Institutional Affiliations of AALS Annual Meeting Speakers

Trying to find the panel on which one of my colleagues was speaking, I discovered that one can use the AALS conference app to search de facto for speakers by institutional affiliation, instead of by name. After thinking and writing yesterday about folks making multiple appearances on conference panels (see here), I wondered what schools provide the most speakers for the AALS Annual Meeting. My guess was that results would vary based on geography, budgets and faculty culture.

I searched the conference program for appearances by speakers affiliated with law schools in two groups: (a) the top 50 schools law schools identified by Brian Leiter in his study (here) of "Top 70 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact, 2007-2011;" and (b) those schools that have joined the AALS since 1980 that do not appear in the top 50 on the Leiter list. I could have done a search by all AALS member schools, but even my procrastination techniques have their limits!

Here are the schools with the number of speakers from the AALS 2015 Annual Meeting Program:

2015 AALS Speakers from Leiter Law School Reports Top 50 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact, 2007-2011

Leiter Ranking	School	# Speakers
1	Yale University	12
2	Harvard University	14
3	University of Chicago	3
4	Stanford University	8
5	New York University	6
6	Columbia University	5
7	University of California, Irvine	7
8	Vanderbilt University	5
9	Cornell University	3
10	University of California, Berkeley	12
11	Duke University	4
	University of Pennsylvania	3
13	Northwestern University	5
14	University of California, Los Angeles	9
15	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	3
16	George Washington University	18
	University of Virginia	4
18	Georgetown University	31
19	University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul	9
	University of Texas, Austin	8
21	Boston University	3
	George Mason University	3
23	University of California, Davis	7
24	University of Southern California	3
	Yeshiva University, Cardozo Law School	5
26	Emory University	5
	Washington U University, St. Louis	6
28	University of Colorado, Boulder	5
	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	2
30	Ohio State University	5
	University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)	1
	Washington & Lee University	3
33	Florida State University	6
	Hofstra University	1
	Indiana University, Bloomington	10
	University of Arizona	0
	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	10
38	Case Western Reserve University	2
	University of California, Hastings	4
	University of Notre Dame	2
41	Brooklyn Law School	6
	College of William & Mary	5
43	Fordham University	5
	University of Maryland, Baltimore	8
45	University of Houston	7
	University of Nevada, Las Vegas	3
47	American University	20
	University of Alabama	0
	University of Iowa	4
	University of Pittsburgh	3
	University of Utah	5
	TOTAL	318

AALS 2015 Annual Meeting Speakers from New Member Schools Not in Leiter Top 50

Name of School (Year Joined AALS)	# speakers
University of Baltimore School of Law (AALS, 1988)	3
Chapman University School of Law (AALS, 2006)	3
City University of New York School of Law (AALS, 2008)	3
Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law (AALS, 2012)	3
Florida International University College of Law (AALS, 2009)	3
Georgia State University College of Law (AALS, 1995)	1
University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law (AALS, 1989)	2
The University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law (AALS, 2001)	0
Mississippi College School of Law (AALS, 1990)	2
New England Law \| Boston (AALS, 1998)	0
University of New Hampshire School of Law (AALS, 2014)	3
North Carolina Central University School of Law (AALS, 2012)	1
Northern Illinois University College of Law (AALS, 1985)	0
Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center (AALS, 1989)	1
Oklahoma City University School of Law (AALS, 2003)	1
Quinnipiac University School of Law (AALS, 1985)	1
Roger Williams University School of Law (AALS, 2006)	2
Saint Thomas University School of Law (AALS, 2001)	3
Southern University Law Center (AALS, 2011))	0
South Texas College of Law (AALS, 1998)	1
Texas Southern University, Thurgood Marshall School of Law (AALS, 2014)	3
Texas A&M University School of Law (AALS, 2012)	4
Thomas Jefferson School of Law (AALS, 2008)	4
Western New England University School of Law (AALS, 1981)	2
Whittier Law School (AALS, 1987)	1
Widener University School of Law (AALS, 1987)	1
TOTAL	48

By presenting this information, I do not mean to suggest the wisdom of ranking of schools by number of speakers supplied to the AALS Annual Meeting. What I wonder, though, is whether the numbers suggest anything *other* than differences in school cultures — i.e., that some faculties highly value AALS attendance and participation; others do not. In terms of geography, I had assumed that D.C.-area schools would supply a disproportionate number of speakers, based on the conference location this year, but apart from Georgetown, GW and American, my assumption appears to be incorrect. For those who think the current system for selecting speakers for AALS panels yields the "best" (however defined) speakers, does the school-based data add anything to the analysis? It may be that the results are purely descriptive. For whatever it's worth, the AALS panels generally are not populated with more than one speaker per school (and there may be a rule prohibiting that; I don't know).

2 Comments

Michael Risch


January 5, 2015, 2:11 pm

Other considerations: faculty size (probably larger at the top schools), budgets for travel (shrinking many places, making AALS a luxury regardless of "culture").
Jim Greif


January 6, 2015, 2:29 pm

Thanks for your post. Quite an interesting use of the data provided by the AALS Annual Meeting app!

Just wanted to clarify or elaborate on a couple items.

Most programs at the Annual Meeting are planned by sections—and the faculty in those sections select most of the speakers, as opposed to AALS as an organization.

Also, as you suggest at the end of the post, there is an AALS rule that generally there should not be more than one speaker from a school on a panel.

As the sections plan their programming, AALS encourages sections to pick at least some speakers through a call for papers process and conduct a "blind review" so speakers can be selected on their merits rather than by the ranking of their school.

Thanks for attending the meeting and we're already looking forward to New York in 2016.

Thank you for your feedback on the meeting and mobile app as well.

Take care,

James Greif | Director of Communications
Association of American Law Schools

2 Comments

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