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Does America Need 202 Law Schools?

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Law School (Photo credit: Tulane Public Relations)

The U.S. has 202 accredited law schools. Sure law schools are highly profitable for the professors and administrators. But radical changes in the way law is practiced means that the high tuitions imposed on aspiring lawyers to get that law degree are less likely to pay off.

And this imbalance between the supply of lawyers, the rising cost of adding to that supply and the likely inability of those lawyers to get jobs means that fewer people are willing to sign up to pay tuition. This means law schools will need to shrink or shutter themselves. 

The decline in the number of students heading to law schools is profound. As the New York Times reported, 30,000 people applied to law school for this coming fall -- a 20% decline from January 2012 and 38% fewer than in 2010. In 2004, 100,000 people applied to law school and in 2013 the number will likely be about half that -- 54,000.

The number of law schools is likely to decline as a result -- perhaps to 192 by 2023. In the meantime, Vermont Law School reduced its staff --Peter T. Glenshaw, the school's director of communications, said "more than 90% of that reduction occurred voluntarily." The University of Illinois is offering "tuition discounts to keep up enrollments," according to the Times.

And the University of Chicago Law School's Brian Leiter said he expects "as many as 10 schools to close over the coming decade and half to three-quarters of all schools to reduce class size, faculty and staff."

The reason for the drop in the number of applications to law school seems to be based on simple math. A Spring 2012 American Bar Association study found that only 55% of law school graduates had gotten a job requiring a law license while the average student took on $125,000 in debt to earn the license.

But the declining job prospects did nothing to tamp down rising tuition. Between 2001 and 2011, the average private law school tuition nearly doubled from $23,000 to $40,500.

Most law schools are stuck with the idea that law is a dignified profession with elegant theories that should be the principal focus of law school classes. Those law schools do not want to teach students the nuts and bolts of lawyering -- assuming that law firms will do that after students graduate.

But law firms and corporations no longer want to foot the bill for that. Nor, presumably do they see a need to pay enormous bills for doing things like legal research that was formerly the province of law school graduates aspiring to partner in a big firm.

Now the Internet and cheap telecommunications make it easy for law firms and companies to hire low-wage temps in places like India to do that work. ValueNotes, a research company in India, reported that the number of Indian firms offering legal related services nearly tripled between 2006 and 2011 to 140 and is expected to generate $1.1 billion in revenues next year.

Some schools are adapting to the needs of companies. For example, the Times reports that Stanford has put more attention on clinics that give students "hands-on training." And Boston's Northeastern Law School "has long emphasized in-the-field training" and suffered among the "smallest decreases in its applicant pool this year" as its dean, Jeremy R. Paul, told the Times.

It used to be that law school was a three year refuge for those who were not sure what they wanted to do after college. But it looks like the basic laws of economics are scaring tens of thousands of those slow-to-grow-up graduates away from the bar.

That makes me think that 202 law schools is way too many for America.