In a trying time for legal education, the proactive will feel little, but the reactive will feel a lot
There is no question that there are several pressures facing legal education at the moment, and I’ll walk through some of them below. But, as I’ve reflected on them over the last few weeks, it’s been quite clear that most of these developments are unremarkable. Yes, some of the specific means may be a surprise, but events like these are actually long predictable (again, as I’ll highlight below). In the next couple of years, we’ll see which schools have been proactive about managing these pressures and will experience little disruption. And we’ll see a contrast in the reactive schools, the once that will face some of the more significant turbulence.
Law school admissions
Back in 2023, I noted it was a time for law schools to rethink law school admissions. The pressures of USNWR had changed. Outputs mattered more than inputs. There, I highlighted some of the proactive steps schools should consider:
Law schools could rely more heavily on the LSAC index, which is more predictive of student success, even if it means sacrificing a little of the LSAT and UGPA.
Law schools could seek out students in hard sciences, who traditionally have weaker UGPAs than other applicants.
Law schools can consider “strengthening” the “bottom” of a prospective class if it knows it does not need to “target” a median—it can pursue a class that is not “top heavy” or have a significant spread in applicant credentials from “top” to “bottom.”
Law schools can lean into need-based financial aid packages. If pursuit of the medians is not as important, it can afford to lose a little on the medians in merit-based financial aid and instead use some of that money for need-based aid.
Law schools could rely more heavily on alternative tests, including the GRE or other pre-law pipeline programs, to ascertain likely success if it proves more predictive of longer term employment or bar passage outcomes.
In one respect, it is a strong time for admissions. Applicants are up, and high quality applicants (i.e., those with high LSAT scores) are up even more. (As an aside, some suggest the increase in LSAT scores is attributable to the change in the LSAT format. I am entirely sympathetic with the view that LSAC has inadequately explained how the validity of the test will remain as strong with the dropping of the analytical reasoning section. At the same time, there was a significant cohort of LSAT test-takers, and high-end scores were up very early in the cycle (as measured before November 1, 2024), well before the bulk of those new LSAT scores were introduced.)
Despite the “demographic cliff,” a decline in births that is making its way through the higher education space more generally, will affect admissions, but not this year. And perhaps not next year. It’s entirely possible that, as the economy softens (more on that below), and as former federal employees who have lost their jobs—service-oriented professionals—consider alternative employment trajectories, we’ll see an increase in admissions interest next year, too.
But there will be new and additional strains on legal education. For non-JD legal education, those who relied on foreign-trained lawyers may face new restrictions on who may study in their programs, and those who relied on third-party for-profit service providers to administer their non-JD programs may find challenges as that market has changed significantly. It is also likely that the value of non-JD credentials, such as legal master’s degrees that allow federal employees a bump in pay status, will also diminish, if there are fewer federal works or higher uncertainty about the employment status of those workers; likewise, with a softer economic market, the value proposition of those non-JD degrees may decline. These alternative revenue streams will make JD admissions all the more significant.
That said, if there are more prospective JD students with higher credentials, there will be a temptation to over-fill some classes to make up for lost revenue elsewhere., or to stock up on revenue in the event of an admissions decline in the near future. But for those schools that have failed to be proactive about thinking about the ultimate employment outcome possibility of these prospective students, it could create significant divergence between law schools—those focused more on the “old” metrics like medians, and those focused on the newer and more valuable metrics they should have been considering two years ago. And by 2028 or 2029, the employment landscape may well have sufficiently shifted to be notable.
One more detail. Proactive law schools anticipated changes to the racial and ethnic makeups of their classes ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision in SFFA v. Harvard. Some schools pivoted toward considering socioeconomic status more robustly, or to providing greater financial need-based aid to attract students, or to reassessing their student recruitment pool for talent on a more aggressive and robust level. Others, more reactive, have seen significant changes to their incoming classes or continue to use explicit racial decisionmaking mechanisms that mark them as targets for federal oversight and investigation.
Law school accreditation
The American Bar Association is under attack by the present presidential administration, and it is, of course, entirely possible that accreditation power changes in the years ahead. If schools have been proactive about managing what the ABA requires—including, frankly, doing what is necessary to meet the minimum standards—then there should be little for law schools to worry about. But note that the ABA is very reactive. As I blogged earlier, the ABA buckled under pressure from the Department of Justice in 1995 and the Department of Justice in 2016. It is buckling again in 2025.
For reactive schools, reactive to a reactive institution like the ABA, they will have a much harder time calibrating. If schools over-corrected on matters like racial diversity policies in response to the ABA, they may have to over-correct back to come back into compliance with the ABA and new Department of Education policies. Proactive schools will have planned and prepared for changes to these policies—as the ABA has certainly changed over the years—and experience less disruption.
Funding and staffing
Many law schools are not overly reliant on federal funding. Some are, however; some have more substantial research grant money from federal sources. And some are parts of universities that quite reliant on federal funding. Some schools have more independence over their funding, others are more in a collective model with their universities.
In light of recent developments over the years, including an endowment tax instituted a few years ago that may well get much larger, and including significant inflation pressures, proactive schools began to develop long-term strategies to anticipate the challenges. Universities negotiated with donors over terms of endowed and restricted funds, creating more opportunities and more flexibility. Law schools negotiated with the university about how much to draw down the endowment. Development offices clearly communicated to donors the concerns in advance of these changes to ensure broader use of funds. The proactive have been prepared. But the reactive will face significant challenges of where to get the money and how.
For schools that staffed up to an appropriate level in recent years, including, as mentioned above, to handle admissions, and more importantly, as I highlighted back in 2023, larger and more aggressive career development offices, they, too, will be in a strong position. A hiring “freeze” at many institutions means to keep the status quo, absent exceptional circumstances. If the economy is softening, or if more labor-intensive admissions processes will be needed, then more staff will be essential, at the very time staff might be harder to come by.
Legal employment
Earlier this year, I highlighted a small piece of the employment picture to watch, recent law school graduates in government jobs. But there are bigger changes to the legal markets coming. One is the presidential administration’s targeting of some specific law firms. Another is that it will examine summer associate programs that may have been focused on underrepresented minority groups. Layoffs in federal government lawyer positions will create new pressure in the private sectors at those attorneys look for jobs elsewhere. Some practice areas, like Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, may dry up if the administration is enforcing it much less; the same goes for tax audits for sophisticated clients if the Internal Revenue Service loses personnel, or if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers fewer regulations of major segments of the economy. If Public Service Loan Forgiveness drops, schools will likewise need to ensure in-house funding mechanisms to assist those in public interest work, or find more robust financial aid packages. And there’s the whole AI thing.
In short, we may see significant transition in the employment markets more generally with law students. Schools that been proactive of building up career development offices, broadening interest in legal markets, counseling students holistically for professional formation, and the like will be more ready to handle these challenges. The reactive, however, could very quickly see a rise in unemployment among their graduating classes (and a corresponding drop in the USNWR rankings that are heavily focused on outputs like these from year to year). Alternatively, reactive schools could more aggressively backfill classes with school-funded jobs or by placing students into other degree programs.
Bar exam
Set aside the entirely predictable snafu in California. The bar exam is changing (more posts on that to come). Academic support and bar preparation support at law schools has become all the more critical to ensure students are shepherded through their legal education and make it out with success on the bar exam. Passing the bar becomes all the more critical for employment if the market is tightening. Changes to the bar exam require staffing and personnel ready to make a swift transition in methods of teaching. Schools that have adequately staffed and prepared for this should experience few problems. Those that are unprepared for a new bar exam and expect students—especially those falling in the gap in some jurisdictions, especially if they’ve previously failed a bar—to handle on their own; or those who failed to staff up ahead of a hiring freeze, will face challenges.
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In one respect, I suppose, this long post is nothing new. It’s better to be prepared than to react to changes. But given the volume of changes and uncertainty facing legal education in the present moment, it’s worth pausing to think about what’s to come in the months ahead. Many of the things I discussed I was writing about two years ago. They are hardly surprises. Yes, of course, this iteration of changes may be, in many respects, surprising as to its cause or its specific effects. But for the law schools that have the leadership, faculty engagement, foresight, and will to execute these things in advance, they will ultimately serve their students and the profession quite well.