LSAC Data and Predicting Number of Applicants for Fall 2015, Part 19

The LSAC is now reporting that "As of 7/3/15, there are 333,848 fall 2015 applications submitted by 52,506 applicants. Applicants are down 2.0% and applications are down 4.2% from 2014.  Last year at this time, we had 97% of the preliminary final applicant count."  If this year's applicants follow last year's pattern, there will be approximately 54,130 applicants this year.  The last post in this series is here.

Comments

[PaulB]

Credit is due to the marketing efforts of the law schools. Despite all of the negative publicity and increasing numbers of unhappy grads spreading the word, applications are barely down at all this year. Way to go admissions staff!

[Jojo]

There has been a late surge in applicants. I suspect that this does not bode well for student quality, but a paying customer is a painful customer.

[JM]

Total decline in applicants is no longer really an issue. The real issue is decline in applicant profiles, which was enormous again this year. For any school that is attempting to maintain high academic standards, the applicant pool will be down significantly again this year. That goes for probably the top 50 schools. The lower ranked schools will face a different set of problems even if they can maintain enrollment, such as lower bar passage rates and market loss of confidence in its graduates.

[Derek Tokaz]

JM,

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not an issue. Maybe not the most important issue, but certainly an issue. And it's not independent of the decline in applicant profiles. As the entire pool gets smaller, there are fewer middling students who provide the cross-subsdization needed to attract higher quality students.

I wonder what the long term effect of a weaker applicant pool will mean for schools. There's been plenty of talk about what it might mean for the profession, but I'm wondering how it will impact the schools themselves years from now.

Most professors (with a some notable exceptions) want to teach the best and the brightest. Having a vigorous intellectual discussion is generally more enjoyable and rewarding than slogging through the basics. But, if the best and the brightest simply aren't going to law school any more, the profession will lose some of its appeal. On top of that, if the best and brightest aren't going to law school, then there will be a weaker pool of junior professors in a few years.

[Ben Cardozo]

Next year is really going to be interesting and we'll see if we have truly hit the bottom in terms of law school applicants. Law schools have really upped the efforts at recruitment with increased advertising, discount tuition, virtually open admissions (at lower ranked schools), and a never ending admission cycle where applicants are accepted through the first few weeks of the semester. I think it's just a matter of how the efforts to enroll students fare against a still declining legal job market, excessive student debt, and the continued negative coverage of these factors in the media and blogs. There are still a lot of lawyers graduating from top schools that don't have jobs and this may continue to drive the narrative that law school is a losing proposition for many students. Then again, nobody ever went bankrupt from suckering 22 year olds out of 150k in non-dischargeable federal loans.

[Barry]

JM: '...such as lower bar passage rates and market loss of confidence in its graduates..

And that market confidence has historically been 'we don't want to hire most of them'.

This is probably good news for grads of schools ranked #15-50; the lower-ranked schools will be putting out a higher percentage of absolutely unqualified grads.

[JM]

Barry: "This is probably good news for grads of schools ranked #15-50; the lower-ranked schools will be putting out a higher percentage of absolutely unqualified grads."

Yes, and schools ranked 15-50 should seize on this. They should point out the higher quality of their graduates publicly and privately to employers. They should also openly criticize lower ranked schools for accepting legions of unqualified graduates. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, the T50 schools feel more allegiance to the other 150+ law schools than they do to a) their own grads, b) the legal profession and c) the public consumers of legal services.

[Derek Tokaz]

I have to wonder what this will mean for the professor market a few years down the line. As the top intellectual talent flees law school, there will be fewer people available to fill the junior professor ranks. (Of course, if schools shrink their class sizes and reduce faculty headcount to match, this won't be as much of an issue.)

What's more, professors generally prefer to teach the best and the brightest. If fewer law students fall into that category the academy will offer much less appeal. It will probably be quite similar to how many people are turning away from law because the legal profession has lost much of its prestige.

[henry Lime]

There's no doubt that much top intellectual talent has fled law schools. Where is it going?

[ATLprof]

"Yes, and schools ranked 15-50 should seize on this. They should point out the higher quality of their graduates publicly and privately to employers. They should also openly criticize lower ranked schools for accepting legions of unqualified graduates. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, the T50 schools feel more allegiance to the other 150+ law schools than they do to a) their own grads, b) the legal profession and c) the public consumers of legal services."

Part of is probably what is considered decorous, whether that is the same as loyalty of not.

But part of it is that higher ranked schools can't go out and brag about the LSAT and UGPA scores of their students, because then they would actually have to be more open about their transfer policies. The grads of those schools include students who were admitted to the bottom ranked schools and then admitted to the high ranked school on transfers, all so that the high ranked school can continue to "let people believe" that their published LSAT and UGPA numbers actually reflect the qualifications of their grads. Sure they could still claim they are better, but they'd have to explain a whole lot they'd rather not be dragged out into common knowledge. It's probably safer and easier for them to keep reporting the required numbers, using the transfer loophole to avoid reporting low LSATs and UGPAs, and letting people make the assumption that the entrance numbers are the numbers of their graduates (which they aren't).

[Derek Tokaz]

Henry,

There has been an increase in students getting specialized graduate business degrees. Some of that will be people no longer getting traditional MBA, but I'd guess they pull some JDs away as well.

Undergrads have become increasingly focused on getting their careers started while still in college. There's more emphasis on having a marketable major, and students often have multiple internships during their undergrad years. So quite possibly that top intellectual talent is just going to work. There ought to be a lot fewer students who reach their senior year, haven't a clue what to do with their lives, and pick law school as a default option.

[Anon123]

I think many students are pursing what I used to call allied medical fields, not medical school, but nurse practitioner, physician's assistant, D.Psy. Others are looking at graphic design, net design. These careers were not nearly as popular 10 years ago.

[tony smith]

Oh, please, people. Maybe the teaching market will look beyond 2 schools to find people. And I say this having graduated from one of the two (Y) with a nice top tier chaired position. There are smart people in many environments that are not dominated by white legacy children.

[Anon]

As many have previously noted, let's hope this blood letting results in real and lasting changs to legal education, such as more transparency (and in some instances, honesty) in employment outcomes, tuition stabilization or reductions, and shifts in course offerings and facutly hiring so that law school becomes relevant to the practice of law.

[a]

I doubt you'll find a shortage of people applying to be a law professor. The perks are just too good to be true and as for the quality of students, many professors teach at bottom of the barrel law schools in the 3rd and 4th tier category.

[Learned Foot]

@Tony Smith: Thank you. No other academic discipline has so constrained its intellectual marketplace out of religious fealty to two or three graduate departments. Because they're real disciplines.

[Derek Tokaz]

Someone pulled my post out of the spam filter! Now I look mildly nutty(ier than before).

[Derek Tokaz]

a,

You won't have a shortage of professors. What I was saying is there could be a significant decline in quality.

[Anon]

Derek, independent of quality, because of the realization that law school doesn't do a particularly good job of training lawyers, schools may start hiring professors with more connections and background outside of academia, which would be a good thing.

[Derek Tokaz]

Anon,

That's a good point. I was thinking they'd be of lower quality, but that's lower only in terms of the current metrics. If those metrics are poor, a brain drain in the professor pool might cause schools to adopt different and better metrics. Reminds me of the boll weevil.

However, I think the practitioners with good connections aren't terribly likely to want to be professors. If you've been in practice 10-20 years, it's probably because you actually like it. These aren't junior and midlevel associates jumping ship once they've paid off their loans.