Data Big and Small: Challenges and Opportunities for Law Schools

Law schools are awash with data of all types, from grades to student demographics to bar and employment statistics to fundraising to salaries, which (when effectively used) can offer great insight into how a school does, and should, operate. Even while law schools begin to seek ways to utilize these data to improve results and reputation and are responding to growing demands for transparency from applicants and accreditation bodies, they face a number of challenges. Institutional inertia, legal requirements (FERPA, privacy policies, and others), and severe lack of financial and technological resources all hamper effective data collection, management and analysis. Further, much of this information either is ignored, or collected only in departmental silos from which it may be infrequently and inefficiently shared with peers and the outside community.
This session will address and provide best practices on both the challenges and opportunities of data collection and use by law schools, including:

• The legal and practical restrictions on collecting and sharing student and other information;
• Free and low-cost data analytics tools (including discount or zero-cost educational licenses for Salesforce);
• Ways to allay concerns and obtain faculty and administration buy-in; and
• How better use of data can help alleviate the current existential crisis in legal education.