College grads are finally paying attention. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the number of law school applicants has dropped by 11.5% from last year, and is so far the lowest number since 2001.
Apparently, “prospective law students increasingly are aware of the grim job market for lawyers and the challenges they would face in paying off law-school loans, college career advisers said. Corporate law firms, long the employer of choice for many graduates, have cut back on hiring in recent years, and most firms haven’t raised salaries for starting lawyers.” And while there is the potential for great success, fewer students are prepared to make that gamble.
A Slate article suggests more reasons for the decline in applications. Since the economy and job market are gradually improving, students may be more willing to try out the workforce first rather than turning to grad school—which is often a way to push off dealing with finding a job in a lousy market.
Or, perhaps cultural forces are at work here: “In the past year or two, scads of blogs have committed themselves to exposing law school as a ‘scam,’ and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have devoted thousands of words to telling readers why law school is a bad, bad idea if you do not actually want to be a lawyer. Look to any of a dozen blogs or news sites to explain how wages for legal workers might continue to fall, as automation takes over rote tasks and businesses increasingly refuse to pay obscenely high per-hour fees.” The media’s coverage of the issue has likely had an impact on how prospective law students consider their future.
Whatever the impetus, “the law-school bubble may have just burst.”
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