Numbers, the saying goes, don’t lie. But they don’t always tell the whole truth, either.
Such is the case with law school enrollment data, which the American Bar Association released this week.
Enrollment across the country has steadily declined since 2010, when the 204 ABA-accredited law schools reached a record high 52,488 first-year students.
That number is down to 37,924 this year, a drop of 27.7 percent and the lowest since 1974, when there were 151 ABA-accredited schools.
Illinois schools are faring slightly better, according to data gathered by the Daily Law Bulletin, with a 21.8 percent decline in first-year J.D. enrollment over the same period, going from 2,282 in 2010 to 1,785 this year.
But a drop in enrollment isn’t necessarily a bad thing, deans from several law schools said. A decrease was expected for two reasons — a natural leveling out following the 2010 peak, and job reductions in the legal industry brought about by the economic recession, prompting fewer applicants.
“No matter how sophisticated we as deans or admissions officers are in our enrollment management, it’s an art, not a science,” said Northwestern University School of Law Dean Daniel B. Rodriguez. “We have limited control over the market for student choices.”
According to data collected by the Law School Admission Council, nationwide law school applications fell 8.2 percent this fall, with the number of LSATs taken down 6.2 percent from the 2012-13 cycle to the 2013-14 cycle.
Since 2010, applications are down 37.7 percent and LSATs are down 38.5 percent.
Northwestern was one of two Illinois law schools that enrolled more first-year students this year than last, increasing from 232 to 244 (5.2 percent), while Loyola University Chicago School of Law jumped from 213 to 231 (8.5 percent).
“Don’t make anything significant of us going up this year,” said Loyola Dean David N. Yellen. “We intended to shrink last year.”
The school’s goal was to shrink first-year enrollment by about 15 percent between 2012 and 2013. They “overshot the mark a bit,” Yellen said, dropping from 288 first-year students to 213. The 26 percent dip was the largest one-year decline at an Illinois school in the past five years.
“This year, we just got back to the smaller class size that we intended to have in the first place,” he said. “Going forward, the enrollment … of around 230 new students is what we’re targeting.”
A school’s enrollment target is essential when reviewing enrollment data, deans said. For the 2013-14 school year, Northwestern sought to trim enrollment by about 10 percent. It finished with a 10.4 percent decline.
This year, the school wanted the same number of students, but ended up with more than expected, Rodriguez said, leading to a first-year class of 244.
Northwestern will again pursue around 230 students next year, and though he would not set exact goals beyond that, Rodriguez said that the total is “unlikely to go up.”
Around the state, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law saw the largest decline in first-year enrollment — 20.3 percent, down from 286 first-year students to 228.
DePaul University College of Law is down 18.1 percent (276 to 226), followed by Northern Illinois University College of Law at 16.8 (101 to 84), University of Illinois College of Law at 7.6 (170 to 157), Southern Illinois University School of Law at 5.3 (132 to 125), The John Marshall Law School at 4.8 (315 to 300) and the University of Chicago Law School at 3.1 (196 to 190).
Since 2010, Northern Illinois’ first-year enrollment decline is the steepest in the state at 37.8 percent, followed by U. of I. (30.8), DePaul (27.6), IIT Chicago-Kent (26.5), John Marshall (21.7), Loyola (20.6), Southern Illinois (13.2), Northwestern (10.9) and U. of C. (7.8).
At Northern Illinois, enrollment is controlled by three factors, said Dean Jennifer L. Rosato Perea — the number of applicants; the quality of applicants based on how they mesh with the school’s culture; and the number of jobs available.
“We look at what our goals are, we look at the market, we look at the yield (the percentage of admitted students who enroll) and then we look at the students who will be the right fit,” Rosato Perea said. “It’s a multi-faceted process.”
The school’s first-year enrollment of 84 falls below its preferred range of 95 to 105. To help bolster admissions, the school launched a Chicago recruiting program in September with an office currently at 73 W. Monroe St.
Enrollment trends have led IIT Chicago-Kent to focus its curriculum on areas that Dean Harold J. Krent said “can lead students to jobs,” such as labor and employment, intellectual property and technology.
The school is also trying to improve its name recognition by reaching out to prospective students before they apply.
“I think outside of Chicago, our brand is not well-known,” Krent said. “We don’t have a football team. We don’t have a hospital system. So we have to work a little harder to make sure that students are aware of our innovative programs.”
U. of I.’s first-year class of 157 students falls shy of its target of 180, a total that interim Dean John D. Colombo attributed to a “very, very challenging environment for law schools.”
“We view this as a little bit more than normal variation but not much more than normal variation,” Colombo said.
The decline in students, he said, has not impacted the school’s day-to-day operations. Rosato Perea said the same about Northern Illinois.
While that’s the case for public institutions, at private schools, the decline is definitely felt.
“We’ve had a fair amount of attrition in staff,” said John Marshall Dean John E. Corkery, estimating a 10 to 15 percent decrease in faculty over the past three years. “That contributes to the overall revenue cost picture.”
Krent said that IIT Chicago-Kent is “tightening the belt” financially.
“We have plans to get smaller, both in the sense of number of students — which is already happening — but also smaller in the sense of faculty numbers,” he said.
Due to attrition, Krent said, “I would foresee the next three or four years, a decline of four full-time faculty members.”
Attrition has shrunk Loyola’s faculty as well over the past few years, Yellen said. The smaller student body has not led to any significant budgetary changes, though, because the school has about 300 online students in various programs for non-lawyers.
“We’re using the revenue generated by these programs to offset the decline in revenue of the J.D. program,” Yellen said. “That’s why we’ve been able to downsize the J.D. program without budget cuts.”
No matter the method, all schools will continue to adjust.
“None of us in our lives will see 52,000 first-year law students again,” Yellen said about the 2010 peak. “That’s a pretty powerful indicator of how dramatic the downturn has been.”