The American Law School Faculty Study features two online survey components.

School administrators will receive a survey that focuses on faculty hiring, voting rights, and tenure policies in order to collect more accurate hiring data and understand law school tenure eligibility standards.

School teaching faculty will receive a survey that collects information from teaching faculty across academic ranks at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) member or fee-paid law schools. It will collect information related to work life and career trajectories.

The AALS is leading the study, which is made possible by support from the AccessLex Institute. AALS has contracted with NORC at the University of Chicago to collect data for the study.

NORC is a non-profit corporation affiliated with the University of Chicago that conducts survey research in the public interest for government agencies, educational institutions, private foundations, non-profit organizations, and private corporations.

Law school administrators and teaching faculty representing all 194 AALS member and fee-paid schools have been asked to participate in the study. About 9,000 teaching faculty members have been asked to participate in the faculty survey.

You are being asked to participate because you currently serve as an administrator or teaching faculty member at an AALS member or fee-paid law school.  AALS has provided directory information for NORC to use in contacting you for the purposes of conducting this study.

For the school survey, the invitation was sent to a contact provided to us by the AALS. However, the school survey only needs to be completed by a school administrator, so the contact may designate someone else to complete the survey for their school and forward the survey to them. Each school will be provided with a unique personal identifying number (PIN) and a link to access the survey. Only one response per school can be submitted.

For the faculty survey, to ensure it is as representative as possible, no one may complete the survey on your behalf. Your individual experiences are needed to represent others like yourself.

The school administrator survey takes about 5 minutes, while the survey for faculty members takes about 15 minutes.

Responses to the school administrator survey will represent your school’s tenure policies and recent hiring across teaching faculty types. Responses to the faculty survey represent your experiences regarding work conditions and climate. Your participation helps to ensure that study results are valid and complete so the AALS has an accurate understanding of law teaching faculty at member and fee-paid law schools. 

This survey is voluntary, and you are not required to participate. If you do participate, you may skip questions that you do not wish to answer.

Responses to data collection are voluntary, confidential, and will be used only for broadly descriptive and statistical purposes. Respondents will submit their self-administered online survey using a secure server. Results will only be reported in aggregate groupings of sufficient size or otherwise masked so there will be no way of identifying individual participants – or the law schools at which you serve. No identifying information about you, or your law school, will be shared with the AALS. 

If you have any questions or concerns pertaining to this survey or your participation, please contact NORC at the University of Chicago by emailing lawschoolfacultystudy@norc.org. If you have any questions or concerns about your rights as a research participant, please contact the NORC IRB Manager toll-free at (866) 309-0542.