Applications Decline : College Recruiters Hit the Road--for Law Students

Carefully surveying the prospective law students as they wandered from table to table, the recruiter for the Villanova University School of Law left nothing to chance.

Beside her stack of order forms for law school catalogues and Chamber of Commerce maps of Philadelphia, she set up a small basketball goal with a ball securely in the net. Villanova, lest any would-be lawyer forget, is the 1985 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball champion.

“That,” conceded the recruiter, “is a cheap shot.”

Such gimmicks became commonplace this fall, however, as recruiters for about 100 law schools hopscotched across the country with a traveling Law School Forum as part of an effort to shore up enrollments of quality students.

Over the last two or three years, applications to the nation’s 175 law schools approved by the American Bar Assn. have declined nearly 20%, said S. Paul Richard, deputy executive director of the Law School Admission Council.

Just why the number of applications has declined is uncertain, but recruiters, law school officials and students interviewed as the second annual cross-country forum wound up in Los Angeles said the reasons include:

- All Baby Boomers going to law school are already there, and fewer 22-year-old college graduates are available for law school or any graduate program.

- The large influx of women and minorities that accounted for the profession’s major growth in recent years has now stabilized as the number of male law students did earlier.

- When the economy is healthy, as it is now, fewer students go to law or any graduate school, opting instead for high-paying jobs right after college.

- There is a strong perception--some say created by the media, others by practicing lawyers--that the country has too many lawyers, intimidating students who fear they could not find jobs.

- In California, and only in California, where only 60% of graduates of ABA-approved schools (and a smaller number from other schools) passed the Bar exam last year, students fear they could spend three years in law school and never win the right to practice.

Another possibility, many suggest reluctantly, is that the luster has simply worn off law as a career, with bright, capable students now more interested in fields like computer engineering.

Period of Growth

“We started our great growth in the late ‘60s,” said Leigh Taylor, dean of the Southwestern University School of Law, “when law was seen as a way of changing social positions, and we had another surge with Watergate. But right now there is nothing to make a lawyer look glamorous, good or noble or to show that law is intellectually and socially rewarding.”

With only about 70% of applicants actually accepted into law schools, no institution has yet had to close its doors or even resort to open enrollment, in which every applicant must be admitted.

The Law School Forum was instituted in 1984 to ward off such catastrophes, after educators became alarmed by a downward spiral in the number of law school applicants.

“The thought was that by placing information in the hands of undergraduate students, we could attract more applicants,” said Richard, whose council sponsors the forum.

About 100 law schools dispensed brochures, applications and advice during the 1985 forum to about 3,000 would-be lawyers in New York City, 1,600 in Chicago, 2,000 in Boston and 1,500 in Los Angeles.

Paired with the customary campus visits by recruiters, the effort provided early indications that applications will hold steady or even rise by 2.5% to 5% for the fall of 1986.

Welcome Reversal

That would be a welcome reversal to the concerned educators. With about 40,000 slots available, Richard said, a peak 72,911 students applied to ABA-approved law schools in 1982. But the number of applicants fell to 71,755 in 1983, 64,100 in 1984 and 60,132 this fall.

Enrollment, Richard said, has dropped about 1% in the last year, mostly because schools voluntarily cut their class sizes to maintain quality.

Although educators are concerned that the decline may eventually mean that law schools will have to accept less qualified applicants to fill their classes, they do not believe that has occurred yet. The dropouts, Richard said, appear to be the middle scorers on Law School Admission Tests (LSAT) and grade point averages, meaning high and low scorers still apply. And the numbers so far still allow schools to choose the top.

“Maybe this is just a return to sanity. We never thought there was anything sane about having 7,500 people try for 550 slots,” said Molly Geraghty, assistant dean and director of admissions of Harvard University School of Law.

Harvard’s applications, she said, have fallen from the 1982 peak of 7,483 to 6,000 in 1983 and 1984 and 5,800 this fall. With a freshman enrollment set at 550 since 1902, that means Harvard now accepts 9.5% of its applicants instead of 7% but can still choose top-quality students.

Stanford University School of Law remains equally secure. Although applications dropped 7% between 1984 and 1985, said Director of Admissions Dora Hjertberg, 3,300 people applied this fall for 172 chairs and the number is expected to stabilize there. That means Stanford accepts only 5% of its applicants.

Among public schools, UCLA School of Law applications fell from 4,342 in 1982 and 4,373 in 1983 to 3,828 in 1984 and 3,607 in 1985. With 325 slots to fill, the school now chooses 9% of its applicants rather than the 7% in 1982.

UCLA Expectations

Assistant Dean Michael Rappaport also expects the number of applicants to UCLA to stabilize now with no significant ups or downs.

“UCLA is not typical because it is a state school with a top reputation and low tuition,” he said, unconcerned about any drop of quality students or lack of applicants. “If there are 3,000 law student applicants left in the country, we will get 2,000 of them.”

The decline hits harder at smaller and less prestigious schools and, geographically, on those in the Midwest fed by less populated areas.

Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles, known for turning out such graduates as Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and Los Angeles County Superior Court Judges Ralph A. Biggerstaff and David J. Aisenson from its night schools, had a 9% drop in applicants between 1983 and 1984.

Dean of Admissions Sandra Oakman said the decline leveled off this fall with about 2,400 applications for its 400 slots. Accepting 17% of its applicants, Southwestern is a little more worried about maintaining quality than Harvard or Stanford.

“The number of applicants (nationally) still far exceeds the number of first-year seats. If schools feel they have to keep the same number of entering students, they will make some sacrifices in quality,” said Southwestern’s Dean Taylor, who began paring down his school’s enrollment of 1,700 when he became dean in 1978 to its current total of 950 because of limited library and other resources.

“But from the national data, it looks like applicant quality may even have gained,” said Taylor, who also serves as a director of the Law School Admissions Services, which administers the Law School Admission Tests. “I think quality is the major concern of most law schools.”

Possibility of Failure

As for the effect of the decline on schools themselves, the Southwestern dean also found little to worry about: “I think a lot of law schools have become somewhat smaller. But will any law schools go under? I doubt it. Institutions of higher education hang on tenaciously.”

Noting that law schools have always been good at “keeping an eye on the bottom line so that they don’t overproduce lawyers,” Richard agreed, based on national data kept by the council, that declining applications might force slight reductions in class size but have not endangered law schools.

Hardest hit may be the non-ABA-approved law schools like the University of La Verne College of Law, which was not invited to the forum. Applications have remained between 100 and 150, said Dean Kenneth Held, but enrollment dropped from about 45 in 1983 to 30 in l984. It held steady this year, and because inquiries are up 20%, Held hopes for an increase.

“When you are dealing with us, you are dealing with tiny numbers,” Held said. “I don’t know how much the national trend affects us. La Verne has had financial problems which are now turning around, and people may not have enrolled for that reason.”

Among the prospective law students who attended the Los Angeles forum were Ellen Zalman of Rancho Palos Verdes and Scott Collins of Pasadena, who drove up from their University of California, San Diego, campus to collect application forms.

Zalman, who had scored well on the fall Law School Admission Tests, was aiming for Harvard or Stanford, and Collins, carefully calculating his chances and his tuition bill, was considering the University of California at Berkeley or Davis.

Worried About Wasting Years

“I’m worried about wasting three years and then maybe not being able to pass the Bar or get a job,” Zalman said. “But everyone feels he has some special quality and it will work out. And if I can’t practice, maybe I can teach.”

While recruiters from Harvard and UCLA considered their booths at the forum to be drawing cards and public service efforts to help students and the smaller schools, Sandra Goadby Mannix thinks the forum helped preserve her sanity.

By paying the $400 fee, the director of admissions for Villanova University School of Law said she could reach 150 to 700 students from one table at each stop of the traveling forum, instead of darting around to several campuses in each city.

The Los Angeles forum, she observed at the end of the traditional two-month recruiting season, attracts the smallest number of potential applicants, possibly because of distances and the high cost of hotel parking.

Forums in New York, Boston and Chicago, she said, benefit from those cities’ public transportation systems, which make it easy and cheap for students to dash over to a hotel for a few hours to contact favored law schools.

The council provided various information for students, including sample tests of the Law School Admission Tests and videotapes offering down-to-earth advice on how to apply to law school, encouraging women and minorities to apply, and reassuring students through interviews with lawyers about their experiences in law school and practice.

Worth the Effort

But it was the recruiters like Mannix who bore the burden of attracting top students for their schools. None can statistically track results of the forums, to tell how many applicants or enrollees they nail down in each city. But they feel the forums are worth the effort, if only as a public relations effort for their schools.

Selling her area as well as Villanova, Mannix patiently answered questions about entrance requirements and the chances of becoming one of the school’s 200 first-year law students. Occasionally fingering the basketball hoop, she also answered more mundane inquiries.

“West Coast kids have a crazy idea of what Philadelphia is like,” she said. “When a kid from California asks how to get tickets to the Steelers, I have to explain that Pittsburgh is (more than 250) miles away.”