Law Schools

For Law Schools, No Change Is Good News

It could be worse.

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Female teacher addressing university students in a classroomSome incredibly mediocre news from the world of legal education: the number of students enrolled in law school has barely increased. There are 36 more students in this year’s 1L class, and that counts as good news since it’s the first time these numbers have gone up since 2010 — when the impact of the Great Recession began to take its toll on law schools.

But to be clear, the small numerical increase registers as a statistical non-event, meaning the numbers are flat from last year. It should also be noted that even if this year’s bump in enrollment was a cause for celebration, law schools are still down 29 percent from their pre-recession highs.

The bad news, at least if you’re a law school admin hoping for a return to the glory days, is that these new numbers may be here for a while, as the National Law Journal reports:

Not so fast, said Derek Muller, a law professor at Pepperdine University School of Law who tracks enrollment trends on his blog Excess of Democracy. The new data suggests that this is the new reality for legal education.

“Flat” is good in the sense of stability, Muller said, but he added, “I think it’s bad for a lot of law schools that were hoping for growth, both in terms of quantity and quality. For schools that had been bracing for a short-term decline, with this bottoming out, I think they’re going to have to expect that this is the new normal.”

Muller predicted that the number of applicants this admissions cycle will remain stable, based on the fact that there has been no significant change in the number of people taking early administrations of the Law School Admission Test.

Welp, at least law schools aren’t losing students. These days, that counts as a reason for cheer.

Number of Students Enrolling in Law School Basically Flat [National Law Journal]

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headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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