Law schools don't exactly have the greatest reputation when it comes to collegiality.

Conventional wisdom—and popular culture—depict law campuses as cutthroat environments where students want classmates to fail so that they can succeed, and hard-nosed professors enjoy making students squirm under pointed questioning.

But a new survey of more than 18,000 law students finds that legal education's bad rap is largely unwarranted. The vast majority of respondents reported positive relationships with both faculty and classmates, despite the stress and anxiety that comes with academics.

More than three-quarters of the surveyed students—76%—reported that their peers are friendly, supportive and help them feel like they belong, according to the most recent Law School Survey of Student Engagement. The same percentage reported positive relationships with faculty members, including interactions with professors in and outside of the classroom. Fully 93% said they believe their professors care about their learning and success, while 83% reported having a mentor they could approach for guidance.

"There's a narrative that's told about law school—of classmates almost pushing each other out of the way to get to the top and succeed," said survey director Meera Deo, who said the high level of positive student relationships reported by respondents is perhaps the survey's most unexpected finding. "Instead, it seems likes students as a whole are bolstering each other and succeeding as a whole in law school."

The Law School Survey of Student Engagement, which is housed in Indiana University's Center for Postsecondary Research, gathers extensive data from law schools about the student experience, focusing on different topics annually. This year's survey included responses from students at 72 campuses. Researchers opted to zero in on student relationships in part to figure out what aspects of the law school experience students enjoy, Deo said. With so much focus of late on rising debt loads and other challenges facing law graduates, they wanted to help pinpoint why the majority of students still report overall satisfaction with their time in law school.

While most students said they have good relationships with classmates, the results varied somewhat by race. Among white respondents, 79% said they have positive relationships with their peers. That figure was 73% among Latinos, 71% among Asians, and 69% among black students. That disparity is not surprising in light of existing research that shows students tend to feel most comfortable with classmates of their own race. The relatively small number of minority students on many law campuses likely contributes to those lower rates of satisfaction with classmates, Deo said.

"There is, as a whole, a greater sense of belonging among students who are in the majority," she said. "Other research certainly indicates that straight, white, male, wealthy students tend to have fewer challenges feeling like they belong or fewer questions about their success."

The survey also found slight differences in how minority students interact with and feel about faculty. Black and Latino students tended to discuss assignments with faculty more often than white and Asian students. (Among black respondents, 65% reported discussing assignments with faculty "very often" or "often," compared with 58% of Latino students, 56% of white students and 53% of Asian students.)

But that added faculty interaction does not correlate to greater positive relationships with faculty among minority students, the researchers found. White students reported the highest rate of positive faculty relationships, at 79%, followed by Latinos at 76%, Asians at 75% and black students at 72%.

In light of those disparities, law schools should encourage faculty to think carefully about not just the amount of time they spend with students in office hours but about the quality of interactions they have with all students, Deo said. Another piece of the puzzle lies in the composition of law faculties, where minorities comprise just 15% of professors, and women of color are a mere 7%.

"We know from existing research that students from all backgrounds tend to gravitate toward faculty of color and women faculty—that they find women faculty of color more accessible, for example," Deo said. "They are the faculty members who tend to be on campus more frequently, for longer days, and tend to set aside long hours to meet with students."

Thus, maintaining a more diverse faculty should help improve student and professor relationships not just for minority students but for the entire student body, she added.

While there are plenty of encouraging findings in the new survey, the results confirm that law school is still a stressful experience, even if student stress and anxiety diminishes over time. Among respondents, 77% said their academic performance is a source of stress, with 76% also saying their academic workload is a stressor. But stress from student competition is not as pervasive and peaks during the first year on campus. Forty-two percent of respondents reported stress from student competition during their first year—a figure that dropped to 24% by the third year.

"The vast majority of students see their classmates as contributing to their positive relationships and increasing their overall sense of belonging in law school," Deo said. "It's not that there is no stress or anxiety, but competition between their classmates does not seem to amplify that stress. They seem to draw on those supportive relationships."