AALS has made the Before the JD and Beyond the Bachelor’s research reports available without charge on the AALS website.
Published in 2018, Before the JD explored student perspectives on legal education and was based on a survey conducted by Gallup for AALS. More than 22,000 college students and over 2,700 law students completed a survey which captured details on their career aspirations, sources of information and advice, and academic backgrounds. The report also explores demographic differences in survey respondents by gender, parental education, race/ethnicity, and academic achievement.
“This is the first known study in more than 50 years of undergraduate views on law school,” said Judith Areen, Executive Director of AALS at the time of the report’s release. “It is our hope that this report will be useful not only to law schools and aspiring law students, but to everyone who cares about law and justice. We all have a stake in the quality of the next generation of lawyers and judges.”
Beyond the Bachelor’s: Undergraduate Perspectives on Graduate and Professional Degrees is a report based on a same Gallup survey. Findings from the report showed the already narrow pool of first-generation college students considering graduate and professional school face additional barriers depending on a variety of factors.
“The future of graduate education is being built on data, and this study provides a wealth of information based on a very large sample size. We are proud to sponsor Beyond the Bachelor’s as an important addition to the continuum of data we provide to benefit higher education and legal education,” said Kellye Testy, President and CEO of the Law School Admission Council, who co-sponsored the report with AALS.
Find the reports at www.aals.org/research/bachelors and www.aals.org/research/bjd.
