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June 10, 2014

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anon

Enrollment for Fall 2014 begins in a couple of months.

Will schools be accepting right up until the day before classes commence?

Anon123

If they bring a check, yes

anon

Are the 6% of applicants that are anticipated to come in between now and August - well after deadlines, and just weeks before the semester begins - thought to be the BEST qualified applicants, shopping for better deals?

Will that be the spin?

Right now, schools are parsing out 51,570 applicants: a very low number based on earlier threads and estimates.

Steven Freedman (KU Law)

Folks, relax on the subject of late admits. Long before the recent downturn in the market, it has become relatively common for law schools to consider late applications. It could be an outstanding last minute candidate, or maybe the school is under-enrolled. I'm sure the practice has increased in the past few years, but this is nothing new. Not every school does it, but most law schools I'm familiar with do.

Full disclosure, last year we admitted several students from the June LSAT. This year it looks like we're slightly over-enrolled, so we are not likely to make any additional offers. And before people cry foul, we're not being duplicitous as we explicitly describe our deadline as a "priority" deadline, meaning we may consider applications received after the deadline.

JM

Ok, so applicants will be down 8% this year. No real news here.

The big question is what happens next year. The legal market has been stable for a couple years now, so that won't explain any addition decline in applicants.

Personally, I think the real issue is student debt. Even if prospectives are confident that they will get legal jobs post-graduation, they will still continue to be scared off by the debt they will incur in law school. This issue continues to get more publicity, which can certainly affect application numbers.

I'm predicting another decline in applicants of 5-10% next year, and probably for a few years thereafter.

BoredJD

"Personally, I think the real issue is student debt. Even if prospectives are confident that they will get legal jobs post-graduation, they will still continue to be scared off by the debt they will incur in law school. This issue continues to get more publicity, which can certainly affect application numbers."

There are two problems with the debt/salary. First, prospective students are terrible at calculating real COA, taking into account the fees and accrued interest and cost of bar exam prep materials. High-debt student borrowers have startlingly poor financial literacy: http://www.nera.com/nera-files/PUB_Student_Loans_0312.pdf

My own observation is that even if the borrower knows the black and white terms of their loan repayment and amount borrowed, they do not actually understand what it's like to live with 150K or 200K of debt.

Second, accurate salary information is still hard to come by. This problem is always going to exist because the vast majority of salary information has to be self-reported, and self-reporting rates are much lower. Schools can get salary info from sources like NALP or government websites, but this tends to favor the higher paying jobs. We who are glued to NALP reports know that median private sector entry-level legal salaries are mostly within 45-60K band, but prospective students assume they are much higher. 150K on an (assumed) 95K salary looks a lot better to an applicant than 150K on a 55K salary.

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