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.
LSAC Data and Predicting Number of Applicants for Fall 2015, Part 13
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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.
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.
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!!!
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.
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.
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
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.
The decline is over!! Our phony baloney jobs are safe!! Take that you scambloggers!
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."
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.
Can't wait to read the faculty posts complaining about the quality of students.
"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.
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 | 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?
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
YOu are woefully uninformed.
@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-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
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!
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 …"
This exchange is an utter embarrassment.
In response to the comment above, why can't we have it both ways — having professors who are exceptional researchers but also are invested in law students and appreciate and know what it means to actually be a lawyer.
Anon,
It is completely possible to have it both ways. And, maybe hiring preferences are even starting to move in that direction. Based on Lawsky's thread over at Prawfs there are at least a decent number (7) of folks ten years or so out of law school that got hired this year. Of course, there still seem to have been a number of K-Prof hires too, so who can tell?
more non-denial denials….
Former Editor, you're being too optimistic. Professors make the hiring decisions (not students), so they will keep hiring people that have the same profile and preferences as their own.
Anon, perhaps. Some of the hires certainly do seem to bear out your view, but others don't seem to. I think a number of professors realize that if their schools are actually going to move toward a more experiential and "practice ready" model in more than the very short term then they need to diversify their faculty profiles in terms of years of practice experience. I could be wrong, of course, and we will know more come the fall when more comprehensive data can be compiled.
By the by, I think that going forward we can all assume that anyone posting here is aware that students don't make faculty hiring decisions.
Yes, it my be possible to have both but it will take some time for that. There is very slow turnover of law school professors.
"I think a number of professors realize that if their schools are actually going to move toward a more experiential and "practice ready" model" – more fantasy from critics. This is too expensive and not really feasible given gap between academia and real world.
You know what else is expensive? Law school! At current prices, the so-called gap between academia and the real world you mention shouldn't exist. Things need to change.
It will be a gradual process but the law school of the future will blend theory with practice.