As the number of law school applicants across the country continues its historic decline, law schools appear to be lowering the bar in terms of required standardized test scores among applicants, according to a study conducted by University of St. Thomas School of Law professor Jerry Organ published at the end of last year.
According to the study, only 33.4 percent students entering law school in 2013 had median LSAT scores of 160 or higher, compared with 40.8 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, the percentage of newly enrolled students with scores at or below 149 increased from 14.2 percent to 22.5 percent in that same period. LSAT scores range from a minimum of 120 to a maximum of 180.
Law school admissions consultant Ann Levine said that this trend, which has only recently become widely scrutinized, has been ongoing for the last two or three years.
“It’s just that it’s been going on long enough that people have enough data to take notice, but I started to notice a difference about three years ago,” Levine said. “It’s not that people who are not qualified are getting into top law schools. It’s just that law schools have less selection among people with top LSAT numbers, so they are dipping down to fill classes.”
In 2014, 120,000 students matriculated into law schools across the country, the smallest class since 1987 and a seven percent decline from 2013. Pre-law coordinator at Dartmouth’s Center for Professional Development Leslie Kingsley said that the number of law school applicants from Dartmouth has also been on the decline.
Levine added that the cause of declining overall LSAT scores could be a result of the draw of fields like investment banking as an alternative to practicing law among students who might otherwise be top performers.
“People at the top of the LSAT chain are no longer taking the LSAT,” she said. “In terms of GPAs, I haven’t seen a big difference in what schools are looking for there.”
John Hammel Strauss ’15, who applied to law school last fall, said that students at competitive schools like Dartmouth have been scared away from pursuing law degrees over the course of the past decade.
“I’m sure that has something to do with the poor job market, but I also think that the job opportunities for graduates from these types of competitive top-tier schools are on the rise,” Strauss said. “I’m not particularly worried about it. Markets go down and markets go up, and I think the law school market is on its way up.”
College and graduate school applications advisor and former dean of admissions at the University of Chicago Law School Anna Ivey said that declining number of applicants is a positive change in the legal landscape.
“Overall, the volume of applicants to law school is down, and rightly so,” she said. “There were way too many people applying for the number of law-related jobs out there, so this strikes me as a very good and necessary correction. I think the word has gotten out that if you’re going to go to law school, it should be a very good one. It should be a top one, and it should not cost you an arm and a leg, ideally.”
Lane Zuraw ’15, who also plans on attending law school next year, expressed a similar sense of declining interest in attending law school among the undergraduates she knows.
“There’s definitely a decline in the legal market — you can definitely see that, even as an applicant,” she said. “In terms of when I tell people that I’m applying to law school, they’re like, ‘Are you serious? This is maybe not the best time.’”
Zuraw worked at the Greensboro, North Carolina, district attorney’s office the summer after her freshman year and worked with law school graduates from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law and Wake Forest University School of Law.
“[They] are really good schools, and they said no one can find any jobs, so it’s a little scary,” she said.
While five years ago no American Bar Association-accredited law school had an entering class with a median LSAT score below 145, seven did in 2014 and five did in 2013, according to Organ’s study.
Ivey said that while applicant numbers have seen their most significant decline among elite law schools, the effects of this phenomenon will be felt more among students at middle and lower-tier institutions for whom a job after graduation might not be readily available.
“From what I can tell, a lot of the people who are dropping out of the applicant pool are dropping out of the pool for the top schools,” Ivey said. “That’s ironic, because those are exactly the graduates who will land on their feet and who will get good jobs. It’s troublesome that there are still plenty of applicants who are heading off to schools where the jobs aren’t going to be very secure, so they’re going to graduate with a bunch of debt and no important prospects.”
Levine said that she considers the current trend a beneficial one for students who do decide to apply to law school and pursue a career practicing law.
“People who have 4.0s at fabulous schools but are not good at standardized testing would have been dismissed out of hand because the schools could easily fill the classes with people with higher LSAT scores,” Levine said. “That’s not the case now, so those students are the ones who are really benefitting, but in general all applicants are benefitting because of the increase in scholarship opportunities.”
Zuraw said that she thinks the College has prepared her well for law school.
“I think one of the great things about law school is that they’re not going to expect you to know anything substantive,” she said. “It’s more a matter of skills, and I think that Dartmouth has prepared me very well in terms of writing, analyzing and things like that.”
