Law Admissions News Round Up

Here’s the latest law school admissions news:

The law school at the College of William and Mary has seen a 26 percent rise in applicants this year, receiving close to 6,300 applications for only 200 plus spots, as reported by the Daily Press. The school has had a 48 percent increase in applications since 2007. William and Mary has also experienced an increase in applications volume at other professional and graduate programs.

An increasing number of traditional law schools are offering LL.M. degrees online, New York Lawyer reports. Southwestern University School of Law, Florida Coastal School of Law, and Loyola University Chicago School of Law are all launching LL.M. programs next fall consisting completely of online coursework. A number of schools already offer at least one LL.M. program entirely or mostly through online classes, including Boston University School of Law, the University of Alabama School of Law, and New York University School of Law. Nontraditional law schools have been offering online J.D. degrees for years, but this is fairly new territory for B&M schools. As opposed to online J.D.s, which don’t necessarily meet American Bar Association accreditation standards, LL.M.s offered by fully accredited, conventional law schools have no other restrictions.

Despite the substantial rise in the number of law students from the University of Pennsylvania applying for internal support for their public interest internships this summer, Penn Law has granted funding for all who applied. Penn Law has significantly increased its financial support for students pursuing public interest work over the summer, including policy advocacy, government internships, work with non-governmental organizations and criminal tribunals around the world, and direct representation of underserved and indigent clients.

According to New York Lawyer, a group of Harvard 3Ls who are slated for law firm jobs next year have created their own public interest fellowship. Their goal is to raise enough money to grant at least one of their classmates a public interest job for a year post-grad, and continue this fellowship for the following graduating classes. This could very well be the first public interest fellowship funded solely by student donations.

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