Law School Enrollment Continues to Shrink

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Summary: The latest stats show law school enrollment continues to shrink.

We know the situation by now: there are more law schools in existence in the United States than ever before – more faculty, more buildings, higher expectations for enrollment – and meanwhile, conversely, enrollment is at a 30 year low. The 2008 market collapse pulled the rug out of the legal market, and unlike most the other industries, they still haven’t crawled out of oblivion. Pretty much if you are an accomplished JD coming out of law school, chances are you are straddled with six figures of debt, but have few prospects to help with that particular problem.

  

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The latest stats from the Law School Admission Council shows that this trend, which came into its own in 2010, hasn’t since diminished, but in fact, with 50,269 applicants for law school nationally, we are down by 2.5 percent from this point last year.

More to the point, those applications are redundant: people are averaging submissions to six schools. And considering that this stat is up, that means even fewer students are actually submitting, down 4.6 percent compared to last year.

In light that law schools are charging $23,900 for yearly tuition, or $42,000 for private schools, and this according to the American Bar Association, choosing to be a lawyer is no longer the natural next step for those undergrad graduates who still haven’t figured things out.