At a recent LSSSE webinar, one insightful participant wondered whether the trend younger law students that we outlined in our recent annual report might be related to a corresponding ongoing decline in relationships with administrative staff. In this blog post, we will explore the relationship between law school student age and quality of their relationships with law school faculty and staff.
Law students generally enjoy satisfying relationships with others at their law school. LSSSE respondents are asked to rate their relationships with other students, law school faculty, and law school administrative staff on a 7-point scale. We consider a rating of 5 or higher to be a positive relationship. Typically, law students are most highly satisfied with their relationships with each other, followed by their relationships with faculty, and finally they tend to be least satisfied with relationships with law school staff.
There is much less variability by age in the percentage of students with strong relationships with faculty compared to the percentage of students with strong relationships with staff. In other words, most students have strong relationships with faculty, but certain age groups of students are more likely to have strong relationships with staff than others. The hypothesis about student age and quality of relationships with staff seems to be mostly supported. The oldest students (those over age 40) are most likely to have strong relationships with administrative staff. Students in the 23-30 range are the least likely to have strong relationships with administrative staff, and students in their thirties fall in between. Most age groups have showed a decline in recent years, and it doesn’t appear that any age group has experienced a more precipitous decline than the others. The one notable exception is the youngest group of students—those under the age of 23. These students have been more likely to be satisfied with their relationships with staff in recent years, nearly reaching the same levels as the over 40 group in 2024.
Overall, students are much more likely to have strong relationships with faculty than with administrative staff, which makes sense given that students are likely to work more closely with faculty and see them more often. However, parsing the relationship data by age shows the same general pattern: the oldest students are most likely to have strong relationships, the youngest students are the least likely, and the middle group falls somewhere in between. In this instance, the 22 and under group appears nearly indistinguishable from students in their thirties in recent years.
Age clearly matters at least to some degree when it comes to the quality of student/faculty and student/staff interactions. Older students tend to be satisfied with their relationships compared to younger students. This suggests that law schools might consider how they are facilitating the formation of these relationships and what tweaks might bring younger students into closer, more meaningful relationships with law school faculty and staff.