The 2024 LSSSE annual report 20 Years of LSSSE is now available on the LSSSE website. Our previous post examined trends in law student demographics. In this post, we will share some trends in student support services, both in terms of satisfaction with formal law school student services offices and relationships with faculty and staff.
A large part of overall student satisfaction with law school is likely due to strong bonds with others on campus. Student relationships with faculty and classmates have been compellingly positive over the past twenty years. Throughout the past two decades, over three-quarters (76-81%) of law students have consistently rated their relationships with classmates as five or higher on a seven-point scale. Peer relationships are the only ones to have remained in 2024 at the high levels of 2019, showing these bonds quickly recovered from any potential pandemic-related decline. Students also report strong bonds with professors. Roughly three-quarters (73-78%) of LSSSE respondents from 2004 to 2024 have rated relationships with faculty as positive, measured as five or higher on a seven-point scale. Though the current 73% of students reporting strong relationships with their professors is slightly down from 2019 levels (76%), it nevertheless remains high. Relationships between students and staff, on the other hand, are more concerning. From 2004 to 2019, roughly two-thirds (65-68%) of law students reported positive relationships with staff; in 2024, this figure dropped to 59%. While student-staff connections have never been as strong as those between students and faculty or students with peers, those reported in 2024 are the lowest ever recorded, revealing room for significant improvement in these relations post-pandemic.
Because staff have many opportunities to interact with students in response to various issues, each contact provides an opportunity to strengthen bonds between them. Between 2004 (61%) and 2019 (71%), there were steady increases in satisfaction with academic advising; however, the percentage of law students reporting they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” dropped to 64% in 2024. Whether due to COVID-19 or other reasons, student satisfaction with academic advising declined over the past five years, instead of continuing the steady progress it enjoyed through 2019. Because the percentage of students using academic advising remains particularly high (90-94% in the past decade), positive interactions with academic advising staff could be instrumental in improving student-staff relationships overall.
Most students also partake in advising opportunities with career services staff, including 87-92% of all students over the past twenty years. Though only half (51%) of students were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with career counseling in 2004, that percentage also steadily increased over time for fifteen years through 2019. However, as with other staff services, the upward trend has stopped, with current student satisfaction with career counseling (64%) matching 2014 levels, down from 69% five years ago.
Satisfaction with personal counseling sessions also enjoyed incremental increases over time for fifteen years, from a low of 57% in 2004 to 65-67% in 2009 and 2014, to a high of 68% in 2019. Troublingly, satisfaction has dropped significantly in the past five years, down to only 60% of students who are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the personal counseling they receive. Although the myriad challenges of the pandemic and other upheavals in legal education and society writ large may suggest personal counseling is all the more necessary for law students today, only 60% used these services in 2024 (another drop from 68% who sought personal counseling in 2019).
Students also reported lower levels of satisfaction with job search help in 2024 than they did in 2019, with only 61% reporting they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with these services. Again, this reveals a break in the trend of increasing satisfaction with job search help from 2004 (49%) through 2019 (66%). The good news is that roughly the same percentage of students (83-85%) over the past decade have sought assistance with their job search; thus, opportunities remain to improve these interactions over time.
For more information on how the law student experience has changed over time, including overall satisfaction and trends in student debt, please visit the LSSSE website to read the entire report.