For 2nd Year, a Sharp Drop in Law School Entrance Tests

Published by New York Times, David Segal, on March 20, 2012

View David Segal's original article here. Posted by on March 21, 2012.

Excerpt:

The organization behind the Law School Admission Test reported that the number of tests it administered this year dropped by more than 16 percent, the largest decline in more than a decade. … In all, the number of test takers has fallen by nearly 25 percent in the last two years.

The decline reflects a spreading view that the legal market in the United States is in terrible shape and will have a hard time absorbing the roughly 45,000 students who are expected to graduate from law school in each of the next three years. And the problem may be deep and systemic.

Many lawyers and law professors have argued in recent years that the legal market will either stagnate or shrink as technology allows more low-end legal work to be handled overseas, and as corporations demand more cost-efficient fee arrangements from their firms.

That argument, and news that so many new lawyers are struggling with immense debt, is changing the way law school is perceived by undergrads. Word is getting through that law school is no longer a safe place to sit out an economic downturn — an article of faith for years — and that strong grades at an above-average school no longer guarantees a six-figure law firm job.

“For a long time there has been this culturally embedded perception that if you go to law school, it will be worth the money,” said Kyle McEntee of Law School Transparency, a legal education policy organization. “The idea that law school is an easy ticket to financial security is finally breaking down.” …

For some law schools, the dwindling number of test-takers represents a serious long-term challenge.

“What I’d anticipate is that you’ll see the biggest falloff in applications in the bottom end of the law school food chain,” said Andrew Morriss of the University of Alabama School of Law. “Those schools are going to have significant difficulty because they are dependent on tuition to fund themselves and they’ll either have to cut class size to maintain standards, or accept students with lower credentials.”

If they take the second course, Mr. Morriss said, it would hurt the school three years later because there is a strong correlation between poor performance on the LSAT and poor performance on the bar exam. If students start failing the bar, then the prestige of the school will drop, which would mean lowering standards even more. “At that point,” Mr. Morriss said, “the school is risking a death spiral.”

Tags: ABA Law Schools, Outreach, Prospective Law Students, Reform Central,
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  • flapflapflap

    Tremendous site. Thank you for providing transparent consumer information to prospective law students.

    While I do strongly agree that law schools should be transparent and detailed with their employment data, I’m reluctant to argue that their lack of transparency is the primary reason why recent and near future graduates face unemployment.

    As your site mentions, the economy and technological advances, have tightened the job market. The economy is expected to stay its current condition at the very best. Obviously, this is very alarming. As far as technological advances, I think the legal industry needs to evolve and reinvent itself to restore its value. But this is an entirely different discussion.

    Then of course, there’s the misguided youth to blame. Since when did common sense erode so quickly? These are prospective law students…individuals who I assume to be intelligent. They are well aware of the economy and the uncertainty of the legal market. But that doesn’t stop them from applying, does it? What other choices may they have considering how worthless a college degree is these days? I find a 16% decline in law school applications shocking. I expected a higher percentage than that. Until that number reaches, perhaps 30-40%, the lower tier schools will remain in business. The market will equalize eventually.

  • flapflapflap

    btw, the key captcha prog is really annoying.

  • LST

    Thanks for commenting. First things first, I agree about the captcha. However, we were having really bad spam problems, and it’s cut down on the spam entirely.

    I don’t think anybody credible has argued that a lack of transparency is to blame for the structural changes our profession is undergoing (or has undergone). However, I think it can be credibly argued — and I think you even make this argument, albeit implicitly — that the number of those who are un- and under-employed is higher because of the lack of transparency. In other words, if more people had known that there was not enough room at the entry level of the legal profession, they wouldn’t have gone in the first place. This is the basic belief that fewer total people would attend with better information.

    As for misguided applicants, I think many people underestimate what the Times has quoted me saying in this story:

    “For a long time there has been this culturally embedded perception that if you go to law school, it will be worth the money,” said Kyle McEntee of Law School Transparency, a legal education policy organization. “The idea that law school is an easy ticket to financial security is finally breaking down.”

    Can we really damn a young person for trusting his teachers, parents, and peers, along with the schools?

    Kyle