Law students report high satisfaction with career, academic advising, new report finds
Law students tend to initiate support from career and academic advisers, and most are satisfied with those services, according to a report released Thursday from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement.
Advising services are available when needed, 73% of students said, with 71% happy with the academic advising, and 69% with career counseling that they received, according to the report.
Still, 41% received no academic counseling, and 28% didn’t have career advising during the past academic year, the study found; while 29% had only one academic advising session, and 30% had just one career advising meeting in the past year.
Of the types of advising, career advising seems to be a priority, as students are nearly twice as likely to have three or more career advising conversations as academic advising sessions, 23% compared to 12%.
Students, not advisers, are far more likely to start these conversations. Just 16% of students said their academic advisers reach out often or very often, while 44% said these advisers did not reach out at all in the past year. Career advisers, however, are more likely to contact students, with 39% reporting frequent outreach but 20% noting that career services professionals did not reach out over the past year.
The report found that students have different access to support at different times in their law school career, with 78% of 1Ls saying support is available when needed, compared with 70% of 2Ls and 71% of 3Ls. And the need for career advisers decreases from 73% among first-year students to 46% among third-year students, as the need for informal mentoring relationships grows over time.
The study found that 16% of first-generation college students did not seek career advice during the past year, compared with 10% of those whose parents did attend college.
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