity backgrounds. Each hand represents 100 JDs. The colors represent four different categories in the U.S. News law school rankings. Thus, the Tier 3/4 schools have the largest number of diverse race/ethnicity graduates—4,500 JDs, or about 45% of all diverse 2018 JD grads. Likewise, only 1,300, or 13%, attended elite T-14 schools, which is clear, useful information for legal employers who have urgency regarding diversity.
Continue Reading How to talk data and influence people, including lawyers (137)
In 2014, I was invited to lunch with Joe Andrew, the chairman of Dentons, in his DC office. The invitation came from John Fernandez, an Indiana Law alum who joined Dentons a couple of years earlier after two decades in government. Joe and John came up through the ranks together in Indiana Democratic politics, with Andrew eventually becoming Chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party (from 1995-1999) and Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (1999-2001).
Continue Reading Special Post: Dentons rolls out Project Golden Spike (120)