Aba Report

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 38 No. 5 Pg. 14
• Publication year: 2015
• Pages: 14
• topic: Business of Law,Technology

ABA Report Vol. 38 No. 5 Pg. 14 Wyoming Bar Journal October, 2015

Darin B. Scheer Wyoming State Bar Delegate to the ABA.

A Change is Gonna Come: Is the Legal Profession Up to the Challenge?

"May you live in interesting times," is purported to be the English translation of an ancient Chinese curse. Although the saying is apocryphal, this is, indeed, an interesting time to be a lawyer. Our profession presently faces a multitude of challenges, or opportunities, depending on one's perspective. These include declining law school enrollment numbers, lower LSAT scores for those who are choosing to apply, worrying trends in bar exam results, new graduates experiencing increasing difficulty finding full-time legal employment, a significant access-to-justice gap in which low and moderate means clients are not able to find or afford legal services, and the threat of diminished public confidence in both the civil and criminal justice system as a whole.

At the end of 2014, enrollment numbers of first-year law students nationwide had declined to levels not seen since 1973, when there were 53 fewer law schools in the United States.^[1] Those numbers represent a 30 percent decline from national enrollment numbers just four years prior in 2010.^[2] The number of college graduates considering law school is also dropping. In 2014, the number who took the LSAT declined 8.1 percent from the previous year, and was nearly 50 percent below the same test period in 2009.^[3] Of even greater concern is the steep drop in the quality of applicants nationwide. In an article entitled, "The Smartest People Are Opting Out of Law School," Bloomberg reported in April of this year that "fewer people with high Law School Admission Test scores are applying to and enrolling in law school, and less-qualified students are filling their slots."^[4] According to figures from the Law School Admission Council, as of March 2015, U.S. law schools saw only 50% as many applicants with LSAT scores of 165 and above as compared to 2010.^[5] Thus, in order to compensate for declining numbers of applicants in general, many law schools are facing the prospect of filling those empty seats with applicants they may not have admitted only a few years prior.

In a profession already saddled with many near-term challenges, these statistics raise significant long-term concerns. According to Jerome Organ, a University of St. Thomas School of Law professor who reviewed the LSAC statistics, "The top is eroding and the bottom is growing__Four years from now, when those people graduate and take the bar, you'll have a much smaller percentage who are likely to pass the bar and a much larger percentage that are likely to fail."^[6] Unfortunately, we may already have gotten a glimpse into the future, with states reporting the single largest score drop in four decades for the July 2014 bar exam, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners.^[7]

Falling law school enrollment numbers are accompanied by, and are likely due to, discouraging employment numbers for recent law school graduates. According to the ABA, less than two-thirds of new law school graduates in the class of 2013 found jobs that required passing a bar exam.^[8] These numbers are concerning, especially coming at a time...