What to Know About Law School Class Sizes

[Dave_Berry]

"WHEN RESEARCHING law schools, the typical applicant compares schools based on rank, location, program substance and many other factors mostly related to academics or long-term career goals. However, one of the most often overlooked characteristics of a school – and one of the most impactful ones in the three years you’ll spend there – is its class size.

How Long and Difficult Is Law School?
From Appalachian School of Law’s 146 full-time enrollees in fall 2018 to the Georgetown University Law Center’s 1,790, law schools come in all sizes. The differences change the dynamics of students’ everyday life and have impact on their future, too.

Here are some factors that you should consider when thinking about which law school class size fits you best:" …

https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/law-admissions-lowdown/articles/2019-09-02/what-to-know-about-law-school-class-sizes

[bluebayou]

ridiculous article, written to gen up bidness from the masses that don’t qualify for a top law school.

For example, size:

However, even with the best intentions, with 500-plus students in a class and often more than 100 in a course, a professor can only dedicate so much time to walk students through something that has eluded them during class.

One of the largest law schools has a low student/faculty ratio (hint: HLS), less than half of the smaller LS, App State. So in this case, bigger class = 2x law faculty.

[sorghum]

In-class ranking. Wouldn’t it be great to tell a potential employer, “I graduated in the top 10% of my class”? If your class has 100 students, that means you need to beat “only” 90 other students to achieve this benchmark.

Conversely, while there is more competition at larger schools, employers are likely to be more impressed by that number when you beat hundreds of other students.

To be top 10% in the whole USA, you gotta beat 300 million people - that’s tough!

[twoinanddone]

Most law schools put ~80 students in a section and they travel from class to class together as first years. Second year they have a few large classes and then start to pick electives and the class size goes down to 15-35. By third year most classes are smaller. A moot court class might have 100 students in it but you’ll be in a small group of 8-10.

Harvard used to not release class ranks. Before 1990’s you could tell top 10% because they were on Law Review, but other than that they were just HLS grads, one big lump. I don’t know if they release rankings now.

[Publisher]

This article’s focus on Appalachain–arguably a very unethical law school due to certain practices with respect to scholarships & transferring out–reveals the author’s lack of knowledge regarding US law schools.

I agree with the above poster @bluebayou who labeled this article as “ridiculous”.

[StoneMagic]

It’s a weak justification - rankings, employment and starting salary, what area you want to focus on and where you want to practice matter. Class size is so far down the list it’s not even worth the discussion