It was announced on Monday that the Kansas University School of Law saw a 19 percent increase in applications for 2012. In 2011, the school received 819 applications and in 2012 the school received 973 applications. In 2010, there were 1,120 applications filed with the school. The Law School Admission Council said that in 2012, applications for law schools dropped by 13.7 percent.
“I think they’re starting to make the realization that it just makes more sense to go to a high-quality public school as opposed to paying twice as much to go to a private school, or sometimes three times as much,” Law School dean Stephen Mazza said.
The school was only the 11th out of 198 accredited by the American Bar Association to see their applications increase by more than 10 percent.
“Knowing that law school applications were likely to decline nationally, we sort of anticipated this,” Mazza said, according to LJWorld.
The law school hired a new assistant dean for admissions a year ago named Steven Freedman. Freedman said that the law school used paperless application processes and reached out across the state of Kansas to help with the application increase.
“I think people in difficult times want to go to a safe harbor, a place that they know is respected and well-known,” Freedman said.