It’s not just law schools that are facing a downturn with reduced applicants, but the legal industry is facing the fact that there are less lawyers needed, according to Quartz.
Students considering law school have to consider a change to flat-fee contracts, technology, and globalization these days.
Job data for recent law grads is bad right now, with the class of 2013 have an unemployment rate of 11.2 percent for nine months after graduation. This is an increase from 10.6 percent for the class of 2012 and 9.2 percent from the class of 2011.
If the drop in students taking the law school admission exams and applying for admission to the ABA, then the bubble for litigation attorneys in the United States has popped.
Law schools in the top quartile of rankings that take into account job placement have between 84.1 and 97.5 percent of their 2013 graduates employed within nine months. Job placement rates in the bottom quartile saw a rate under 71 percent.
The bottom quartile of schools are seeing the worst decline in demand for legal education. These schools find themselves, reducing tuition and being less selective of its candidates. This can lead to reduced perceptions of the quality of the law schools.