Over at Slate, Annie Lowrey argues that the surge of law school applicants and graduates was a bubble and that the bubble was burst by cultural, rather than economic forces.
In the past year or two, scads of blogs have committed themselves to exposing law school as a "scam," and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have devoted thousands of words to telling readers why law school is a bad,bad idea if you do not actually want to be a lawyer.
As we've noted, law school applications are down over 11% this year to 2001 levels. Who knows – maybe they'll drop even more next year. And maybe the market for lawyers will continue to suffer – after all, automation and the off-shoring of legal work could reduce the long term demand for lawyers in the U.S.
Maybe. Or maybe not. But we know this much. Because law school applications are down this year, it's likely a student's LSAT will go a lot farther in this admissions cycle. Compare the LSAT required to get into schools back in 2001 compared to 2009. I've compiled a chart with selected law school 25th and 75th percentile LSAT's for 2001 and 2009. And I've included the US News overall rank (not for the truth of the ranking, but to show that the school is not likely to have suddenly become more attactive to top students). There are other possible explanations for the phenomenon, of course: increased reliance on transfer students or overall LSAT score inflation. But this chart suggests, at least, that particularly among the more elite schools, this might be an excellent opportunity for students already certain about attending law school to – shall we say – get more house for their LSAT dollar.
|
School & USNews Rank ‘02/’11 |
2001 LSAT (25th-75th percentile) |
2009 LSAT (25th-75 percentile) |
|
Yale 1/1 |
168-174 |
170-176 |
|
Harvard 3/2 |
167-172 |
171-176 |
|
Stanford 2/3 |
165-170 |
167-172 |
|
Columbia 4/4 |
166-172 |
170-175 |
|
Chicago 6/5 |
165-172 |
169-173 |
|
NYU 5/6 |
167-172 |
169-173 |
|
Georgetown 14/14 |
163-168 |
167-171 |
|
Vanderbilt 17/17 |
160-164 |
164-169 |
|
Emory 22/22 |
158-162 |
165-167 |
|
BYU 37/42 |
158-164 |
160-165 |
|
Wake Forest 36/38 |
156-161 |
160-164 |
|
American 49/48 |
155-160 |
158-164 |
|
Maryland 2nd Tier/48 |
152-159 |
159-166 |
|
Brooklyn 2nd Tier/67 |
155-160 |
159-164 |
|
Rutgers Newark 2nd Tier/80 |
153-159 |
155-161 |
|
Marquette 3rd Tier/3rd Tier |
153-157 |
154-159 |
Cross posted at Leiter, without the chart.
You could even compare 2001 to 2004 and the differences would be significant. There was a huge spike in admissions in 2003-2005.
The important question is whether the number of applications from folks at the top of the credential pool has declined as much as the overall pool. If the top has stayed the same, or declined less, then the top schools will still be able to fill themselves with high-numbered students. This, in turn, will allow the schools lower in the pecking order to retain more of their relatively high-numbered students, etc.
Here's what I'm wondering, as my jaw drops at the scores at the top schools: Does a 176, or a 174, mean anything appreciable and relevant, compared to a 168? To be sure, it's lovely that top students have even higher LSAT scores than they did a decade ago — nice work, folks! With these ever-increasing scores, I'm pretty sure than neither I nor 2/3 of my law school class would have gotten in. But are these LSAT-rich students really that much better, in any meaningful sense, as these higher scores appear to suggest?