Law school enrollment continues to fall, despite hopes

 Law schools have been having a rough time of things lately. Takers of the LSAT have slumped over the last 5 years, and the numbers - despite what hopes had been - continue to slump.

 The hope was that the slump would be followed by an influx of new students.

But it isn’t happening. The law school, which Parrish leads, saw the number of first-year law students decline 10 percent this school year on top of the nearly 25-percent decline in first-year enrollment it suffered from 2010 to 2013.

A similar story is playing out at most law schools in Indiana and the nation. Enrollment has fallen at the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law at IUPUI and Valparaiso University Law School in northwest Indiana.

Article here (via taxprof blog). 

More ways to cut costs for law schools with declining enrollment

It's been five years since the beginning of the decline in law school enrollment. Law schools have predictably already cut a lot of things out of their programs. But many schools are still looking to cut more costs!

This article has a brief list of what to cut:

• Voluntary Retirements/Voluntary Pay Cuts 
• Cuts to Faculty Research Support
• Cut/Consolidate Administrative Positions
• Reduce the Number of Course Offerings/Mandate More Courses
• Law Library
• International Programs
• Overhead

Number of people taking LSAT drops further

The number of people taking the Law School Admission Test dropped 8.1 percent for the test this fall, compared to the fall test last year, after declining 9.2 percent for the June test.

Those latest figures from the Law School Admission Council indicate a downward trend over the last five years, report TaxProf Blog and the Excess of Democracy Blog. The total number of LSATs administered in June and September/October is 52,745, a drop of 40 percent from the totals for the same test period in 2009.

Article here. (ABA Journal). 

Want to go to law school for less? Get into Wayne State Law School.

Wayne State University Law School is battling a drop in enrollment with a tuition freeze and guaranteed scholarships for every incoming student.

The Detroit law school says in a press release that tuition will be frozen at about $28,000 for all incoming and current students through at least the 2015-16 school year. In addition, the school is guaranteeing scholarships of at least $4,000 annually to all incoming students and offering nearly $1 million in new scholarship opportunities to current students. TaxProf Blog noted coverage in the Detroit Free Press.

Article here (via abajournal). 

Law schools have smallest incoming classes since the 1970s; top schools and scorers buck trend.

Law schools admitted 39,675 first-year students last year, the smallest incoming class since the 1970s.

Article here. 

Bucking the trend are Harvard Law School and students who score high on the Law School Admission Test. More high-scoring students are applying to law school, and applications to Harvard’s law school are up significantly this year, according to the story.

Why the decline in recent LSAT applicants?

Recent years have shown a downward trend to the amount of people applying to law schools and taking the LSAT (law school aptitude test). Why? It's because the recent law grads -- those just out, looking for work, and finding little to no help from their law schools-- feel disaffected and left out. Their advice to others inquiring about a decision to go to law school has been "don't go."

At least that's the theory in this article from Above the Law. 

(hat tip, taxprofblog).

Are law schools heading into a bull market?

The schools of thought are hesitant to say "yes" to this question, but it's a good "maybe."

Article here. (via WSJ law blog, hat tip taxlawprof blog).

The analysis, the writer suggests, is less an endorsement of law school than a recognition of the law of supply and demand.

Says Mr. Weissmann (business reporter at Slate): “The only reason the class of 2016 is looking at a relatively upbeat future is that enough students gave up on the idea of becoming lawyers amid a market that was flooded with jobless young people.”

In other words, the only reason it looks good now is because so many people decided it looked terrible a few years ago.  

Which law schools are cutting their full-time faculty?

In response to lower enrollment, law schools are making cuts to stay afloat. Which law schools are cutting full-time faculty?

Article here.

What does "the new normal" mean to current legal scholarship?

Law schools, and the legal profession, are wondering how to adjust since law school enrollment is steeply declining. There's definitely been a period of adjustment since 2009/10, when enrollment was at its recent high. Law schools are cutting costs by asking faculty to retire, or offering merit-based tuition, and in rare cases, cutting tuition amounts.

But what does this all mean for the current quality of legal scholarship? This article explains more.  (via TaxProf blog).

ABA report on 2012 law grads: about 1/2 have full-time legal work

Barely half of all 2012 law school graduates had full time, long-term legal jobs as of Feb. 15, according to employment outcome data released Friday by the ABA's Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.

Law schools reported that 56.2 percent of 2012 graduates were in jobs requiring bar passage, the figures show. But that's still a slight improvement over last year, when only 54.9 percent of all 2011 graduates had full-time, long-term legal jobs nine months after graduation.

Article here. 

What do law students think of law school?

Via Wall Street Journal's law blog. 

In 2013 nearly two-thirds of students (65%) reported that their schools place “a substantial emphasis” on giving them the support they need to succeed academically, and 68% said they were satisfied with the financial aid advising they received.
  ( . . . )
But students seemed less happy with job search services and career counseling, which were rated unsatisfactory by 43% and 42% of respondents, respectively—not terribly surprising, given the challenging legal job market.

Article here.

Change: More law jobs than law grads by 2016 ?

Is it a good time to apply to law school or not?

With law school enrollment dropping, some say it is only a matter of time before the number of legal jobs exceeds the number of graduates. ...

[D]ifferent law professors can't agree on the date when supply will drop below demand. Paul Young, a law professor at Appalchian ... predicts that full-time legal jobs will exceed the number of law school graduates in 2017.

article here

Good news for prospective law students

Deciding whether or not to enroll in law school is a big decision, with the potential for a lot of debt (and a degree) at the end. (Related: So you think you want to become a lawyer?) So prospective law students often ask: Is it going to be worth it?

In this article, The Economic Value of a Law Degree,

[t]he authors conclude that ”a law degree is associated with a 60 percent median increase in monthly earnings and 50 percent increase in median hourly wages…[and] estimate the mean pre-tax lifetime value of a law degree as approximately $1,000,000.”

See more here. 

WSJ: Is now a good time to apply to law school?

As law school class sizes shrink and the legal job market shows signs of life, some industry observers are wondering whether it’s a smart time to apply to law school. It’s a debate that pits optimists against pessimists, both of whom make good points.

Article here. 

Why now is a good time to apply to law school

From the article:

These comments are addressed to a specific audience: those who think they want to be lawyers some day and are simply not pulling the trigger on applying because of all the bad news. Here’s why I think [the bad news] is a mistake.

article here. 

What has changed in law schools in 25 years, and what hasn't?

The Lawyers, Guns and Money blog posts some feedback about its earlier entry, about law schools losing money.

From the article:

For example, at the University of Michigan, all the traditional first-year classes continue to be taught, and continue to be taught in very large sections, as they were when I was a student there in the mid/late 1980s. First-year students still take Contracts, Property, Torts, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure, and Constitutional Law — exactly the same courses I took as a first-year in 1986. Indeed three of these courses are being taught by the very same professors I had nearly 30 years ago. (The one significant alternation to the first-year curriculum is the addition of a Legislation and Regulation class, as law schools are now beginning to acknowledge that knowing something about the contemporary administrative state may be of more practical relevance than memorizing The Rule In Shelley’s Case.)

full article here. 

Declining LSAT participation numbers - again.

The number of people taking the LSAT (Law School Admissions Test) continues to decline. Article here.

Law School student debt could be even more terrifying in the future

Thinking your student loan repayment is high? Well, be glad your tuition is still not charging, according to this article.Even though enrollment is down, cost remains the same at many law schools. But according to the article, costs will get even higher in the next few years.

Part of the problem in my opinion is that tuition rates change as you're enrolled. So that means what cost you A when you enrolled costs A x2 by the time you graduate. So why can't students only agree to pay the tuition rate they were enrolled at? Sounds fair to me.

Thinking of becoming a lawyer? That means you'll need to apply to a law school

The process of becoming a lawyer is somewhat, um, lengthy.

1. You have to get through undergraduate school. (Some schools will enroll students who haven't finished undergrad, but put lots of requirements on these "provisional" students).

2. You have to take the LSAT and apply to law schools. 

3.  A law school has to accept you. This might be less of a problem right now, since law school enrollment is declining at most schools. Here's an article on the best law schools currently, as evaluated by the Princeton  

4. You have to pass and graduate from law school. This takes maybe 3 years, but could be more, depending on your schedule of classes and the school you go to. (By the way, I hope you like reading: I estimate I spent about 40-50 hours a week reading during some semesters when I was in law school. Not like reading for pleasure, either, but the law-geek part of me thought it was OK most of the time. Especially Criminal Procedure and Constitutional Law, my two favorite subjects). 

5. You are now a juris doctor.

6.  But if you want to practice law you'll have to be licensed, which means applying for (at least one) state's bar exam, passing their Character and Fitness (a lengthy background check), and being admitted to the exam, and then passing the exam. 

7. You can now practice law! Congratulations.