LSAC Data and Predicting Number of Applicants for Fall 2015, Part 14

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 4/03/15, there are 308,871 fall 2015 applications submitted by 45,978 applicants. Applicants are down 2.8% and applications are down 5.0% from 2014.  Last year at this time, we had 87% of the preliminary final applicant count." If this year's applicants follow last year's pattern, there will be approximately 52,848 applicants this year.  The last post in this series is here.

Now that we're into April I think we can predict with some certainty that there will be a small decline in the applicants to law schools for fall 2015 over fall 2014.  The National Law Journal published Karen Sloan's story about declining enrollment at law schools on March 16.  In that story I went on record saying that I thought that we'd continue to see a decline in applications after 2015.  Yet, I imagine we're close to the bottom in applicants.  Perhaps there will be some further decline for fall 2016 -- it's hard to know that yet.   Some years ago I thought that 35,000 first year students would be about the low.  We're likely to be a few thousand above that in fall 2015.

On a related note, on March 25 the Indiana Lawyer ran a story about the U.S. News rankings.

Comments

[PaulB]

The pattern of smaller declines as the year goes on continues, as it has for the entire period of the great decline in applicants. This means that the applicant pool has become increasingly back loaded, year After year, almost certainly with low quality applicants who apply to schools with no closing date for applying. With almost all schools lowering their admissions standards to whatever is needed to fill up a class and meet budget projections, you have to wonder if the next big shock to the system will have to be a huge number of students incapable of passing classes, or if schools pass them anyways, face the impossibility of passing the bar exam.

[Observer]

"face the impossibility of passing the bar exam."

That's why you are going to see a major push to abolish the bar exam over the next few years - you already see people trying out the arguments for doing so.

A longer-term problem is the decline in prestige in attending law school, which is likely to continue to hold down applications - a local well-regarded regional law school used to take about a third of its applicants, so it was a mark of some academic distinction just to get in. The school now takes two-thirds of its applicants.

[anon]

The comments are precisely right.

It is no secret that admissions standards are declining. As peers see slackers attending law school, the standing of the profession is being ruined by greedy law school operators, hungry to fill seats with federal student loan conduits.

The waste and abuse is appalling. And, as the efforts to do away with bar exams increase, we can only hope that state bar associations will ignore the pleas of third or fourth rate law schools, and increase the demand to close these schools before they do any more damage.

Faculty members at these schools need not worry! They all gave up million dollar salaries to teach at a law school. Now, they can cash in!

[Anon]

As discussed in other threads, now that things have stabilized, hopefully law schools will make some meaningful changes, such as better training students to be lawyers, not just how to read cases in a particular way. Law school isn't a trade school but it should move a bit in that direction.

[Jojo]

Law is a hard, stressful, and time consuming way for someone with 7 years of higher education to make $75,000 per year.

Until very recently, law students were an above-average sample of college graduates.

Hard work, mediocre money, stressful job, lots of debt, eroding status. It is not difficult to see why quality applicants are not applying.

Those are the problems, but there are solutions. If fewer students graduated, you'd expect opportunities and salaries to pick up over time. If debt were slashed, it would further improve quality of life. Lots of people would be interested in the profession if they had a 75 percent chance of reliably keeping six figures for most of a 35 year career. That simply does not exist now, and what smart student would rush in?

Would you advise your niece or nephew to go to law school now? I would have 20 years ago despite the problems then. Today, advising a kid to go to law school is parental malpractice.

[John Thompson]

@Alfred:

Where does a 2.8% drop in applications or a 5% drop in applicants rank in comparison to similar drops from the past three application cycles?

[Alfred L. Brophy]

John, the decrease in applicants last year was just under 7%.

[kmttmk]

As a lawyer practicing at one firm for 20 years, I never encourage anyone to go to law school. Indeed, I try my best to discourage those who ask (and those that don't ask) whether they they should go to law school. It is a ripoff, for most students at most schools.

[Anon]

Many who go to law school go on to have interesting and flourishing careers. A subset may have different outcomes but that is the case with any career path.

[anon]

"Anon" is an abbreviation of "anodyne."

[Barry]

"Many who go to law school go on to have interesting and flourishing careers. A subset may have different outcomes but that is the case with any career path. "

I'm sure that *dozens* of grads in each class from the lower-ranked schools have such careers.

*Dozens*, I tell you.

[Nathan A]

(http://excessofdemocracy.com/blog/2015/4/the-wrong-sort-of-law-school-applicants-visualized)