Enrollment in the nation's law schools dropped nearly 5 percent in 2015, including a slump by 2.2 percent in first-year class sizes, according to data provided by the American Bar Association.The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar on Wednesday released statistics submitted by each of the 205 ABA-approved law schools on the year's total enrollment, first-year matriculation, test score and grade-point average quartiles, student body ethnicities, scholarships, bar-passage rates and other categories.Although total enrollment for Juris Doctor degrees is down by nearly 6,000 to 113,900 this year, total first-year matriculation is more of a mixed bag. Ninety-seven schools reported same or increased first-year classes compared with last year's 69 schools, while 107 schools reported decreased first-year enrollment compared to 127 last year.The overall first-year numbers, however, continue a downward trajectory. This year, first-year students totaled 37,058 students, compared with last year's tally of 37,894, marking a nearly 30 percent drop in first-year enrollment since 2010's high-water mark of 52,488 students.Over that period “more strong students left the applicant pool and more weak students joined it,” said Bernie Burk, a visiting assistant professor at Campbell University Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law. “We still have yet to see the effect of the last three years of admissions decisions” for current students' graduation, employment and bar-passage rates, Burk said.The good news for law schools is “this is smallest decrease in a while and it seems also like we've reached the bottom of the trough,” said professor Alfred Brophy of University of North Carolina School of Law. The Law School Admission Council last week reported applications for the 2016-17 school year are up 3.4 percent, a figure that led Brophy to predict a modest enrollment bump next year.“I thought we might get down to 35,000 first-years before we started turning around. It's not as bad as I would have expected,” Brophy said.The data, which the schools collected in mid-October and posted to their websites on Tuesday, will be the same numbers the U.S. News & World Report use to make its rankings next year, and some schools took some heavy hits.Charleston School of Law cut its first-year matriculation nearly in half from 166 to 85, and the University of Connecticut, Liberty University and Whittier each saw their first-year classes go down almost 40 percent. In sheer numbers, Charlotte and Florida Coastal schools of law lost the most seats at 137 and 104, respectively.On the opposite side of the ledger, William Mitchell College of Law's 320 first-years in 2015 is almost double 2014's matriculation figure thanks to the school's January launch of a hybrid online/on-campus program that brought in a vastly increased part-time student population. The school last week finalized its merger with fellow St. Paul institution Hamline University's law school, which saw a modest dip in its final first-year enrollment numbers. Mitchell Hamline School of Law will be located on William Mitchell's campus.In California, Santa Clara University beefed up its first-year enrollment by nearly 70 percent and small University of La Verne College of Law brought in 95 first-years in 2015, a 63.8% increase of last year's cozy 58-student entering class. City University of New York and Arizona State University's law schools upped their first-year classes by more than 50 percent, while Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law had a 42 percent bump.Not every school was subject to such flux in 2015. Yale Law School, perennially perched at the top of U.S. News & World Report rankings, and the 18-strong first-year class at Concordia University School of Law in Boise, were among the 10 institutions that saw no change in matriculation numbers at all.