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This is pretty big news. I wonder if the decrease in applicants, especially among applicants in the low to mid 160s that Hastings traditionally targets, has anything to do with this. Anyone think other law schools will follow suit?

I know Hamline law (in MN) is making some major cuts.

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Jessuf wrote:My law school is going to decrease the class size by ~25%. However, they blatantly said it was to increase USNews rankings.

what school do you go to?

Jessuf wrote:My law school is going to decrease the class size by ~25%. However, they blatantly said it was to increase USNews rankings.

That seems to be the choice many law schools will have to make over the coming year. This decrease in higher credentialed applicants means that LSAT/GPA scores will take a big hit.

I also wonder whether students are more price sensitive now, so that jacking tuition to make up the lost revenue isn't going to help without big scholarship outlays.

timbs4339 wrote:

Jessuf wrote:My law school is going to decrease the class size by ~25%. However, they blatantly said it was to increase USNews rankings.

That seems to be the choice many law schools will have to make over the coming year. This decrease in higher credentialed applicants means that LSAT/GPA scores will take a big hit.

I also wonder whether students are more price sensitive now, so that jacking tuition to make up the lost revenue isn't going to help without big scholarship outlays.

sounds like a field day for the TTTs. no rankings to worry about.

Very interesting. This has made intuitive sense to me for a while. Thank you for sharing!

angrybird wrote:

timbs4339 wrote:

Jessuf wrote:My law school is going to decrease the class size by ~25%. However, they blatantly said it was to increase USNews rankings.

That seems to be the choice many law schools will have to make over the coming year. This decrease in higher credentialed applicants means that LSAT/GPA scores will take a big hit.

I also wonder whether students are more price sensitive now, so that jacking tuition to make up the lost revenue isn't going to help without big scholarship outlays.

sounds like a field day for the TTTs. no rankings to worry about.

I'm not so sure about that. The TTTs are more likely to not have endowments to help them blunt the pain- meaning that they are basically operating in a model where cash coming in must go out. Therefore they must maintain class size or their school will fold. They also cannot give out huge scholarships to try and entice more students because that money is already allocated to other things.

Now if the T1s and T2s are taking students that normally would have gone to TTTs, the TTTs will simply just pluck people out of the 130 and low 140 range to fill their classes. Who cares about LSAT/GPA right? But then they are going to have a serious problem assembling a class where 75% of the students can pass the bar. Thomas Jefferson did- only 33% of their most recent class passed. If this continues, they might lose accreditation.

Luckily for TJSL, they can operate as an unaccredited school in CA where they are located. But some other TTTs can't. If they lose accreditation their graduates cannot sit for the bar. And then they either have to make SERIOUS cuts in class size, or they fold for lack of applicants.

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Hastings announced this a while ago actually, it isn't really news or anything. I have no problem with reducing the class size by 20%, I think it is the responsible thing to do. Having a class size of 400+ makes it extremely difficult to have good employment prospects in such a desired market, or anywhere really. I also don't mind them cutting some staff if it means they aren't raising tuition even more. I don't really understand why this is being portrayed in such a negative light. It isn't like they are increasing the class size.

ilovesf wrote: I don't really understand why this is being portrayed in such a negative light. It isn't like they are increasing the class size.

I think it is just the negative tone of that blog in general.

I agree with you. This is not a bad thing.

ilovesf wrote:Hastings announced this a while ago actually, it isn't really news or anything. I have no problem with reducing the class size by 20%, I think it is the responsible thing to do. Having a class size of 400+ makes it extremely difficult to have good employment prospects in such a desired market, or anywhere really. I also don't mind them cutting some staff if it means they aren't raising tuition even more. I don't really understand why this is being portrayed in such a negative light. It isn't like they are increasing the class size.

This is a way that law schools invest in increasing their ranking. They forgo the marginal tuition for a period while cutting class size. By removing the bottom quintile of their class, they hope to improve their medians. If Hastings can afford to continue to provide the same amount of scholarships that it was prior to this cut, I think you'll see a marked increase in their US News ranking.

sundance95 wrote:

ilovesf wrote:Hastings announced this a while ago actually, it isn't really news or anything. I have no problem with reducing the class size by 20%, I think it is the responsible thing to do. Having a class size of 400+ makes it extremely difficult to have good employment prospects in such a desired market, or anywhere really. I also don't mind them cutting some staff if it means they aren't raising tuition even more. I don't really understand why this is being portrayed in such a negative light. It isn't like they are increasing the class size.

This is a way that law schools invest in increasing their ranking. They forgo the marginal tuition for a period while cutting class size. By removing the bottom quintile of their class, they hope to improve their medians. If Hastings can afford to continue to provide the same amount of scholarships that it was prior to this cut, I think you'll see a marked increase in their US News ranking.

I don't really care about the reason they are decreasing the class, I think it's a good move regardless of their motivation.

WUSTL is also hoping to cut the class size down, back to our historic 1L class size (220-230) and probably will take fewer transfers. This is happening a lot of places. There are lots of factors at play here driving these decisions. Part of this is due to abnormally high levels of applications for the c/o 2012 and 2013, part of it is due to the sharp decline last year and (especially) this year, part of it is probably USNWR driven, and part of it likely has to do with job placement. It is definitely a good thing though.

I go to a TTT and my class size was about 20% less this year compared to the 2010-11 1L's, and the school is expecting another drop this upcoming year. There was an article in the school paper showing applications were down considerably.

ilovesf wrote:

sundance95 wrote: This is a way that law schools invest in increasing their ranking. They forgo the marginal tuition for a period while cutting class size. By removing the bottom quintile of their class, they hope to improve their medians. If Hastings can afford to continue to provide the same amount of scholarships that it was prior to this cut, I think you'll see a marked increase in their US News ranking.

I don't really care about the reason they are decreasing the class, I think it's a good move regardless of their motivation.

OK. I'm only pointing out that the legal education market is finally providing T1 law schools with incentives to reduce class size.

What's the over/under on total c/o 2015 class size? 40,000?

romothesavior wrote:What's the over/under on total c/o 2015 class size? 40,000?

If you apply the same ratio of LSATs administered-to-ABA applicants (1.96) as the previous two known cycles, you get 66,300 applicants.

Then if you apply the same ratio of applicants-to-1st year enrollment (1.66) as the two previous known cycles, you get 39,960.

If you applied 6,000 total JD attrition (which seems to be what's been happening: --LinkRemoved--) you get down to 34,000 JD's graduating in 2015.

I think that probably overstates the effect. If I had to guess total 1st-year enrollment will probably stay north of 40,000.

Class of 2015, not in 2015. Probably low 40,000 range?

ETA: Wait, I get you now. Cool stuff, thanks for the numbers.

romothesavior wrote:Class of 2015, not in 2015. Probably low 40,000 range?

So the class entering 2015 and graduating 2018? Hell, hopefully 20,000.

What I really hope some school somewhere out there does is say, hell with it, we're gonna slash faculty pay by 1/3, early-retire as many tenured professors as possible, hire only part-time adjuncts for the next five years, find every way to reduce costs possible (f/u to US News rankings), slash tuition by 1/3 to 1/2, and see what happens.

so 40,000 grads for 25,000 new jobs? Well not counting the classes of 10-12 that will still be looking for entrance level legal work I'm sure.

doesn't that 25000 jobs statistic come from 2006? Making it WAY too high.

They should've done this a long ass time ago.

Again, I don't think the drop in enrollment is gonna be as extreme as the numbers I ran point to, but if it were, and attrition held steady at current rates, there would be 34,000 new JD's entering the market in 2015, which would be the lowest number since 1981: http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/ ... eckdam.pdf

Desert Fox wrote:doesn't that 25000 jobs statistic come from 2006? Making it WAY too high.

in 2009 there were 26,239 new openings. Latest data I could find.