Applying to law school? The competition is steep
Applying to law school? Warning: It’s going to be even more competitive than last year. As of Thursday afternoon, the number of applicants is up 32% compared to this time last year, while applications are up 27.8%, according to the Law School Admission Council’s volume summary data.
This follows last year’s competitive cycle, when, by December, applications were up 35% and applicants by 25% compared to a year earlier. By May, things had settled down a bit, with applications to ABA-accredited law schools landing at 22.9% higher over a year earlier, while the number of applicants jumped 19.5%, according to the LSAC.
But last year’s increase explains, in part, this year’s growth.
“We often see a wave of early applicants in years following more competitive cycles,” wrote Sudha Setty, the LSAC’s president and CEO, in an Oct. 13 blog post.
That’s because many applicants who were disappointed last year reapplied this year, wrote Mike Spivey, the founder and CEO of Spivey Consulting and a law school admissions consultant, to the ABA Journal.
But he sees the current weakened job market, in which recent college graduates are more likely to be unemployed than the general population, 4.59% vs. 4.18%, according data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, as the biggest reason more are applying to law school.
“Recent college graduates are facing the highest unemployment rates in 45 years,” he adds.
And more law schools now offer early decision programs, encouraging early applications, Setty said.
She added that the current figures are “extremely early data” for this admissions cycle, when typically only about 15% of applicants and applications have been made.
Ultimately, Spivey predicts that these numbers will increase a bit through November “and then slowly glide down through 2026,” he wrote to the Journal, with the increase ultimately landing at being up between 15% to 25%.
With the increase in applications, it might take a while for applicants to learn whether they are accepted, Spivey says.
“Admit offers will be fewer as a percentage of the entire applicant pool—the technical definition of more competitive—and possibly slower going out as schools are overwhelmed with applications,” he adds.
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