Correction
The last name of Wendy Collins Perdue, dean of the University of Richmond School of Law, was misspelled on second reference in the originally published version of this story, which has been updated.
The number of students applying to Virginia’s law schools seems as scant as last year. Midway through the application season, school administrators are continuing to deal with a dramatic drop in applications and enrollment.
Nationally, the American Bar Association reports total enrollment in law schools is at its lowest in 28 years, and for first-year students, enrollment is the lowest it’s been in 40 years. Just five years ago, the largest class ever entered law school.
Applications to Virginia’s eight schools fell more than 10,000 from 27,784 in 2011. And last fall’s entering class was about 20 percent smaller than 2011’s first-year students.
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An expansion of law schools and a contraction in legal jobs have contributed to fewer students viewing a career as a lawyer as a sure path to lucrative employment.
The downward trend is putting pressure on law school administrators to step up recruitment and scholarship awards while, in some cases, spending less on faculty. Also, the financial dynamic has shifted for some of the schools as they no longer have surplus revenue to share with their universities, and instead are looking for financial aid.
“Generally, law schools bring in more revenue than it takes to operate them. Being in the law school business looked like a good idea. Those days are over,” said Daniel Polsby, dean of George Mason University School of Law.
Each of Virginia’s schools has a different relationship with its university, and one school, Appalachian School of Law, is independent of a university, though it is seeking to strike up a relationship with Emory & Henry College.
“Our university does not use our law school as a cash cow. We are financially self-sufficient,” said Paul Mahoney, dean of the University of Virginia law school. The law school keeps its tuition and donations and pays the university for services it provides. Neither subsidizes the other.
“William and Mary has not had to adjust expenses, in part because we have always operated as efficiently as possible,” said Faye Shealy, associate dean for admission. “In fact, we have significantly increased the number of students we can assist with financial aid, thanks to the generosity and support of our alumni body. Gifts to our annual fund made by alumni and other benefactors, for example, have increased by 48 percent since fiscal year 2011.”
But for newer schools and those that do not have large endowments or wealthy alumni, GMU’s Polsby said the situation is more difficult.
“We have reworked the budget and the revenue model. We will get through this. We will get smaller. Probably be 80 percent of where we were. I have to assume a bunch of law schools are going to have to put up the shutters, of which we are not one,” he said. “Here, we are breaking even where we used to generate a healthy surplus. … We are university connected, and in a great legal community; we’re kind of in a blessed situation. We’re not rich, we’re not old and don’t have the wealthy alumni who can make it through hard times. But we do have a lot of assets. We’re a very large state university.”
“We return a certain amount of tuition to cover essential university expenses,” said Jeff Brauch, dean of Regent University’s law school. “We’re sending back less, but our university administration agrees that we are not going to do anything with the quality or reduce admission standards. We don’t want less prepared and committed students who would do poorly on the bar exam. Our commitment is to being excellent lawyers.”
The sentiment was expressed by all of Virginia’s law schools.
“We had 17 applicants for every seat, so there is not a ‘can we get as many students as we can?’ What we do look at is the quality of the applicants, the size of our faculty and how many small classes versus large lectures we want,” Mahoney said.
UVa, as a top 10 law school, is competing with its peers and not necessarily the other Virginia schools for the top students, he said. “At the very high end, competing for top students is increasingly fierce.”
UVa purposely reduced class sizes in order to lower the student-faculty ratio to that of its peers in order to appeal to students who are seeking to build relationships with their professors.
“Given the declining number of applicants, we are seeing schools aggressively recruit students through scholarships, stipends and other benefits. We, too, are being aggressive and creative in our approach but, in the end, we also know that the unique Christian mission of the law school and rigorous practical skills curriculum make Liberty Law the right choice for many students,” said Rena Lindevaldsen, interim dean of Liberty University’s law school. “Our focus is on building a class, even if it is smaller in size than last year, with strong academic abilities so that they can succeed in law school, on the bar exam, and in their chosen field.”
“Cost is an issue to our students,” Brauch said. “We want to be more flexible and creative. We want to be among the first adopters.”
Regent began a master’s program for students wanting to learn about the law but not become lawyers. It initiated an accelerated program that would allow a student to compress the three-year program into 24 months. And it also works with part-time students who might take five years to finish.
“We are adding courses and integrating programs,” Brauch said.
At Washington and Lee, senior administrators this week are expected to present a plan to the board of trustees.
Brian Eckert, executive director of communications, said when the national decline in law school admissions continued to accelerate last year, the trustees formed a task force to examine the changes to legal education and study both the law school and employment markets.
“After that task force reported its findings to the full board last October, the trustees charged the university’s senior administration to work with the law school to create a plan to respond to those challenges,” he said. “The trustees approved temporary additional allocations from the law school’s resources to help support its operations in response to the financial challenges that W&L, like other law schools, are now facing. Throughout this process, the goal has always been to maintain the law school’s quality and to protect its defining characteristics of personalized attention, strong student-faculty relationships, and an innovative curriculum.”
At Appalachian School of Law “our school is only 17 years old. The alumni isn’t of the age yet for endowments. We do have private donors who are very good to us,” said Donna Weaver, director of institutional development. For the most part the school is tuition driven.
“Because of the downturn of applications, the board of trustees lowered the number of faculty. We cut to the bare bone,” she said.
The school is considering an alliance with Emory & Henry College. “It would connect us to a college in Virginia that could be a good feeder school,” she said.
Appalachian also hired a market research firm to help develop a strategic plan. With it, the school could possibly access funding through a federal tax credit program. The plan is also to identify geographic areas from which to recruit students.
For example, Weaver said the school has a strong natural resource program that would appeal to students wanting to pursue environmental and land-use law.
She said the school appeals to students wanting a nontraditional setting and a close faculty relationship and who want to be lawyers.
Wendy Collins Perdue, dean of the University of Richmond School of Law, said though the number of applications has dropped, prospective students are more committed to the law.
“There was a time when going to law school for many people was that if you could just graduate from law school, life would be good,” she said. Students now are weighing the cost of law school against their prospective earnings right out of school rather than looking at it as a career investment, she said.
“Thinking of law school as an industry, there is an over capacity. So the demand for legal education that was burgeoning in the 1990s and the 2000 aughts. New law schools opened, existing law schools expanded to take care of all of it,” Polsby said. “The world ended economically around 2008. There were ramifications for that. Candidly, they haven’t stopped ramifying. … Jobs in the legal market have not recovered anything like the labor market. … The labor market is what sucks kids into a legal education.”
Richmond’s Perdue said for students still interested in law school, Virginia has an advantage.
“We aren’t situated any different than the rest of the country [as far as a downturn]. That said, we have a … group of strong law schools when you look at the collection of schools in one state,” she said. “Fortunately, we have a very strong economy to support the graduates of those law schools.”
Virginia law school admissions
Field 1 | Field 2 | Field 3 | Field 4 | Field 5 | Field 6 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Appalachian | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 313 | 146 | 1177 | 20 | 21 |
2012 | 332 | 75 | 860 | 20 | 20 |
2013 | 265 | 56 | 678 | 18 | 20 |
2014 | 216 | 48 | 494 | 19 | 14 |
George Mason Univ. | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 731 | 186 | 5354 | 160 | 120 |
2012 | 714 | 147 | 4510 | 157 | 117 |
2013 | 636 | 149 | 2460 | 146 | 130 |
Virginia law school admissions, 2011-2014 | |||||
2014 | 520 | 161 | 2443 | 150 | 129 |
Liberty Univ. | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 313 | 99 | 414 | 42 | 38 |
2012 | 286 | 83 | 380 | 41 | 41 |
2013 | 257 | 68 | 342 | 42 | 37 |
2014 | 207 | 84 | 297 | 36 | 38 |
Regent Univ. | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 428 | 154 | 1180 | 55 | 55 |
2012 | 434 | 142 | 1026 | 53 | 48 |
2013 | 417 | 106 | 668 | 53 | 49 |
2014 | 355 | 104 | 570 | 47 | 50 |
U of Richmond | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 460 | 154 | 2371 | 102 | 97 |
2012 | 454 | 153 | 2823 | 106 | 95 |
2013 | 460 | 133 | 2446 | 103 | 85 |
2014 | 456 | 133 | 1867 | 88 | 75 |
Univ. of Virginia | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 1106 | 357 | 7379 | 197 | 185 |
2012 | 1093 | 356 | 6062 | 203 | 177 |
2013 | 1078 | 330 | 6048 | 193 | 173 |
2014 | 1048 | 307 | 5233 | 193 | 172 |
Washington & Lee | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 407 | 121 | 3972 | 65 | 65 |
2012 | 395 | 187 | 3408 | 65 | 66 |
2013 | 457 | 111 | 2409 | 74 | 80 |
2014 | 419 | 101 | 2335 | 81 | 81 |
William & Mary | Students | First year students | Applicants | Faculty spring | Faculty fall |
2011 | 628 | 217 | 5937 | 107 | 99 |
2012 | 637 | 196 | 5564 | 113 | 108 |
2013 | 619 | 226 | 5849 | 134 | 114 |
2014 | 623 | 213 | 4407 | 133 | 112 |
Source: American Bar Association |