3 Reasons Why Going to Law School has Become Popular Again

Summary: Why has there been a spike in law school attendance. These 3 reasons will explain the increase.
 

 

• For nearly 10 years law schools have experienced a decline in applications.
• Recently, however, those same law schools have seen an increase in applications of as much as 8 percent.
• What are the reasons for the increase? Keep reading to find out.

 
Recently law schools have seen a notable increase of applicants that has risen as high as 8 percent. This comes after nearly a decade of declining law school applications. Given this, the question on everyone’s minds is: Will the job market show a similar rebound, so that these larger entering classes will find jobs a few years from now when they graduate?


As a recent article that appeared on The National Jurist points out, it is important to note that the law school applicant pool is not just larger than it’s been, it’s also stronger, at least in terms of traditional entering predictors like Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) scores.

So, in short, not only are there more applicants, the applicants themselves are more likely smarter.

To add to this statistic, it appears as if the largest increases in applicants have come from those in the highest LSAT ranges. This suggests that the increases in law school enrollments cannot be explained away by concluding that law schools are simply taking qualified applicants who may be less likely to pass the bar exam and get jobs.

Law schools aren’t taking just any applicant, they are instead picking from the cream of the crop.

The query, of course, remains why has this spike in very qualified applicants occurred. Experts cite 3 reasons.
 

1. Recovery of the Economy

 
Those who follow law school admissions trumpet the recovery of the economy as one of the main reasons for the increase in law school applications. With the passing of the Great Recession of 2007, potential students have once again hovered toward law school as a path to a promising career.

It is true that the percentage of law school graduates employed 10 months out of graduation increased in each of the prior years since 2007. But as the National Association for Law Placement has pointed out, there were actually slightly fewer legal jobs from 2016 to present.

In fact, statistics reveal the higher legal employment rate is a direct result of smaller graduating classes, which conversely means fewer new lawyers have been competing for available jobs.

Some of the standard explanations given for the reduction in law jobs include increased competition overseas and from technological substitutes.

Does this mean that prospective law students are being misled into thinking that the employment picture is better than it really is?

A recent study conducted by Gallup for the American Association of Law Schools found that, among undergraduates considering law school, nearly half saw law school as a path to a career in politics, government, or public services, and one in three were motivated by the opportunity law would provide to give back to society or advocate for social change.

To that point, the improving employment rate may not be influencing law school applicants for the simple reason that employment prospects exists; no, that does not seem to be the motivating factor for many undergraduates to go to law school.

But even assuming that every law student wants to practice law, and that there are fewer traditional law practice jobs to go around, one important point is missed; there may be fewer law jobs to go around, however, that does not mean there is less legal work to be performed. In fact, these days, there is more legal work than ever to be performed.
 

2. An Increase in Legal Work

 
The National Jurist article states that there are tens of millions of Americans who are not eligible for free legal services, but who are priced out of the standard market for legal services by prevailing hourly rates of $250 or above.

In that same vein, LegalZoom and other mass market tech platforms will not be able to address every legal need that presents itself with these individuals, who in some cases are willing to pay a little more to have a human lawyer attend to their needs, and not a website or impersonal software.

If even a fraction of this population could turn to new lawyers who would charge them manageable rates of say, $50 to $125 per hour, this would provide more than enough work to sustain the roughly 35,000 new law school graduates each year.

Needless to say, most graduates aren’t thinking in terms of legal work; they’re thinking about legal jobs. So are law schools, for that matter, which is a problem that legal teaching institutions should address.
 

3. Law Schools Are (or Should) Do More Than Just Teach Law

 
Law schools need to do more than just teach law. Part of the responsibilities law schools should take on is to help their graduates be more entrepreneurial in their approach to practice and prepare them to make their own opportunities rather than waiting for those opportunities to occur within a law firm.

Of course, an exception to this rule are the most prestigious law schools that send their graduates into the largest, highest paying firms.

While these firms have recently seen modest job growth, the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t as crucial when the starting salaries for associates at these firms is $190,000.

But for the vast majority of those entering the legal profession, these figures are simply irrelevant. Even before the Great Recession, it had long been the case that only a quarter of law grads went into the largest firms.

Most graduates went into small firms, solo practice, government or public interest work, if they practiced law at all.

So, for many law schools it is critical that they educate their students about the profession’s failure to adequately serve the public and prepare them to access would-be clients themselves if existing firms will not do so for them.

At the minimum each law school should do the following for their students:
 

• Explicitly address the access to justice crisis, which must include not only those in need of pro bono services but those who could pay something but not hundreds of dollars per hour. 
• Expose students to the economics of law practice, including the key considerations for opening their own practice should they desire to do so. 
• Teach students about non-traditional representation models like virtual law practice and limited scope representation (aka unbundled legal services), which can make solo practice more economically viable and open up new markets and revenue streams. 
• Host, or at least provide graduates with access to, an incubator program or not for profit law firm, to steer graduates who want to develop their own practices into structures that will help them to do so successfully. 
• Take a hard look at whether their tuition levels — and students’ corresponding debt levels — are defensible in light of their graduates’ average salaries or incomes.

 
Conclusion and Cost

Finally, the cost of law school has to be addressed.

While given the cost structure at most traditional law schools, no one should believe reducing tuition is an easy feat.

But if law schools are to continue to justify their existence to prospective students, let alone the clients they would serve and to society as a whole, they must improve their return on educational investment.

The law schools who already justify themselves offer their students opportunities as well as reduced tuition costs, and they can be of all sizes and levels of prestige.

So rather than asking if the influx of law students will be able to get jobs at graduation, perhaps a better question is: How do we ensure they will represent the clients who need their help — and how do we measure that?