A sign of market rationality or the start of the decline of the legal profession? For the second year in a row, law school applications are down. According to the Law School Admission Council, “60,693 applicants submitted 440,964 law school applications as of March 30 for the academic year starting this fall,” reports the New Jersey Law Journal. “That’s 15.6 percent fewer applicants and 13.6 percent fewer applications than about the same time last year.”
But here’s the kicker: The smart ones (I use that term loosely to mean those with high LSAT scores) are leading the drop. Among those who score near the top on the LSATs (in the 170 to 174 range), applications to law schools have dropped by more than 20 percent (applications by those who scored at the very top 175 to 180 dropped by 13.6 percent). Reports The Atlantic: “What does that tell us? It says that fewer people who are smart and hardworking enough to even get that score are probably taking the LSAT, and even if they are, they’ve heard enough terrible news about the legal economy that they’ve chosen not to apply.”
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