Forging appealing identities in complex environments: a case study of American law schools

Abstract

Competition has intensified substantially within the American law school sector in recent decades. Scholars note that this has augmented pressures to engage in institutional self-promotion, as law schools attempt to distinguish themselves within a severely over-crowded marketplace. To date, however, few have ventured to empirically examine the promotional behavior of law schools. This study takes a first step towards correcting this oversight within the existing literature, by analyzing the web page content of 204 law schools approved by the American Bar Association. It finds that these actors engage in varied promotional techniques that align with the interests of several distinct stakeholders within their environments. These trends are conceptualized through the lens of contemporary theorizing within the field of organization studies.

Keywords:

• Marketing
• institutional environments
• law schools
• mixed-methods