Association of American Law Schools (AALS)
The AALS was formed in 1900 by 32, educationally focused, legal institutions (“Association of American Law Schools”). During this time in history, a lawyer was not required to obtain a legal education in order to practice law. Typically, lawyers only had to do an apprenticeship or pass a state qualifying exam, also known as a Bar exam. The AALS sought to increase these minimum requirements, by requiring lawyers to graduate from an accredited institution before being allowed to practice law. Slowly, the AALS successfully achieved this goal, and by the 1960s all states required students to graduate from a national, or state accredited institution (“Association of American Law Schools”). Currently, the AALS represents over 172 law schools and 10,000 faculty members in the United States; and maintains the same premise of improving the practice of law through legal education (“Association of American Law Schools”).
In furtherance of their goals, the AALS conducts, and promotes research on items that affect legal education and the legal profession. One report sponsored by the AALS was how the public sector, of the legal profession, could be affected by increases in tuition for law students (Field, 2002). AALS’ concern was that without tuition waivers or scholarships available to students, most students would not enter the public sector legal field. In turn, a reduction in staff for this section could be detrimental to the practice of law, and to socio-economic classes, which rely on the public sector for legal support. AALS believed students with large student loan debts would be forced to enter the private sector due to the pay disparities between the public and private sector. Therefore, the AALS co-sponsored a report which studied this concern.
Dr. Erica Field, currently an Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard University, studied four years of law student admission data, financial aid support, and matriculation employment to achieve her results. Field used New York University’s College of Law as her testing assessment. Upon analysis of all NYU financial awards, exit interviews, and job acceptances Field discovered that the greater the financial aid award the greater the likelihood a student would entering the public legal sector (Field, 2002). The results were similar to a seesaw. As one side increased, the other side decreased in nature. After Field’s results, the AALS, similar to the AAU, advocated for greater financial aid packages to low and middle-income students, but also for anyone who would be interested in pursuing a career in the public sector. Since AALS’ call to action, a number of prominent law schools have implemented tuition forgiveness programs for select students who commit to a certain amount of years in the public sector. Additionally, numerous state and federal departments utilize loan forgiveness programs to entice and encourage gainful employment of lawyers in the public sector.
In conclusion, if not for the AALS’ call to arms, the public legal sector might have been irreparably damaged. However, thousands of legal students are now able to attend law school without having to worry about insurmountable student loans.
References:
Association of American Law Schools. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2011, from Association of American Law Schools website, http://www.aals.org/index.php
Field, E. (2002). Educational Debt Burden and Career Choice: Evidence from a Financial Aid Experiment at NYU Law School (IR Working Paper #469). Retrieved October 16, 2011, from http://www.aals.org/reports/education/index.php.
