08 Nov Lowest Number of LSAT Takers Since 1998

The decline in students taking the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), required for admission to virtually every law school, has continued. The 33,000 who took it in October is an 11% reduction from last year and the lowest since 1998. It is a 45% reduction since the peak of test-takers in 2009 according to the ABA Journal.

What’s going on? As we have discussed here, there are fewer law jobs, especially the plum BigLaw opportunities, and law school remains very expensive and getting more so. There have been periods where droves of folks headed to law school. This is not one of them. I reiterate my suggestion to consider dropping the mostly unnecessary third year of law school, or replacing it with meaningful externship or clinical type work without normal tuition.

Of course law schools and frankly all of higher education need to figure out why the rate of increase in tuition in the last 30 years has far outstripped anything close to the inflation rate. Poor students are often well taken care of with scholarships. Wealthy ones can pay. The students who suffer are in the middle. If your parents are both teachers and make $200,000 between them, you are not likely to get much in the way of grants or scholarship money. But if you want to go to a top college get ready for your family to spend easily $80,000 a year in total annual expense. That’s $320,000 in after tax dollars for four years. And then comes grad school! Let’s try to fix this gang.