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How is the number of JD’s awarded an accurate measure of demand? It’s a measure of the students accepted by existing schools. It doesn’t take into account changing admissions policies (e.g. raising standards for ranking purposes). Couldn’t it be argued that the data you present might actually be a result of existing law schools not meeting the demand? Maybe that decrease in JD’s awarded means that there were other potential law students out there who weren’t admitted.

It also doesn’t take into account regional demand that might not have been accounted for or met by existing schools.

A more accurate measure for demand would probably be LSDAS/LSAT data. That would more accurately tell you the number of people interested in attending law school.

Even if you used the LSDAS data or even if you stayed with the JD data, is a short term blip in demand really what decision makers at potential new law schools are going to base decisions on? Wouldn’t they base their decision on much longer patterns of and projections for demand?

One thing that is missing from this discussion (but seems implicit in many such discussions) is that you are not talking about demand but demand by a certain level of credentialed student. After all, there are plenty of law school applicants every year who do not get into law school. To some extent, the worry over additional law schools is about who is qualified to go to law schools (or put another way, how elite should legal education be), but few people seem to want to say that openly. Additionally, all these new laws schools seem to be filling their seats. Why isn’t that better evidence of what the demand is? It seems like it is, unless you are really talking about students with certain levels of credentials (credentials which may have relevance to law school performance, but may or may not have relevance to lawyering ability).

Another thing that is missing is the ‘so what’ part of the discussion. Let’s say you are right and the demand for law schools has not grown. Why does that mean that existing law schools should fill the need and not face competition from new schools? Maybe UNT-Dallas feels it (future) students and its community would be better served if its (future) students went to school there in Dallas rather than having to go somewhere else.

I think you begin to address that issue at the end of the post when you switch from talking about demand for law schools (as measured by JD’s awarded) and start talking about demand for high paid lawyers. The methods by which students at new schools pay for their legal education (lots of loans) and how well that method matches up with their career prospects is a definite concern.

The ‘so what’ question also brings us back around to the issue of qualifications. One could argue that new schools largely fill their seats by admitting students who would otherwise not have been admitted anywhere while competing with established schools for students on a small to marginal basis.

California and some other states allow graduates of non-ABA schools to take their bar exams; as a result there are quite a few law schools which have not been sanctioned by the ABA. Some of them must aspire to become ABA schools.