National Legal Masters Association
2025-2027 Strategic Plan
Mission
The National Legal Masters Association advances the role and recognition of legal masters programs by supporting law schools, employers, and graduates, while partnering with academia, industry and the legal profession to enhance the contributions of legal master’s degree holders to the U.S. legal system.
Goal #1: Raise the profile of legal masters degrees in the United States.
Strategy #1: Build awareness campaigns through collaborative campaign on national advertising, social media, Reddit discussion threads, conferences, speakers, and coordinated platforms.
Strategy#2: Engage celebrity spokespeople who can help spread the message about legal masters degrees.
Strategy#3: Engage with the CLEAR commission and state supreme courts to describe and promote legal masters programs, and collaborate on initiatives that raise the profile of legal masters degrees.
Goal #2: Invite and Facilitate collaboration between law schools, faculty and program managers to collaborate on the development, delivery and recognition of legal masters degrees.
Strategy #1: Coordinate a discrete list of cooperative and distinct focuses with the new AALS Section on Legal Masters Degrees.
Strategy #2: Develop and distribute core competency-based outcomes for discussion and review, with input from graduates and employers (see goals #3 and #4, below).
Strategy #3: Develop OPM/vendor recommended considerations checklist for law school reference when seeking external program assistance.
Goal #3: Explore the interest, needs, and collective goals of legal masters program students and graduates.
Strategy #1: Convene focus groups of enrolled graduate students across multiple institutions, at both the general and specialized level, to explore the interests, needs, and possible engagement of enrolled students.
Strategy #2: Convene focus groups of graduates across multiple institutions, at both the general and specialization level, to explore interests, needs, and the availability of leaders among those populations.
Strategy #3: Explore existing graduate identity across programs and specializations, and where professional identity development might benefit from support.
Goal #4: Explore the interest, needs and awareness of legal masters program graduate employers and potential employers.
Strategy #1: Survey known employers on their awareness of the degree, as well as their interests, needs, and expectations for non-lawyer legal assistance, and for masters-level hires.
Strategy #2: Survey engaged employment experts, vendors and marketing personnel on perceived gaps in market education and penetration.
Goal #5: Meet and identify areas of collaboration with groups and organizations engaged in legal education, professional development of the legal profession.
Strategy #1: Engage and collaborate with law-school focused groups, including LSAC, ACCESS Lex, AALS in collaborative discussion and program building and the American Bar Association's Section for Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
Strategy #2: Create communication channels with groups representing the legal industry, including the IAALS, CLEAR commission, the larger ABA, affiliated legal practitioner programs, justice workers network and affiliated organizations, as well as parallel specialization training programs (e.g., HR programs within business schools).
Goal #6: Build and maintain a resilient, valuable and sustainable organization.
Strategy #1: Create stable funding streams that are appropriately scaled to the organization’s activities.
Strategy #2: Build a collaborative, forward-looking, perpetual board of directors and sustaining Steering/Advisory committee.
Strategy #3: Create strong processes, accounting, conflict checks, oversight, and annual reporting calendars and responsibilities.
Strategy #4: Explore potential funded strategies to support the organization, law school programs, and all groups in their endeavors.