LSAC Data and Predicting Number of Applicants for Fall 2015, Part 13

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 3/20/15, there are 291,241 fall 2015 applications submitted by 43,197 applicants. Applicants are down 2.9% and applications are down 5.6% from 2014." If this year's applicants follow last year's pattern, there will be approximately 52,679 applicants this year.  The last post in this series is here.

Comments

[confused by your post]

As some here have predicted, admissions offices have adapted to the drop in applicants. They are getting better at attracting applicants much later in the yearly cycle. I believe this will be a continuing trend where much more time, money and effort will be spent to attract "late applicants" and where higher and higher percentages of total applicants apply late in the cycle.

[JM]

Still, not only is this year on track to have the lowest number of applicants in 35 years or so, but it has to be the ugliest talent distribution in history. The negative effects of taking on these late-season drifters (i.e. bar failure, unemployment, damage to school reputation) will ultimately outweigh the money that schools manage to suck out of them.

[anon]

Applicants are down "only" 3%

Once supposes that, in any year other than one that follows such dramatic year over year decreases, this drop would be viewed with at least some concern.

Is this slowing of the decrease grounds for celebration? Have we reached the low point, with nothing but sunny skies ahead (e.g., no further decreases and perhaps increasing numbers of applicants)?

Maybe this really is the "BEST TIME" to go to law school after all!!!

[Justin]

If this is the bottom, then the concern is whether this is the new normal. How many law schools can survive with only 52,000 applicants? I'm guessing a lot can't.

[anon]

The 100 highest ranked law schools will likely admit how many?

How many applicants scored over 150 on the LSAT?

Not hard to figure out the profile of the incoming classes in the "alphabetized" law schools, especially those known, despite hiding behind a "no ranking" veneer, to be at the very bottom on nearly every measure of performance.

[Anon]

It looks like things have finally stabilized. I think we'll now see law schools making some real reform to teaching and their career placement efforts.

[anon]

Anon

Presuming you are serious, why should they?

Everything is fine!

Enrollment is stabilizing, the job market is booming, S&M have taught us that a JD is worth a MILLION DOLLAR premium over an undergraduate degree and that BLS (and other?) labor economists don't know what they are talking about!

Now is the BEST TIME to enroll, right Anon?

What needs to change? Everything is rosy.

[anon]

The decline is over!! Our phony baloney jobs are safe!! Take that you scambloggers!

[anon]

anon at 11:24

YOu forgot to capitalize!

You've got the sentiment correct, but the sort of weak attempt at sarcasm is a tell.

You need to add the customary snarl, with a real big dose of quite obvious anger and paranoia, to make that sort of comment ring true to form.

Try this:

"Scambloggers will be disappointed to learn that the rate of decrease in appplicants, year over year, is slowing. The most recent numbers show a decline of only 3%. Combined with the recent work of S&M definitely showing there has been no decline in legal employment, one would think that these miscreants would be silenced, until one is reminded that these cyber-cretins don't care about facts and would rather remain unemployed and bitter, wasting their time attacking law faculty on this site."

[anon]

Yes, the posters on this and other sites are not a representative sample. They have too much time on their hands, for whatever the reason, and are quite disgruntled.

[spanky]

Can't wait to read the faculty posts complaining about the quality of students.

[terry malloy]

"or whatever the reason, and are quite disgruntled."

The life altering changes hundreds of thousands of dollars of non-dischargable debt causes to a person's finances and mental health are the cause of many. The $143,000 I owed certainly turned me into Madame Defarge.

Rule no. 1 in business: don't make your customers hate you. They will tell your prospective customers, and then you are out of business.

If the federal grad plus loan program goes away, all but the top 50ish law schools would fold like a cheap card table (with the exception of some decent small bore low cost schools such as CUNY). Those diploma mill law schools deserve to die, and I hope they burn in hell.

[Jojo]

anon,

I believe that law schools and law professors have lost their way, and have done so in the last generation. All the great and the good celebrated by Mr. Feldman in his recent opinion piece used to be quietly believed and also practiced by most law faculty. Now, it appears that law schools do not care about their students a whip and view teaching as a burden, and scholarship as some divine right to engage in funded public intellectualism in whatever field strikes an immediate fancy.

I've seen too much carnage among young lawyers, and too much damage caused by overly stressed, under paid, under trained counsel. I believe that the law schools directly and indirectly are responsible for much of this and for the sad state of a very important profession. I think law school could be great, but it has to get its act together first, and cut students, cut costs, and cut debts.

[anon]

anon | March 25, 2015 at 02:35 AM

You seem to find plenty of time to grace these threads with your wisdom. Other threads too, right? And, if your name is mentioned, what then?

[Anon]

JoJo writes: "I believe that the law schools directly and indirectly are responsible for much of this and for the sad state of a very important profession."

No doubt a sincerely held view yet one that could not be heard in the boom periods of the last 20 years.

[anon]

Anon

YOu are woefully uninformed.

[John Thompson]

@Anon/5:25 p.m.:

During those boom periods, there wasn't a critical mass of angry law graduates meeting the Internet in numbers sufficient to give pause to your prospective students, nor were there changes in how employment was reported to expose the holes in the idea that every JD is a lawyer unless they choose to be something even more awesome than that.

[Anon]

anon-I am particularly uninformed about a single instance when any of so-called "critics nouveau" spoke a single word about the problems of law schools in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007.....please enlighten me.

[anon]

Anon

No thanks. I don't intend to expend any further effort to address your "proposition" (to state the matter charitably).

It is called "google."

Try it, you'll like it!

I'll wait for your next whopper to chime in.

Fun!

[anon]

Just to be clear, JoJo stated:

"I've seen too much carnage among young lawyers, and too much damage caused by overly stressed, under paid, under trained counsel. I believe that the law schools directly and indirectly are responsible for much of this and for the sad state of a very important profession."

Anon thinks that "not a single word" of this critique (or, one supposes, any other of the critiques JoJo mentioned, or any other criticism of legal education and scholarship) was heard prior to 2008.

Bravo, Anon! Your comment will join the ranks of "BEST TIME EVER" and any comment that begins "S&M have shown ..."