Applicant boom drives record first-year law school classes

By Karen Sloan

Sept 23 (Reuters) - The Legal Grounds coffee shop at Elon University School of Law is pumping out more cappuccinos and lattes these days to caffeinate the school’s record high number of first-year law students.

Elon, located in Greensboro, North Carolina, is among seven U.S. law schools which have reported their largest-ever new classes this fall. At least 10 others — including Harvard — said their first-year classes are the biggest in more than a decade.

“It’s been a boon for the coffee shop,” said Elon law dean Zak Kramer, adding that with a nearly 10% increase in first-year students across its two campuses, the school is working to ensure sure classrooms have enough chairs and that students are getting the services they need.

The full picture for U.S. law school enrollment won’t come into view until the American Bar Association releases official numbers in December, but early data from law schools suggests that their corridors, classrooms and libraries are more crowded this year thanks to bigger first-year classes.

That’s due largely to a blockbuster admissions cycle. The national applicant pool increased 18%, which was the highest year-over-year increase since 2002, according to data released by the Law School Admission Council. About 12,000 more people applied for a seat this fall than the previous year – a jump experts have attributed to a difficult entry-level job market for college graduates and a politically-energized pool of students eager to pursue careers in law.

The surge builds on a strong 2024, when applicants were up 6% and the number of first-year Juris Doctor students increased nearly 5% nationwide to nearly 40,000. However, that's still far below 2010's historic high of more than 52,000 first-year law students.

Law schools at the University of Hawaii; Rutgers University; Pace University; Liberty University, Faulkner University; and the University of New Hampshire each reported their largest first-year classes this fall, alongside Elon.

Harvard Law School enrolled 579 first-year students this year, about 3% more than the typical class of 560 and the biggest since at least 2011, according to data from the American Bar Association. A Harvard Law spokesperson did not provide enrollment data prior to 2011, which is as far back as the available ABA numbers go.

The University of Tennessee; the University of Buffalo; Duquesne University; Drake University; Samford University; Cleveland State University; University of Maine; Southern Illinois University; and Ave Maria School of Law each have their largest classes of new law students in more than a decade.

Larger first-year law classes could translate into an oversaturated job market for new graduates in 2028, warned National Association for Law Placement Executive Director Nikia Gray. Law firms are already projecting that they will need fewer entry-level lawyers in the future because of artificial intelligence, she noted.

“The unknown here is how quickly that change will happen across the whole market and whether the impact will be felt before or after these students graduate,” Gray said.

The last notable spike in law school enrollment took place in 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic helped spur a 13% increase in applicants and a 12% jump in first-year enrollment. Industry watchers at the time had cautioned that those students might struggle to find jobs, but that wasn’t the case. The class of 2024 posted a record-high employment rate, with 93% landing a job within 10 months of leaving campus.

But last year’s sizeable class of new lawyers graduated into a strong market, Gray said, and the economy may weaken before this fall’s new crop of students start looking for jobs.

The first-year class at Southern Illinois University's Simmons Law School went from 109 last year to 134 this year — a 23% increase and the school’s largest class in more than a decade, said dean Hannah Brenner Johnson. She said she is optimistic about their employment prospects, pointing to so-called “legal deserts” where people don’t have access to legal services.

“While it’s hard to predict with certainty the impact on the job market given more sizable law school classes, we do know that there are communities that are underserved by lawyers,” Johnson said. “This challenge presents abundant opportunities for students seeking jobs.”

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