Executive Director & Chief Executive Officer
Dear Colleague,
It is my privilege to welcome you to the Association of American Law Schools and to the legal academy. We are absolutely delighted that you are here.
The mission of AALS is to uphold and enhance excellence in legal education, guided by our core values. Our Association has 175 member and 19 fee-paid law schools, and as the learned society for legal education, we are also very much your organization.
The most important part of the work accomplished under the AALS umbrella is that it creates opportunities for you to connect with faculty beyond your home law school—which has led to career-enriching collaborations in both scholarship and teaching for many law faculty members over the years.
Association activities encompass many areas that may be of particular interest to you as a new professor:
- The annual Workshop for New Law School Teachers is held in Washington, DC each spring. This event connects your peer cohort of new professors with experienced mentors and offers concrete resources that you can use immediately in your teaching.
- More than 100 AALS Sections provide the platform for sustained, year-round activity and professional development for their members. Sections are organized around subject matter, affinity group, or area of professional interest. You may particularly be interested in the Section on New Law Professors and the Section on Teaching Methods .
- The Annual Meeting offers works-in-progress sessions and speaking opportunities via AALS calls for proposals and section calls for papers. It’s also the largest gathering of law faculty and professional staff in the country.
- AALS sponsors a Scholarly Papers Competition for those who have been teaching law for five years or less.
AALS also publishes the Journal of Legal Education and co-sponsors the Clinical Law Review. We maintain the AALS Directory of Law Teachers—your dean’s office can assist in ensuring that you are included in the Directory. Additional professional development programs, workshops, and conferences are posted in our events calendar.
As you begin your career in law teaching and focus on developing your own courses and advancing your scholarly agenda, I encourage you to make time for AALS as well. This is just the beginning of what we is sure to be a long, productive, and satisfying career. Please feel free to reach out to me or the Association’s dedicated staff if we can be of any assistance.
Sincerely,
Kellye Y. Testy
Executive Director & CEO