A Radical Shift in the Number of Seats;
Fewer Near the Top, More at the Bottom

By June of 2007, I was one of the many scratching my head and wondering how every law school could claim that their median LSAT score was still a XXX.  Then I chanced upon the LSAC Volume Summary (linked here under Data), and saw that there were 800 fewer students enrolled in 2005 than there were in 2003 (sorry, that's the most recent data published as of June 2007).  

Eight hundred didn't seem like enough to account for all the change, but it  might account for more in some segment of law schools -- by geography, rank, demographics, etc.  So I decided to look on a school-by-school-basis.  The result was amazing!  Among the top 100 schools, there are 1400 fewer seats; among the top 140 schools (through Tier 3) there are 2150 fewer seats!  This change is obscured by the increase in seats at 4th tier schools and at newly accredited schools; there are 2000 new seats at the bottom-ranked schools.  

Since I found this result fascinating, I thought someone else might like to see it.  Being a famously generous person (where's the smiley icon?), I'm providing the details here.  

The number of seats was copied from the ABA/LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, 2008 ed. and 2004 ed.   The ranking is from the USNews, 2008 ed.  The math is very simple; Difference = Seats 2007 minus Seats 2003; Percent difference = Difference / Seats 2003.  

As you can see, there was no significant change at the very top.  A few schools took more people, others took fewer, but the net change is about one per cent.   In the remaining schools in the top 50, however, we see a very different picture:

Nearly a third of the schools had an increase, but more than two-thirds showed a decrease in the number of seats.  Part of this was certainly offsetting overenrollments when apps and yields were at a record high.  But whatever the reason, there are well over 500 fewer seats in the top 50 this year than there were four years ago.  

Tiers Two and Three show an even sharper decrease; each group has 8% fewer seats in 2007 than it did four years earlier.  

This 939, added to the 33 and 509 above, means that there are cumulatively nearly 1500 fewer seats in the top 100!  

Schools in the third tier followed the same trend.  Nearly a third got larger, one or two showed no change, and two thirds got smaller.  There's a decrease of 750 seats in this tier alone, and a cumulative decline of 2231 seats.  

Tier Four sharply reversed the trend, helping to mask the changes above:

Some of the changes in this range reflect the relative youth of the schools.  Newly accredited schools often grow for five or more years, as they increase teaching staff and facilities.  The sizeable increases at Ave Maria, Barry, and Florida Coastal are probably explained by their recent accreditation.  Thomas Cooley's enormous increase may be a result of their unusual admission policy; they admit virtually everyone who meets a certain numerical formula.  As people are rejected elsewhere, they might wind up enrolling at their safety school.  

But we're not quite finished yet!  In this four-year period, seven new schools were accredited (provisionally or otherwise) by the ABA.

We see, then, that the number of seats at ABA-approved law schools has not changed radically, but the distribution has shifted dramatically.  A change of 243 seats represents a decrease of 2250, offset by an increase of 2000.