A Recent Bump In Law School Applications

In the past day or two, we've seen a spate of articles and posts highlighting the newest LSAC application data and announcing that law schools are poised for a big drop in applications this year.  It's true that there is new LSAC application data, it's true that as a whole it shows a big drop in applications this year as compared to last year, and it's true that law schools will probably net a much smaller application pool.  

But if news is to be faithful to its name - that is, if news is supposed to be new - these stories are a little late.  We've seen a lot of coverage about the drop in applications over the past month and a half.  And it turns out that, if  you look at the fresh LSAC data,  over the past few weeks there has actually been a comparative uptick in applications. 

As of 1/18/13, total applicants were down 20.1% and applications were down 22.3%.

As of 1/4/13, total applicants were down 22.1% and applications were down 23.8%.

As of 12/7/12, total applicants were down 22.4% and applications were down 24.6%.

This fall's entering class of law students will inevitably be both smaller and statistically weaker than last fall's class.  There is an earthquake going on in legal education.  But the most recent data from LSAC  didn't break any fresh ground; the only thing new was that the decline is slightly less pronounced now than a was a month and a half ago.  

While this year's drop is dramatic, I'm surprised at how few people have been talking about the longer term story of law school applications: with the exception of two years (2009 and 2010), the number of law school applicants has dropped every year since a high of 100,600 in 2004.  This chart tells that story graphically.  If you take a look here, you discover that the big pool in 2004 was the cap to a dramatic 33% spike in applicants: only four years earlier, in 2000, there were a total 74,600 applicants - roughly halfway between the 2011 and 2012 applicant pools.

Comments

[Brian Tamanaha]

A chart in Failing Law Schools going back to 1990 (p. 161) shows that the number of law school applicants has cycled up and down twice in the past two decades (and again in the 1980s, though not in the chart). An earlier peak of 100,000 applicants was reached in 1991, which then declined until it bottomed out in the late 1900s, then began to rise again until the 2004 peak. This rise and fall correlates with the unemployment rate--as the unemployment rate rises, law school applicants increase, and vice versa.

The huge leap in unemployment that marked the great recession, however, produced only a small bump in the number of applicants (2009 and 2010), followed by a renewed decline as the economy improved. What we cannot know is whether this pattern will continue. But it does suggest that the number of applicants will remain suppressed if the general unemployment rate goes down.

[tony smith]

Thanks for posting the longterm data. I have been wanting to look at this. Why haven't others talked about it: 1. I was unable to pull the longterm data when I tried yesterday; 2. People do not believe in context.