Shreveport, Louisiana, Photo: Shutterstock.com

The number of law schools in the United States has been shrinking in recent years, but Louisiana could buck that trend with the addition of a fourth law school in the state.

Lawmakers in the Pelican State this week approved a $100,000 feasibility study of a new law campus in the Shreveport area, which officials say is underserved when it comes to access to legal education. The proposed new campus would be part of Southern University, a historically black, public university that already operates a law school about 250 miles away in Baton Rouge.

The resolution was introduced by a lawmaker who represents Shreveport, and it enjoyed unanimous support in both the state house and senate. “There is a need in the Shreveport area for law degree programs in order to meet not only the educational needs of students but also the economic and workforce 3 development needs of the region,” the resolution reads.

Louisiana's two other law schools—Tulane University School of Law and Louisiana State University Paul M. Hebert Law Center—are located in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, respectively.

John Pierre, chancellor of Southern University Law Center, told lawmakers that he supports the addition of a second campus in Shreveport. “The vision of the Southern University System is to increase its footprint throughout Louisiana,” he said, according to a report in the Shreveport Times. “This is an opportunity to increase the footprint in a much-needed venue.”

It remains to be seen whether a feasibility study will support the need for a new law campus, however. The last new American Bar Association-accredited law school to open was the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law, which welcomed its first class in 2014. Since then, eight law schools or branch campuses have closed or soon will close, most falling victim to low enrollment. One of the nation's newest law schools, Indiana Tech Law School, closed in 2016 after just four years in operation.

Last fall, state regulators in Tennessee nixed the acquisition of the shuttering Valparaiso University Law School by Middle Tennessee State University after a consultant concluded that the transfer would cost more than anticipated and that Tennessee did not need a seventh law school. The state's existing law schools also opposed the move.

Backers of a new Shreveport law school say they envision a different approach, with evening and weekend classes and perhaps online courses.

The feasibility study is slated to be complete ahead of the legislature's next session, which begins in March of 2020.

Louisiana isn't the only state where people are pushing for new law campuses. A group has been working for years to bring legal education to El Paso, Texas, though their progress has been slow. A California lawmaker in 2017 introduced a bill that would have created a new law school at the University of California, Riverside, but later pulled the legislation amid opposition.