LSAC Data and Predicting Number of Applicants for Fall 2014, part 19 (and last)

I really wish someone would interview even just one young person (22-24) that has decided to enroll at an average school (say, Santa Clara) for approximately full cost, and which will result in at least $200,000 in debt.

What could be going through this person's mind? How many of the 38,000 new enrollees fit this description?

JM, what I think would be interesting would be to know what percent of students (in the classes entering in 2013 and 2014) at the non-T14 schools are borrowing that much. From a policy standpoint, I think it would be a shame if law school became available only to the upper class, but I wonder if that is happening.

Anon123,

I would guess about 25% are running up 200k in debt just for LS. Probably 33% will have 200k total debt from LS + UG.

I estimate that 200K debt results from 30k tuition and 20k living. When you add in tuition increases, books, fees, loan interest, healthcare, travel and, importantly, Bar prep, it likely gets you to $200k.

30k net tuition means a student has a 15k (33%) scholarship at most institutions.

Anon123, on some blog it was stated that at Duke (estimated CoA: $250K), about 25% of the students had no reportable debt. This means that their families either had the cash, or assets sufficient to take out $250K in loans.

Barry, many students may think it is worthwhile to borrow substantial amounts to attend Duke. I am not aware of any disclosures of debt of the most recent classes (not the say 2014 graduates).

For the drop to be less than 2000 from last year that means law schools have done well fighting back against all of the negative press about employment outcomes. Whether that is good for the legal profession is another issue, but a bigger drop would have been expected.

The Empire Strikes Back.

I think you're right about the final matric total. This may be the year that law schools decide that maintaining USNWR medians by reducing class size has become a luxury they can no longer afford.

Roger x3,

A lot of damage was done this year. Schools had to lower admission standards again to keep the drop this low. This will affect bar passage rates, employment rates, reputation, UNews rankings and other variables down the road. More importantly, a lot more scholarship money was handed out, spelling big trouble for the bottom line.

The big issue though is the trend. Where is this decline heading? LSAT takers are down 9% and 1st time takers down 13% for the June '14 administration. If there are 2000 less matrics every year for the next 10 years, we'll be down to 18,000 matrics nationwide.

"The big issue though is the trend. Where is this decline heading? LSAT takers are down 9% and 1st time takers down 13% for the June '14 administration. If there are 2000 less matrics every year for the next 10 years, we'll be down to 18,000 matrics nationwide."

With analytical skills like that and you wonder why you are unemployed?

Anon,

Where is the error? What reason do you have to believe that apps won't decline every year for the next ten years. Any reason you can give should have applied to THIS cycle.

Oh, and, you're right, I was unemployed once. Lasted two weeks, after I quit my AMLaw 50 job. Never sent out a single resume, including to the firm that hired me, which still hasn't seen it.

JM,

Your assertion is flawed for several reasons:
(1) it’s assumed that the decline will be linear based off a X% decline at the current rate and will extend for another decade (keep in mind that 2K reduction in the present is ~5%, but, if linear, will accelerate to ~10% by the end of 10 years),
(2) that the countervailing forces won’t do anything to reduce the relative drop in unemployment over the course of the next 10 years, making the TTTT gamble less financially-suicidal, and
(3) you’re assuming that the ABA's most recent “10% of your class doesn’t need to take the LSAT if you gave them good grades in your own undergrad” edict won’t affect anything.

This logic is about as solid as saying “because the Red Sox didn’t win from 1918 until 2004, and they’ve won 3 in the last decade, we can safely extrapolate that their acceleration in winning the World Series will amount to a sweep from 2015-2025.”

Market demand doesn’t work like that.

Anon 2,

I actually didn't not assert anything, and I did not assume anything. I just described a scenario as one possible answer to a question that is very much up in the air.

So it is unlikely. I agree. But hardly impossible. The current figure of 38,000 includes thousands (probably tens of thousands) that are making a very regrettable choice. Who's to say they won't awaken to this fact at about the rate of 2,000 per year? The media/online onslaughted has not abated, and may be accelerating. The effects are very hard to predict, but I am certain the the negative press about debt outweighs any potential uptick in total hiring, if such a thing is forthcoming. What I proposed is at least one possibility of the direction we are headed.

ABA first year enrollment, 2011-2013, per LSAC:
-7.2% -8.7% -10.8%.

Down 24.3% in three years.

Is that math correct? Hope so. Wouldn't want to trigger another unseemly and baseless insult fest.

The projection is for another 5-6% decline this Fall. To be sure, a slowing in the rate of decline. Good news!

If this projection proves true, what will be proved?

That all is well? That no systemic problems in legal academia have contributed to these declines?

Will there be a "shortage" of JDs in a few years? Will enrollments then increase dramatically and expose all the accumulating consensus about embedded dysfunction in legal academia as pure bullfeathers, believed only by a bunch of hysterical, unemployed, and miscreant scam bloggers?

An oracle should be able to tell us clearly and specifically: to which causes are these historic declines in first year ABA enrollment attributable?

Did the Crash of 2008 (the declines began in 2011), or the “economic recovery” since then cause these declines? In other words, should the academy be hoping for another recession or economic improvement, neither … both? Is the economy at large especially relevant here, or are there deeper explanations that do not entirely excuse legal academia from any responsibility for these declines?

Enlighten us.

Given the lower average realized tuition per student, and this significantly smaller class replacing the large class of 2014, I think its safe to assume that more downgrades by Moodys et al is very likely.

The acceptance rate was somewhere north of 80% I believe last year for ABA schools, eventually you run out of applicants. Unless as noted above we simply eliminate the LSAT and water down admissions further. If the Bar's are not watered down, we are going to be HUGE disservice to these applicants. If someone can't hack the LSAT, good luck on the MBE which passage is necessary to practice law everywhere but LA.

Unfortunately, the graduates of the Class of 2017 who will have the hardest time getting any employment will be those students who are in the bottom 50% of their classes at unranked law schools.

Really, if someone is in the bottom half of the class after either the first or second semester at an unranked school, they should seriously consider dropping out and going to another graduate program (and ask that program to give them some credit for their law school classes).

It's shameful how there have been thousands of law school graduates over the last 7 years or so who never landed a job as a full time attorney.