Legal market causes law school applications and enrollment to tumble

[Shinobu]

I'm not sure how interesting this is to people here. I find education news interesting.

It appears that law schools are about to experience a bit of economic justice.

As the New York Times reports today, applications from aspiring JDs are on pace to hit a thirty year low. About 30,000 brave souls have applied for a spot this fall's law school class, a staggering 20 percent drop from this time last year, and down 38 percent from 2010, as shown in the graph below from the Law School Admissions Council. When all is said and done, about 40,000 students are projected to enroll, which would cap off a 24 percent free-fall in just three years -- or the time it takes your average student to graduate.

This is a desperately needed adjustment, for which the academy largely has itself to blame. The legal economy is a shambles, and law schools have done virtually nothing to react.

For the last decade and a half, universities treated legal education as a cash cow. Tuition rose beyond all reason, so that the average private law school grad in the class of 2011 borrowed $125,000 for their degree, according to the American Bar Association. Public school grads were a little better off, borrowing around $75,700. With students forking over ungodly sums of cash to learn the fine arts of torts and contracts, new institutions opened rapidly. These schools often catered to relatively marginal students, who they lured with egregiously over-optimistic jobs stats. Today, there are about 201 ABA-approved law schools, 19 more than there were in 2000, and seven more than in 2007, when the legal industry suffered a recession-induced aneurysm from which it hasn't recovered.

Law School Applications Are Collapsing (As They Should Be) - Jordan Weissmann - The Atlantic

So The Atlantic column has an obvious frame, but it's still pretty interesting and I recommend reading the whole article.

 

[Legacy]

Crazy. It's the same as my field in school: journalism. Society is changing and some jobs are becoming less and less prevalent. Interesting to see how certain inventions or ideas in human society shapes how we go about our lives.

 

[Fig]

Actually it seems to me completely different from journalism. Law is suffering from what appear to be temporary issues: recession damage, like everyone else, and a glut of law students caused by overenthusiastic law programs.

On the opposite end, journalism is a field that need to completely reinvent itself, because changes in technology (paper journalism vs free internet), have crippled the entire industry.

Also, speaking as someone who is a law student (in Canada, though, so completely different market), I can point about fifty flaws in their analysis that make it sound more like a half-wit more interested in making a point than in putting out the truth, than a text worthy of much attention. The overfocus on big law firms; the bemoaning the 6% salary drop...to a "measley" 85K/Year median, the lack of mention that most everything in that graph is all tied to there was a freaking recession in the US 2007 that affected everydamnbody...it's hackery, by someone who shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard because they could harm themselves with it.

(Mind, the article's core point - that there is a glut of law student provoked by too many schools enrolling too many people (and charging, way, way, way, way, way, way, way too much, is a valid complaint. Very valid. But then they bring in the notion that the legal market is in permanent decline, and try to prove it by mostly pointing at things that happened due to the recession/economic crisis. Which makes them idiots)

 

[Shinobu]

Predictably there's an article about how to fix law school: Four Ways to Fix Law School - US News and World Report

Although frankly for law schools to be fixed they need to stop caring about US News and World Report.