As job opportunities wane and people try to increase their viability in the job market, law schools are seeing an upturn in applicant numbers.
Nationally, almost 79,000 people applied this fall, up 5.6 percent from last year. This June, almost 24,000 people took the LSAT--the single greatest indicator of next year's applicant numbers, noted many law school admissions employees. That constitutes an increase of almost 20 percent from last year, and even more are expected to take the law school entrance exam this October.
Application increases have been especially pronounced in cities with heavy technology influences. For example at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, which is located in a city that is home to IBM and Dell, about 4,450 people have begun the initial application steps this year, compared to 3,900 last year and 3,300 the year before that.
Application numbers to the Duke School of Law reflect the national trend, said Associate Dean of Law School Admissions Dennis Shields.
"In the class that just applied, the pool of candidates went up about 10 percent," he said. "I'm a little leery about guessing about the volume of students we are actually going to get. It is likely to go up, but whether it is 3 percent or 15 percent, I can't know now."
Shields cited three primary reasons for increases in the national law school pool this year. First, he said, more people have been graduating from college nationwide the last six or seven years, and law school admissions are now reflecting those numbers. Second, more people are choosing to continue their education rather than enter the job market directly out of college. Third, people who graduated in the last four years are returning to education in the midst of a less prosperous economy.
The recent increase in law school applicants suggests that the condition of the economy is playing a role in students' decisions. In the economic-boom years of the O90s, application numbers waned from almost 100,000 in 1991 to less than 72,000 in 1998, as students sought career rather than educational opportunities. Now, as the economy is weakening, admissions numbers are back on the rise.
Many students said they agreed with Shield's analysis.
"Whether I decide to go to law school all depends on where I am in the spring--what I want to do, what job options I have," senior Charlie Schaefer said.
However, the predicted increase in the number of applicants will not translate into Duke accepting more law students, said Shields. Duke has a target enrollment figure of about 200 students each year, including this year. The increased number of applications and the consistent number of acceptances at most schools will likely cause a decrease in overall acceptance rates.
Shields is optimistic that this will translate into a higher quality for the incoming law school class.
"In the last few years, we were losing people in the national pool because they decided to take advantage of the prosperous economy and start working right out of college. Now those people are staying in the pool, in addition to those people who are coming back to further their education," Shields said.
Some students worry about the competition, while others said they think that the increased numbers will have less effect at upper-tier schools like Duke.
"People at Duke are motivated and goal-oriented and have the security of a Duke degree," Schaefer said. "I think Duke students will be less affected than people coming from other schools and still have a good chance of going where they want, despite the competition."
Law schools must also discern whether a higher percentage of students will accept admissions offers this year--thus affecting the number offers schools can make.
"We will have to be a little more cautious in the number of offers we make," said Shelly Soto, who works in the admissions department at UT-Austin's law school. "We will be waiting to see how the admission pool reacts.... When [the economy] is less strong, many people look at furthering their education."
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