<p>The University of California Hastings College of the Law will enroll 20% fewer new students starting this fall. The move is in response to the challenging employment market for new law school grads and a decline in applications to law schools nationwide.</p>
<p>A couple of other lesser known law schools took a similar step last year, but Hastings, part of the UC system, is the best known and most selective school to make this kind of move. While filling the seats wouldn't be a problem - Hastings admits just 25% of its applicants - the school hopes to see an improvement in job placement stats.</p>
<p>Fewer students means less revenue, of course, and they cut 20 staff positions but left the faculty unscathed.</p>
<p>That a school would make this kind of move without being forced into it by its inability to enroll qualified students is quite remarkable. Law schools across the country are being faced with declining hiring by law firms and sliding placement stats, but just about all the rest seemed determined to keep churning out lawyers.</p>
<p>Do you think this will become a trend, or is cutting enrollment just too painful for most institutions?</p>
<p>It should be a trend. It is monstrous for law schools to continue to enroll so many students when the job market is so utterly horrible. The entire legal industry is contracting and evolving and it’s long past time that law schools took notice of that. It should be more widespread.</p>
<p>Grad schools in general should cut enrollment, as perhaps should bachelor’s degree colleges. It’s been clear for a good 20 years that forcing everybody and their dog into higher education isn’t helping the economy, society, academia, or anybody who doesn’t stand to gain by usurious student debt.</p>
<p>Graduate schools and undergraduate colleges could opt to unilaterally reduce the number of degrees they award annually, but this won’t stop the proliferation of for-profit diploma mills that will be happy to step into the breach. Money will still be separated from the fool, aided and abetted by the Federal government.</p>
<p>One thing that’s anomalous about Hastings is that it isn’t used as a cash cow by its parent institution. It operates as an independent entity of the University of California, without giving or receiving subsidies.</p>
<p>One reason we have so many law schools is that they’re much cheaper to operate than, say, medical schools.</p>
<p>Accelerated seems like a GREAT option, but that still does not resolve the problem of finding a position. Law schools must rigorously work on placing their students into “internships” before graduation and work on job placement afterward. The English system has you go to law school for two years and be a “trainee” for two years. You then qualify to practice. The two years of trainee work teaches you a great deal more than you learn in law school.</p>
<p>The sad part is that there is still a desperate shortage of public interest lawyers. I understand that most students wouldn’t want to take on a mountain of law school debt to serve this need at low salaries, but there are many people who need legal help who cannot afford a traditional law firm.</p>
<p>There may be a shortage of attorneys, but not for lack of interest – its a lack of job opportunities. My reading of other LS blogs indicate that PI jobs can be more competitive than Big Law, particularly now that some law schools have loan forgiveness programs.</p>
<p>“The sad part is that there is still a desperate shortage of public interest lawyers. I understand that most students wouldn’t want to take on a mountain of law school debt to serve this need at low salaries”</p>
<p>I think that is misleading. There is a lack of funding to pay attorneys any salary at all to do this work. There are lots of young lawyers who are willing and ready to do it, and many of them fight for each paid job. I don’t know of any public interest or government agency unable to fill legal jobs – maybe in the most remote locations.</p>
<p>The boom years aren’t coming back and we now have a lawyer production system that generates 2 J.D.s for every 1 legal job. </p>
<p>I’ll take Duke Law as my example. I just looked at their website.</p>
<p>It will cost you $210,000 to go there for three years. At least.</p>
<p>This is consistent with law school expenses across the board.</p>
<p>If you only have about a 50% employment rate for lawyers, eventually word is going to get out that law school is not a good deal and admissions will drop.</p>
<p>Plus, you now have Law School Professors pointing out the problems with the legal education system.</p>
<p>Paul Campos of University of Colorado and Debra Merritt of Ohio State have a blog about it. Inside the Law School Scam.</p>
<p>I think that the scam aspect has only really become apparent since 2007.</p>
<p>Before that the twin bubbles, first the dot-com bubble and then the housing bubble really propped things up and made it (relatively) easy to get a fairly good job and make payments on the debt.</p>
<p>The problem is that those jobs were essentially fake and won’t be coming back.</p>
<p>Correct, but Campos readily points out that he does personally benefit from faculty salaries and teaching loads being out of whack. 'Bout time someone at least says that the legal ‘Emperor has no clothes’.</p>
<p>The situation in the U.S. with too many law schools, too few jobs available, and too many applicants has been discussed probably for a decade now. And yet, we still see kids (and parents!) here on CC who think that they (or their kid) will be the exception and be at the top of their class and get an excellent job, where they can easily pay off their exorbitant debt. Too many go into this without doing an adequate amount of research and an honest appraisal of their abilities. The schools are not free of blame, even the good ones, that enroll hundreds of new students every year in their 1L class. It’s irresponsible, even at the top schools.</p>