FOOTLOOSE AND…
Who would have thunk it? The law school market is under severe distress, and the number of first-year students has shrunk to perimeters last noted in 1973 — when there were 53 fewer law schools in the United States.
Consider this, there were 37,924 full-time and part-time students who began their education in 2014 — a 30 percent drop from 2010!
Why the striking consolidation? The cost… plus the perception of the job market a few years ahead. Now, a year of tuition in a prestigious law school can easily hit $60,000. And even the bar association’s employment numbers indicate that less than two-thirds of “new lawyers” had secured jobs that required passing the bar exam.
Also clouding the world of law is the knowledge that fewer people are taking the admissions tests — 8.1 percent fewer than in 2013 and some 50 percent less than in 2009, notes the Law School Council.
Overall there are 119,715 law students, full and part time, presently enrolled. That is 8,935 less than in the fall of 2013 and 17.5 percent fewer than in 2010.
The time seems ready, if not overdue, for the chief honchos of American law schools to step up to the plate and reduce the distressingly high costs. One place to look might be the growingly “out of whack” price tags being built up by many university presidents.
