AALS, The American Law School Faculty Study:

As higher and legal education continue to evolve, gaining a comprehensive understanding of law school faculty is increasingly important. To this end, the American Law School Faculty Study provides a snapshot of law teaching and today and is the first of its kind to detail faculty career pathways and work experiences as well as recent hiring trends in legal education.

Primarily drawing on two surveys, one at the school-level and one at the individual-level, this study details analysis of responses from 117 current or acting deans and 1,892 faculty members across 194 AALS member and fee-paid law schools. It was designed to investigate several research questions:

1. Who are law school faculty today?
2. What are the main career pathways to teaching law?
3. What are the current hiring practices of law schools?
4. What are the expectations of law faculty for earning tenure?
5. What are the job responsibilities of law faculty and how much time do they allocate to each?
6. How satisfied are law school faculty with their jobs?

In presenting novel findings about the current legal education landscape, the report offers key insights on law school faculty demographic profiles, professional experiences, and institutional characteristics, such as selectivity and governance.

Hear about the top takeaways from AALS Associate Director of Research Katie Kempner, and listen to analysis of the findings from AALS President Melanie Wilson (Dean, Washington & Lee University School of Law), Brian Leiter (University of Chicago Law School), and Angela Onwuachi-Willig (Dean, Boston University School of Law).

Highlights from the American Law School Faculty Study:

Women comprise the majority of law faculty entering the profession in the last 20 years.

• While women comprise 53% of new law faculty who have been teaching for five years or less,
  they comprise only 42% of tenured classroom faculty or deans.
• Women comprise a greater proportion of clinical and legal writing faculty (59-73% depending on the position).

Law faculty are becoming more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity with each new
cohort of teachers.

• Hispanic faculty and faculty of color comprise 37% of faculty who started teaching in the last five years, compared to smaller proportions of more experienced faculty.
• Hispanic faculty and faculty of color comprise a higher percentage of tenure-track faculty (42%) compared with tenured faculty (25%). …

Most tenured faculty earned tenure within five to seven years after they began teaching.

• 62% of tenured faculty earned tenure within five to seven years after they began teaching. 18% earned tenure within four years and another 20% earned tenure after seven years.
• A greater proportion of men (21%) than women (13%) earned tenure within four years, and a smaller proportion of men (16%) than women (26%) earned tenure after seven years.
• Hispanic (22%) and White faculty (18%) were the most likely to earn tenure within four years (vs. 8-14% for other faculty). Multiracial (30%) and Asian or Asian American, AIAN, NHPI, and MENA faculty (27%) were more likely than other faculty (16-23%) to earn tenure after more than seven years.
• 65% of faculty overall said the tenure system was very valuable. 

Overall job satisfaction among law faculty is high.

• 74% of law faculty are satisfied or very satisfied with their current positions
• A smaller proportion of faculty who selected other responses (63%) report being satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs, than women (75%) and men (77%).
• Faculty at the most (82%) and more selective (75%) institutions report greater satisfaction (satisfied or very satisfied) than faculty at selective institutions (65%).

Inside Higher Ed, Law Faculty Are More Racially, Gender Diverse Than Ever:

However, first-generation students and graduates of less selective law schools still struggle to break in, according to a new study.