The importance of commonality and difference in global legal education communities

Abstract

The forces of globalization and related flows of international students have transformed legal education. For law schools, grounded by the geography of law, being viewed as a global space adds an important reputational dimension. These global reputations have not been interrogated in depth, at least in part because it has been impossible to assess the international identities of students at particular schools. This is an important missing element: it explains which vantage points are prominent during class discussions, where a law school is likely to have and develop relationships with foreign universities, and from which countries future students are most likely to come. This article uses newly available data about the national identities of students to provide an overview of who is studying in the United States and where they are doing so. We analyze these student communities from two perspectives, each at the law school level: first, students from the same home country who connect around this commonality, and second, students from the same law school cohort but diverse home countries who coalesce around their experiences at that law school.  By focusing our analysis on the level of an individual law school, we can provide insight into the distinctive nature of law school global identities.