A Wall Street Journal article reports that at least ten law schools are reducing the size of this year’s incoming class. My guess is that the number is actually higher. The reasons given for the reductions are generally described as the quality and size of the applicant pool and the employment situation. As the article notes, however, there is an elephant in the room—the U.S. News rankings:
Shrinking class size could help schools maintain their all-important U.S. News rankings even as the pool of applicants declines. By cutting the number of places available, a law school can be just as selective, or even more so, about prospective students' LSAT scores and undergrad grade-point averages.
"They are trying to get a class that mirrors prior classes, but with fewer applicants and enrollees," says Indiana University's Mr. Henderson.
The number of law graduates per year spiked to 44,495 this year from 42,673 in 2006, and the American Bar Association accredited 10 new law schools over the same period.
But the high-paying law-firm jobs many of those students had hoped to land are in short supply, and some top firms have scaled back their hiring of entry-level lawyers by as much as half since the financial crisis started in 2008. "This is long overdue," Mr. Wu says of the class reductions. "The expectations about law school have been out of whack since I was in law school," he says, adding that he earned his law degree in 1991 and practiced at Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco before entering academia.
For the law-school class of 2011, employment rates are at an 18-year low, according to a survey by the NALP, a nonprofit educational association for the legal profession.
Look for many more schools to consider reduced class size in the future.
The reality is that only about 1/3 of all law grads get real full-time attorney jobs. I myself have "prestigious" credentials, yet I work as an independent contractor and who knows if my contract will be renewed.
Posted by: b | Saturday, June 16, 2012 at 09:46 AM