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Application Trends

Law School Application Trends

Law School application volumes have undergone three wild swings in the last 40 years.  

(Data from LSAC Reports and LSACnet, 1989-2006)

That first enormous increase.from 1969 to 1975, was credited to Viet Nam draft resisters and the Civil Rights movement.  The Civil Rights era kept apps from plummeting when the draft ended.  The second increase is sometimes called the L.A. Law Phenomenon; the image of lawyer suddenly transformed from stodgy to sexy.  Whether it was the apparent glamour or the reported salaries, applications skyrocketed; a weak economy and lack of jobs augmented the stampede to law school.  When Clinton was elected and jobs resurfaced, the applications dropped almost as precipitously as they had risen.  

From about 1994 through 2000, the number of applications to U.S. law schools was fairly constant.  In 2001, however, there was a large increase in the applicant pool -- about 10% nationally.  This increase was not evenly distributed across law schools; some had increases of nearly 50%, while a few had a slight decrease.  In 2002, the increases, and the extremes of variance, were even greater.  In 2003 there was an increase in apps, but law schools were better at dealing with it, so there was less chaos.  In 2004 there was a slight downturn, which continued in 2005.  

Baby Boom or Recession?

The enormous increase we're seeing is a combination of two factors:  the baby boom plus the recession.  

 In August of '02, I discussed rising application volumes with Dennis Shields, then Dean of Admissions at Duke.  He said that we're putting way too much emphasis on the economy as the cause of the current increase in apps, and overlooking the increase in college applicants.  "What increase?"  I asked. (I've never been afraid to show my ignorance to admissions officers; they know they know more than I do.)  He pointed out that the baby boomers of the 50s, who caused a huge surge in college enrollments in the 70s, are now grandparents.  Their children's children are in college and law school.  For the last several years, college enrollment has been increasing by 250,000 a year, and should continue to do so for the next several years.  That should cause an increase of 10% or so a year in law school applications for the next five years! The chart below should help:

(Thanks to Aaron for the nifty graphic; he made a special appearance as my employee emeritus to construct this chart for me and who taught me how to make my own.) 

The recession is affecting law school admissions in another serious way:  it's increasing yields.

Yields?  Yeah.  They're important.  They're one of the traditional measures of a school's success.  They show how many applicants a school has to accept in order to fill a seat.  Three acceptance letters for every seat is common.  In the USNWR, yield is one of the factors included in Selectivity.

Yield isn't always what you think it would be.  Many top schools have very poor yields, because so many apply to so many overlapping schools.  And many "lesser" schools have impressive yields.  In fact, in 2004, the school with the best yield rate was Florida Coastal.  

Effects on the Admissions Process

Periods of change affect the admissions process in two ways.  The obvious one, of course, is that with more applicants to choose from, admissions officers can be a lot fussier.  (And when apps decrease, they'll be a lot less fussy, but remember that we're expecting to wait a while yet for that downturn to have a noticeable effect.)

The second, and perhaps less obvious, result is that a lot of admissions officers make wrong decisions.  Sure, they see that apps are up, but they might attribute that to one of several different factors:

• The increase in early decision programs.  When people apply to one early decision program, they often apply to other schools at the same time. After all, they've written the essays, revised the resume, and solicited the recs, so why not apply now?
• The advent of the LSACD.  (You young people keep forgetting how much the computer is changing the world, and we old people keep reminding you!)  The LSACD was introduced in 1996 or so.  The number of apps each student sent increased; it's so much easier to produce apps on computer than to type them on a typewriter!  Apps were also sent earlier, since they were done sooner.
• Electronic submission of apps.  In 2000, LSACD went online.  Type, click, and send!  Some schools offered to waive your application fee if you sent the app electronically.  So the number and timing of apps has increased a bit each year since 1996 simply because of technology.

When an admissions officer guesses wrong, a roller-coaster ride of adjustments results.  First the class is way over-full.  The next year, they are way over-cautious.  With any luck, things settle out by the third year, but if the school was waaay over-full, they may decide to take smaller classes for the next two or three years, instead of trying to make all the adjustments in one.  The school takes fewer transfers, since they're trying to keep the faculty-student ratio in line.   Other (dare we say lower-ranked?) schools lose fewer students, so they also take fewer, either as transfers or as 1Ls.  The full cycle takes four or five years to complete.