Law Schools

First-Year Enrollment Is Way, Way Up At Some Law Schools

Are law schools about to repeat the same mistakes that led their oversized classes straight to the unemployment line after graduation?

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With the rising tide of law school applicants came a huge wave of newly enrolled first-year law students. The law school applicant pool increased by 8 percent over last year’s numbers, leaving some schools with record class sizes. But which law schools saw the biggest improvements?

Many law schools haven’t announced the size of their incoming classes yet, but some have already started boasting about their double-digit enrollment increases and the academic credentials of the class of 2021 — after all, this year’s applicant pool performed better on the LSAT. Karen Sloan has more information over at Law.com:

First-year enrollment is up 35 percent from last year at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. The University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law’s new class is 25 percent bigger than its predecessor, and at 196 is its largest in six years.

Cleveland-Marshall College of Law saw a 30 percent climb in first-year J.D. enrollment, while the University of South Dakota School of Law and Elon University School of Law saw increases of 22 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

Enrollment isn’t up at all law schools, of course, and many higher-ranked institutions have yet to announce the size of their new classes, but this sudden influx of students has us wondering whether law schools are about to repeat the same mistakes that led their oversized classes straight to the unemployment line after graduation.

Yes, recent law school graduates have had the “best employment outcomes since the recession,” but that’s because class sizes have been smaller. The number of jobs law school graduates have obtained was flat — or went down — across almost every sector of the legal industry. On top of all of that, the unemployment rate for recent law school graduates is still higher than it should be. This isn’t as pretty of a picture as law schools have made it out to be. More graduates and fewer jobs is a recipe for disaster.

While we wait to see exactly how much larger this year’s class of first-year law students is, we’ll have to cross our fingers and hope that the next recession we’re due for decides to lie in wait for a few more years so these students can get jobs.

First-Year Enrollment Soars by Double Digits at Some Law Schools [Law.com]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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