2012 National Survey Results
Association of Legal Writing Directors/ Legal Writing Institute
This report of the results of the 2012 ALWD/LWI national survey of legal writing programs includes data about the operation of legal research and writing programs during the 2011-2012 academic year from 184 North American law schools (183 from the United States and 1 from Canada), representing approximately 92% of the law schools eligible to complete the survey.
As in past years, this report is admittedly a somewhat inexact composite picture of many varied, complex, and unique programs. Nevertheless, the survey results show common practices and trends and provide other valuable information about the current state of legal writing education in American law schools.
The survey report also includes data from prior years for comparison purposes. Please be aware that some year-to-year variations show real changes in legal writing programs, while others merely reflect changes in the respondent group. Please also be aware that the report includes some re-computation of prior years’ reported average values. Finally, please note that this year’s report again includes median values for most of the salary data. We have chosen to include median values to more accurately reflect salaries in various categories, since median values are less susceptible to skew based on a few extraordinarily high or low salaries in a category.
Once again, we thank all who participated in this year’s survey. Your time and effort are valuable to all of us.
George Mader and Marci Rosenthal
Survey Committee Co-Chairs