Issued as a numbered part of the University of Arizona Record: Vol. LXXII, No. 5

Issued as a numbered part of the University of Arizona Record: Vol. LXXIV, No. 7

Issued as a numbered part of the University of Arizona Record: Vol. LXIX, No. 3

Issued as a numbered part of the University of Arizona Record: Vol. LXX, No. 3

Issued as a numbered part of the University of Arizona Record: Vol. LXXVI, No. 6

Issued as a numbered part of the University of Arizona Record: Vol. LXXIX, No. 4

Past higher education fund-raising studies examining alumni giving across several institutions have had two main limitations. First, the multitude of independent variables used in these studies has made it difficult to determine whether past studies have discovered many different factors that influence levels of alumni gift revenue, or whether they have discovered a few common factors that have been represented by different sets of variables in each study. Second, past studies have failed to adequately describe causal mechanisms through which variables significantly related to gift revenue influence levels of gift revenue. The current study addresses the aforementioned limitations in creating an aggregate model of donor behavior for law school alumni. The study examines alumni giving at 41 ABA-approved law schools. The results indicate that four basic factors account for most (87 percent) of the variance in amounts of alumni annual fund revenue among different law schools. The four factors, listed in order of importance and shown with the variables that load highly on each factor, are the following: Factor l--"Institutional Quality" (variables are average LSAT scores of accepted law students; reputation of law school among professors at other law schools; reputation of law school's graduates among judges and practicing lawyers; average starting salaries of new graduates of the law school; total number of volumes in law library; number of volumes in law library divided by FTE enrollment;). Factor 2--"Institutional Size" (variables are: FTE law school enrollment; number of living law school alumni; number of FTE law faculty; total number of law school advancement staff people). Factor 3--"Relative Advancement Effort" (variables are: number of law school advancement staff people divided by number of living law school alumni; number of law school reunion classes solicited for special gifts each year). Factor 4--"Institutional Age" (variables are: age of law school; age of law school's parent institution). Differences between the factor structures for public and private law schools are examined. The study suggests possible causal mechanisms through which these four factors influence the amount of alumni gift revenue raised by each law school.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, School of Hisotircal Studies, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-252)

This applied dissertation was designed to determine the variations in law school deans’ conceptions of distance education (DE) as an educational model within the American Bar Association (ABA) accredited law school. Currently, not a single ABA-accredited law school offers a plan of study for completion of a Juris Doctor (JD) degree utilizing the DE educational model. The law school dean is an essential opinion leader providing leadership for all stakeholders of the law school. Gaining a better understanding of law school deans’ perceptions towards DE is critical if DE is to become an accepted educational model in ABA-accredited legal education. Nineteen deans of ABA-accredited law schools from every region of the country were interviewed. The phenomenographic qualitative approach was utilized in the study, which seeks to explain variation in understanding a phenomenon among a set of participants. In phenomenographic research, all interviews are transcribed verbatim, and the transcripts became the central focal point of analysis in the investigation. The participants were treated as a group, and the goal of the data analysis was to identify variations in the phenomenon across the group, not between individual participants in the group. The construction approach was used to develop the categories of description. As a theoretical framework, Rogers’s perceived attributes theory was used to develop the categories of description in the analysis of the verbatim transcripts. The findings indicated that the variation in conceptions of ABA-accredited law school deans towards DE could be determined by the 5 constructs of Rogers’s perceived attributes theory: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.

"Forum conveniens serves as a forum for news, opinions, ideas, and especially whinings of the Law School community." --Masthead from Vol. 1, No. 1.