By JOE PALAZZOLO and CHELSEA PHIPPS
Law schools are experimenting with a novel solution to the nation's glut of attorneys: mint fewer of them.
Faced with a weak job market for lawyers and a dwindling number of applicants, several law schools are cutting the size of their incoming classes, a move legal experts describe as unprecedented.
Law-school class sizes fluctuate from year to year and, in isolated cases, schools have reduced enrollment in the past to lower their student-to-teacher ratio or to reflect the jobs picture in their region.
But experts say that the planned reductions by at least 10 of the roughly 200 laws schools accredited in the U.S., suggest a new reality is sinking in: The legal profession may never return to its prerecession prosperity.
"This looks like it's a big structural shift," says William Henderson, an Indiana University law professor who studies the market for law jobs. "Law schools don't think this is going to bounce back."
In previous economic downturns, the number of law-school applicants increased, as students who would otherwise have looked for jobs found temporary refuge studying for an advanced degree. But the number of law-school applicants this year is 65,119, down 14% from a year earlier, according to the Law School Admission Council Inc., a nonprofit corporation that administers the Law School Admission Test.
"We're going down in a down market," says Frank Wu, dean of the University of California's San Francisco-based Hastings College of the Law, a top-tier school that has taken some of the most drastic steps to "reboot" legal education.
The school plans to whittle its total enrollment to about 1,000 from 1,300 in phases over the next three years. The cuts could cost the school $9 million, Mr. Wu says.
Daniel B. Rodriguez, dean of Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, says he is "taking a close look" at reducing the size of its incoming class, as a nod to the grim job prospects for attorneys, but also to raise admission standards and improve the school's program.
Northwestern's law school is ranked 12th in the country by U.S. News & World Report, whose annual surveys are widely followed by prospective students.
Shrinking class size could help schools maintain their all-important U.S. News rankings even as the pool of applicants declines. By cutting the number of places available, a law school can be just as selective, or even more so, about prospective students' LSAT scores and undergrad grade-point averages.
"They are trying to get a class that mirrors prior classes, but with fewer applicants and enrollees," says Indiana University's Mr. Henderson.
The number of law graduates per year spiked to 44,495 this year from 42,673 in 2006, and the American Bar Association accredited 10 new law schools over the same period.
But the high-paying law-firm jobs many of those students had hoped to land are in short supply, and some top firms have scaled back their hiring of entry-level lawyers by as much as half since the financial crisis started in 2008.
"This is long overdue," Mr. Wu says of the class reductions. "The expectations about law school have been out of whack since I was in law school," he says, adding that he earned his law degree in 1991 and practiced at Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco before entering academia.
For the law-school class of 2011, employment rates are at an 18-year low, according to a survey by the NALP, a nonprofit educational association for the legal profession.
About 86% of graduates found jobs in what NALP described as the worst market since 1994, when the employment rate was 85%. Less than 66% of those jobs required a law license, the lowest rate since the association began collecting the data in the 1980s, the survey said.
In recent months, law-school graduates have filed more than a dozen lawsuits around the country accusing law schools of misleading prospective students by advertising that a high percentage of their graduates were employed, without specifying whether the jobs required a law degree.
The schools have movedsuccessfully, in at least one caseto dismiss the lawsuits, arguing that they strictly followed American Bar Association rules and maintained accurate job-placement data.
Still, most law schools aren't planning to shrink. They include Thomas M. Cooley Law School, the largest in the nation, with 3,700 students, and among the first to be sued over its job-placement numbers.
The independent school, which has campuses in Michigan and recently expanded into Florida, has defended its practices, saying they met ABA requirements.
Cooley "isn't interested in reducing the size of its entering class on the basis of the perceived benefit to society," says associate dean James Robb.
"Cooley's mission is inclusiveness," adds Mr. Robb, who says he worries reducing class sizes could disproportionately affect minority students.
Paul Schiff Berman, dean of the George Washington University Law School, ranked 20th by U.S. News, says the school, which enrolled about 480 students in 2011, hasn't decided how many slots would be cut for the incoming class, but he estimates the reduction would cost the school about $1 million.
While Mr. Berman says his school could absorb the loss, that kind of shortfall could have big financial repercussions at other institutions.
Law schools are considered profit centers at many universities. If they can't find external funding to plug the probable revenue gap, some of them might have to consider such moves as pay cuts, paring back faculty and staff and reducing nonsalary costs, legal-industry experts say.
"Putting a university on a sudden diet is not easy," says Marianne B. Culhane, dean of the Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Neb., which in late 2009 made a deal with Creighton University to enroll 20 fewer students a year for as long as five years.
Even if they want to slim down, many law schools will have a hard time persuading their universities that the cuts are warranted, says Ms. Culhane.
In Creighton's case, she says, "We didn't think if people were going to have trouble getting jobs that we ought to be trying to get as many to come to law school."
With Profession Under Stress, Law Schools Cut Admissions - WSJ.com
