Three charts to illustrate the present market for law schools
We often read about the "crisis" in legal education, and the "drastic" steps that law schools are taking. All that being said, I'm actually surprised that law schools are taking such modest steps in the face of fairly long-term declines. That is, given trends, the Class of 2018 is likely to be still a smaller group of students than the 40-year low of the Class of 2017. And even if it's the bottoming out, we even a rebound would likely not return law schools to any sense of "normalcy" until the year 2020. But we see very few schools reacting with a serious, long-term focus like one might expect.
Below are three charts illustrating the total LSAT takers, total JD applicants, and total JD matriculants from 2004-2014, with a projection for 2015 (i.e., the Class of 2018) based on presently-available data. (Data derived from LSAC and ABA resources.)