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Across the country law schools are decreasing the size of their incoming classes. This move, cloned across the country in a lagging economy will “combat the lagging economy and better prepare students to enter the workforce,” according to the Daily Northwestern.com.
Kaplan Test Prep surveyed law school admissions officers and found in their study two critical finds. Firstly, it found that law school applications are in decline; prospective students simply aren’t filling out the applications to enter the pool of aspiring candidates. Secondly, law schools are shrinking the size of their classes. For example, Northwestern School of Law “reduced its incoming class of 2013 by about two dozen students, a reduction of 10 percent from last year.”
At the beginning of the year the study was implemented, and 127 American Bar Association-approved schools were included in the survey. Some schools in the study were in the top 25 law schools in the country.
That law school was the path to “white collar success” was a vision that may have changed since the 2008 recession, according to Jeff Thomas, Kaplan Test Prep’s director of pre-law programs.
“Historically speaking, we saw a lot of students apply to law school in times of economic turmoil. When you graduate college, you decide to enter either the workforce or school.” He continues on to say that at this time the trends show that students are going on into their career rather than school.
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More than half of the admissions officers noted a “declining trend that began two years ago, and 25 percent plan to continue the cuts in the next years.” Thomas considers that smaller law classes give more individual attention to each student.
One student, Andrea Tovar, is applying to law school after one year. She commented that students are passionate about law and legal issues, but are concerned with the bottom line. “At this point in time very few [students] seem to be applying to law school because of the money involved in the profession.”
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