As 1L class sizes stabilize, one in nine law school enrollees are not a part of a JD program
The ABA Standard 509 data has been released for 2016. It includes data about the size of incoming law school classes.
Incoming 1L class sizes have stabilized over the last few years, hovering just over 37,000 new 1Ls.
As a result, the overall enrollment in in JD programs is starting to stabilize--not entirely, as the larger incoming classes work their way through the system and are replaced with smaller incoming classes. But total JD enrollment is now at a 42-year low, at 110,951. In 1974-1975, it was at 105,708.
In contrast, non-JD legal enrollment continues to grow steadily. It's up to 13,677 total enrolled in non-JD programs, up about 600 from 13,086 last year.
As a percentage of total enrollment, however, it continues to climb. Non-JD enrollment is no 11% of a law school's total enrollment, or just about 1 in 9 students enrolled in a law school is a part of a non-JD program. (It was about 1 in 10 last year.)
Note: non-JD enrollment was not disclosed for 2014-2015. Some charts begin at a non-zero Y-axis to display relative changes over time.