Any way to find out historical law school medians?

E.G. Harvard, Columbia, Penn LSAT / GPA medians from 1998 - 2008

According to Tamanaha's blog that LSATblog linked to earlier, enrollments have gone down.

Re: huge cuts. George Mason cut its class size from 300 to 186 last year.

Very anecdotal, but I know that the school I'm attending (mid Tier 2) is decreasing its class size by about 10%.

Sure, medians will have to decrease. But how can schools (especially ones in lower tiers) not decrease class sizes when there's less overall applicants? That would require a huge decrease in the amount of people who just apply to law school and do not attend.

Last year more than there were something like 70,000 applicants and only 47,000 people enrolled.

I see. Guess it just depends how many of the ~66,000 applicants this year enroll. It probably won't be that pronounced of a decrease, but either way, this seems like good news for those who will be attending this fall.

http://www.lsac.org/LSACResources/Publi ... chives.asp

Also: http://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/index. ... sc/LSATLow (goes back a bit further, just click on the school name)

But these will be of limited usefulness. Since more people started retaking LSAT scores have been getting higher--so even though there were fewer LSATs administered and far fewer applicants this year than in 2002, we are not going back anywhere near 2002 medians.

It seems to me that with # of applicants reduced so slow, schools have two choices:

1) Lower their medians to maintain the same class size, and thus funding for their programs

or

2) Admit a smaller class size to maintain medians & thus USN&R rankings, but drastically reducing their funding.

Lots of people in this thread seem to assume schools will choose #1. But I seem to recall reading that law schools at most universities actually earn more $ than they spend on the law school, and have to give up their money to contribute to other undergraduate/graduate programs in the university that aren't self-sustaining (I googled to find something to back this up, closest I came was here here. Quote: "Many schools are making a ‘profit’ on law school students, using them as cash cows to fund other activities" )

I would think that law schools will try to hold off on #1 as long as possible - the rankings are a competition, and the first schools to blink and lower their medians will be the first to lose their status. Deans do everything they can to goose their scores; it seems to me they will try to cut their finances first, and admit smaller class sizes. Law schools will just have less money available to give to other undergraduate/graduate programs that aren't self-sustaining.

Either way, if we don't see the benefits at admissions, we will definitely see them when it comes time to applying for SA and jobs on graduation. There are still more JDs being minted than the market needs, but the economy is improving and this entering class will be the smallest in long time.

Here are specific data for the rest of you who are wondering how the breakdown looked last year and how it looked over the course of two years.

Percentage change in applicants by highest LSAT score.

key:
Δ2010/2011 = change in applicants by LSAT score from Fall 2010 to Fall 2011.
Δ2011/2012 YTD* = change in applicants by LSAT score from Fall 2011 to Fall 2012 year to date.
Δ2010/2012 YTD* = change in applicants by LSAT score from Fall 2010 to Fall 2012. This portion assumes that the YTD percentages remain constant.
(Σ Δ) / n = overall decline. E.g. for last year (delta 2010-2011), overall apps decreased by 10.7%. (Sum of deltas divided by the number of deltas)
YTD=03/30 = Numbers for this year as of March 30th 2012.

@Lonerider: I had the specific numbers for endowment, operating costs, etc., and you would be surprised at how much law schools depend on tuition. I'll have to pull up the exact numbers but some of the T14 schools' operating costs depend 75-80% solely on tuition. Aggregated with the decreased giving from alumni because of the economy, law schools can only decrease class sizes so far before having no choice but to accept a lower quality of applicants (or layoff faculty/decrease operating expenses). Larger schools with lower endowments (GULC, NYU) should especially be affected. According to LSN, they do seem to be a bit more lenient this cycle.

According to ahnhub's 2nd link above, in 2003 Harvard's 25% LSAT was 167. Law school admissions, like life, seems to be getting exponentially more competitive as the years roll on.

The article Lonerider linked to is one of the most comprehensive ones I've seen, a bit depressing in many ways, but not surprising.

Many economists and others have been protesting and making cases/arguments about the overproduction of lawyers in the USA as it relates to supply and demand for well over 15 years.

Perhaps the current internet era of rapid information availability and flow is dispelling the long believed myth that going to law school and becoming a lawyer is an easy path to prestige, wealth, nice cars and a nice comfortable life as long as you get in somewhere good and graduate. The now readily available news about legal profession reality might be deterring people from seeking law school that were interested due to believing the fame, fortune and glory myth. That myth has never been true IRL BTW, only true in movies and TV shows.

Only in America do a lot of people attribute a lot of unwarranted prestige and assumptions about wealth to lawyers in general, especially ones from big name schools and law firms or to lawyers in general. In most areas of Europe and other parts of the world, being a lawyer/barrister is not viewed as a road to riches profession with much higher prestige than most other common education/degree required white collar professions to justify the super egos and pretentious attitudes/views that exist in US culture.

When I was in Holland during winter break while in law school I met a girl that is a lawyer in the EU. At dinner I asked what she does and she meekly said "Oh, I'm just a lawyer, I do paperwork and am a go-between with people and the government and the bureaucracy, nothing fancy, but its a living". I was shocked by her humility. It took the wind out of my sails since I was about to brag and try to impress her by telling her I was a law student at a top tier LS in the USA.

Check out all the graphs in the article, here is the link again:
http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdail ... ising.html

Aside from the over supply of new J.D. grads each year issue, there are many big economic changes that are negatively affecting the demand for new lawyers, pay by the hour legal services from a firm or sole practitioner and how much income a practicing lawyer can reasonably expect to earn.

One of them is the growth of DIY online legal services providers such as LegalZoom that provide a host of inexpensive automated services for many common legal matters that people used to have to hire a paid by the hour lawyer to talk to about the situation and pay large fees to take care of the paperwork, filings, procedures, etc.

With LegalZoom and other similar services the process is almost completely automated by online questionnaires with drop down menus and such for many different types of common legal matters. They'll even file the papers for you for an extra fee that is way less than a one hour consultation with an attorney in person to even get started with basic info about how to handle whatever type of matter it is.

Such services have hit the bottom line of firms hard in recent years, especially big and small firms that depend a lot on pedestrian transactional, mainly paperwork and filings, areas of law rather than hard core litigation of cases with an ongoing semi or super complex/serious dispute involving parties with deep pockets.

This electronic evolution plus the economy is making it much harder for a lot of lawyers to be able to drum up billable hours, leaving some like this:

Jeffort's images are always full of win.

I just put together a chart showing the number of law school applicants over the past 10 years. (2012 is the cycle ending now). I also did a new post on the topic.

LSAT Blog, I hope you meant that in a positive way!

My post contains a lot of the negative realities new lawyers and law school hopefuls face these days, but don't let it discourage any of you that really want to go to law school and become lawyers for the right reasons. Reality is harsh sometimes, it's a jungle out there!



Law school and beyond can be a lot of fun and very interesting. You just have to know what you are getting into and have realistic expectations of what a 'day in the life' consists of in order to be happy with the career path rather than miserable like many people end up that go in for the wrong reasons with unrealistic/unreasonable expectations.

You have to like/enjoy reading, writing, researching, and learning new things on a daily basis to be happy in the legal field since that is what you will be doing most of the time.

The upside of the big decline in test-takers and applicants is potentially less peers to have to compete against for admission and for jobs/work years down the road.

People that are willing to put in the work, time and effort that perform well will be able to secure jobs and work. There will always be demand for lawyers and legal services from humans. The landscape in terms of the types of legal work/services that are in demand has been changing due to emerging technologies and changes in the economic environment. Just have to research things to figure out which areas/types of law have growing demand for talent and find one/some that you are interested in.

More articles about the same thing...

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... ol/255685/


http://abovethelaw.com/2012/04/if-you-a ... -an-idiot/

lame.

and legalzoom blows and people are starting to realize that.

I've been excited about this decreasing applicant thing for a while now... if we don't start seeing movement soon I'm going to be sad. It's gotta make a difference at more places than just NYU/GULC, right? Hoping NYU's snagging applicants from a notch lower than usual results in some major Penn WL movement.

Yes, Jeffort, I meant it in a positive way.







The trend looks promising for everyone applying now. Given the severity of the decrease in applicant numbers from last cycle to this one (~15.6%), the impact will likely be felt across the board.

It will definitely have an effect. I'll eat my words if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.

So with all of this, what do you think a 173/3.2's chances are of getting off the Penn waitlist this year?

I know, I know it's stupid. But while we're speculating, might as well?

I don't think this will have any effect on the GPA floor if that is what you are asking. I think top schools will continue, like Michigan, to drastically reduce class size over the next few years. Remember school want to accept people who will succeed, they need to keep the class filled with a certain level of potential achievement. If they drop their standards, hiring partners are going to know about it. There aren't enough jobs. So if their grads lose status, the schools placement stats go down, putting the school on a downward trajectory - as opposed to upwards towards excellence.

I don't think this is about maintaining talent--it is about maintaining medians. After all, Michigan was considered a top school ten years ago when their LSAT #'s were much lower than they are. It is more about keeping up with the Jones' than about making sure firms still want to come. It's about how you look relative to other schools, not by yourself.

Pretty much this.

I think it's hard to say exactly what the schools will do, but depending on how big / drastic the drop is, we could see some slightly lower standards. But we don't know until deposits are all due... and even then if top schools decide to cut their incoming class by 10%, and then only slightly lower one of their medians, the changes may not be a drastic as we assume.

However, if one of the admissions offices messed up on their projections and start panicking, we could see some major waitlist action somewhere.

When will the new medians get published?

So using these numbers, if I did my math correctly:

Last cycle's total number of applicants:
165-169 = 6961
170-174 = 3234
175-180 = 763

If we just count the 170+, we get 3997 total applicants for last year.

This year we have 3230 applicants who scored more than 170+. So the difference is 767 applicants.

Now how that will play out if spread across 14 schools... who knows. But with an unscientific assumption that they all split them evenly, that meanas 54 less 170+ students per school. That's actually a lot of students each T14 school needs to replace. Some 170+ will go to the T18 or whatever schools too, so that number of shortages will actually be higher.

I like where this is going.

I got 3242 for last cycle's # of 170-174 applicants, 8 more than your number. Otherwise, looks good.

This means 4005 applicants last cycle scored 170-174.

(Small difference, but a 4000+ number looks so much nicer, doesn't it?)

Edit: Remember, this is all compared to data collected by this time last year - ~91% of the total. None of these numbers we're discussing are the *total* numbers. That will require some additional calculation.

Here it is in a pretty chart (adjusted to be projected complete numbers, not projected 91% of the total):