Welcome back to Ahead of the Curve. I'm Karen Sloan, legal education editor at Law.com, and I'll be your host for this weekly look at innovation and notable developments in legal education.

This week, I'm chatting with AccessLex Institute's research director Tiffane Cochran about the organization's new Legal Education Data Deck, and what it tells us about law school affordability and student diversity. There's a lot to unpack in this new trove of data. Next up is a look at how law schools should respond to the wave of attorneys seeking to delegitimize the results of the presidential election both in courtrooms and in the court of public opinion. Read on and stay safe!

Please share your thoughts and feedback with me at [email protected] or on Twitter: @KarenSloanNLJ


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Legal Education: By the Numbers

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which is one of the reasons I look forward each year to the release of AccessLex Institute's Legal Education Data Deck. For the uninitiated, the data deck pulls together the latest figures on law school applications and enrollment, diversity, affordability, bar pass rates, and legal employments using information from the American Bar Association, the National Association of Law Placement (NALP), the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), and the U.S. Department of Education. It's nearly 40 pages of easy-to-digest charts that offers an expansive look at how legal education is doing. The data isn't necessarily new—I've reported on many of the data points as they've been released over the course of the year, for instance—yet seeing it all packaged together always helps me get a fuller sense of where law schools are doing well and where they are falling short. After perusing this year's entry, I hopped on the phone with Tiffane Cochran, the director of research at AccessLex, to get her take on the purpose of the data deck and what this year's numbers tell us.