{"id":163,"date":"2009-09-24T09:36:11","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T15:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/?p=163"},"modified":"2009-09-24T13:42:13","modified_gmt":"2009-09-24T19:42:13","slug":"do-we-need-more-law-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/2009\/09\/24\/do-we-need-more-law-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Do We Need More Law Schools?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <em>The National Jurist<\/em> (September 2009), there are 10 new schools on the way (pp. 12-13). That doesn&#8217;t even count<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the new campus the University of Idaho plans to open in Boise (mentioned in the article), or<\/li>\n<li>the new public law school (approved earlier this year) the University of North Texas will open in Dallas in Fall 2010.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abanet.org\/legaled\/approvedlawschools\/approved.html\" target=\"_blank\">ABA<\/a>, there are now 199 provisionally or fully ABA-approved law schools offering JDs.\u00a0 The following chart shows the growth in ABA-approved law schools since 1923, when the ABA began approving law schools.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-173\" title=\"ABA Law Schools by Year\" src=\"http:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/Chart.ABAbyYear1.jpg\" alt=\"ABA Law Schools by Year\" width=\"500\" height=\"410\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Twenty years ago (1989), there were 174 ABA schools.\u00a0 That&#8217;s 25 more law schools, or a growth of just over 14%.\u00a0 Assuming that all 12 of the law-schools-in-formation make it to at least provisional ABA approval, the United States will have 211 law schools.<\/p>\n<p>How much of this is demand driven?\u00a0 According to the ABA, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abanet.org\/legaled\/statistics\/charts\/stats%20-%207.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">number of JDs granted each year<\/a>\u00a0peaked in the 1996-1997 academic year, at 41,115, and then dropped for several years to a low of 37,910 (2000-2001).\u00a0 The number of JDs did not recover to at least the 1996-1997 level until 2004-2005 (42, 672 JDs). During that period the number of law schools increased from 180 (1997) to 184 (2001) to 191 (2005).\u00a0 That growth was not driven by demand .<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-204\" title=\"HistoricalJDs\" src=\"http:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/HistoricalJDs3.JPG\" alt=\"HistoricalJDs\" width=\"410\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/HistoricalJDs3.JPG 600w, https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/HistoricalJDs3-300x230.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 410px) 100vw, 410px\" \/>One of the\u00a0new law schools mentioned in the article is Louisiana College, who cites unmet demand in Louisiana.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the most recent information from the Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools (<a href=\"http:\/\/officialguide.lsac.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">2010 edition<\/a>) on the 4 Louisian law schools, as well as Mississippi College (mentioned as the fall-back for would-be lawyers from Louisiana):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>LSU:\u00a0 499 offers on 1299 applications (38%); medians of 156\u00a0(LSAT) &amp; 3.51 (GPA)<\/li>\n<li>Loyola-NO:\u00a0 799\/1,611 (50%); 152 (LSAT) &amp; 3.33 (GPA)<\/li>\n<li>Southern:\u00a0 376\/1,114 (34%); 145 (LSAT) &amp; 2.83 (GPA)<\/li>\n<li>Tulane:\u00a0 931\/2,612 (36%); 162 (LSAT) * 3.59 (GPA)<\/li>\n<li>Mississippi College:\u00a0 621\/1166 (53%); 150 (LSAT) &amp; 3.22 (GPA)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Bar-passage data for Mississippi College shows that 13 persons took the Louisiana Bar exam, out of 157 total persons taking a Bar exam for the first time.\u00a0 More Mississippi College graduates from Louisiana might have taken the Bar exam first in Mississippi, but still intend to return to Louisiana.<\/p>\n<p>In the article, <a href=\"http:\/\/info.law.indiana.edu\/sb\/page\/normal\/1415.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bill Henderson<\/a> (Indiana, Bloomington) wonders whether there will be enough high-paying jobs to let an ever-increasing number of graduates pay off their college&#8211;and law school!&#8211;loans.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Gary Rosin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to The National Jurist (September 2009), there are 10 new schools on the way (pp. 12-13). That doesn&#8217;t even count the new campus the University of Idaho plans to open in Boise (mentioned in the article), or the new public law school (approved earlier this year) the University of North Texas will open in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,26,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aba","category-commentary","category-law-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200,"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uberlaw.net\/LawNumbers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}