“That happens in one of two ways: Either each law school accepts fewer students and has a smaller class size, or there are fewer law schools — and the market will dictate which it will be, and maybe it is a combination of both.”
Limited prospects for law students
About 2,311 Ohioans applied for the fall semester to U.S. law schools accredited by the American Bar Association, down 12.5 percent from 2,641 applicants in 2010 and down 19 percent from 2,853 applicants in 2009, according to preliminary data from the Law School Admission Council.
Nationally, the number of people who applied for the fall semester to ABA law schools was 78,900, a decrease of about 10 percent from fall 2010, according to the council. The drop came after law schools nationwide saw two years of growth in the number of applicants.
The number of applicants to UD School of Law was 1,751 this year, down from 2,147 in 2010, 2,097 in 2009 and 2,230 in 2008, according to the school. The school enrolled 177 students this year, a decrease from 207 in 2010.
UD School of Law enrolled fewer students to adjust to the decrease in applicants, McGreal said. He said this was necessary in order to maintain the bar-passage rate and academic quality of the new classes.
The declines in applicants reflect the weak state of the job market for legal professionals, which has been battered by the economic crisis, said Carol Seubert Marx, president of the Ohio State Bar Association.
Seubert Marx said big firms are hiring fewer lawyers and laying off others, because the businesses they represent are reducing their legal costs and performing more legal services in-house.
She said also more people are choosing to represent themselves in court or opting not to sue because of the expense involved in hiring an attorney.
The employment rate for new law school graduates in 2010 was 87.6 percent, the lowest percentage in 14 years, according to the National Association for Law Placement.
Even more alarming is the fact that 27 percent of the jobs were temporary and 11 percent were part time, said James Leipold, the association’s executive director. Only about 68.4 percent of graduates obtained jobs where passage of the bar exam was required.
With the job market for legal professionals contracting, some students are weighing the costs of law school with the prospective earnings from a legal career and deciding it is not worth the money, Seubert Marx said.
“You can make a comfortable income, but if you factor in that debt, which kids are having to do now, it all of the sudden becomes a mortgage on your future,” she said.
Starting salaries decline, loans rise
Despite perceptions that lawyers are all high-paid, the national median starting salary for the class of 2010 was $63,000, down almost 13 percent from $72,000 for the class of 2009, according to the National Association for Law Placement.
In Ohio, the median income of lawyers is about $65,000, said Seubert Marx, adding that salaries matter because the vast majority of law school graduates have sizable student loans.
In the 2009-10 school year, the average amount of debt law school graduates carried was $68,827 at public schools and $106,249 at private schools, ABA reported.
To attend UD’s law school, for example, it cost $34,320 annually for full-time tuition. About 54.4 percent of the students for the class of 2013 received grants/scholarships, with the median award being $8,500, according to its website. At the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, in-state full-time tuition is $26,328 and nonresident is $41,278.
The average salary for the UD law school class of 2010 was $56,841, according to graduates who reported their incomes to the school. The average amount of debt carried by UD law students in 2010 was about $67,856, according to U.S. News & World Report.
By comparison, at the six public law schools in Ohio, which typically cost considerably less than private schools, the average law school debt ranged from between $58,455 to $81,408, said Jason Dolin, an adjunct law professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus.
Dolin published an article in the September/October issue of the Ohio Lawyer that concluded Ohio’s law schools are churning out too many law students. He based his observation on employment and financial data from state schools.
“If we are guided at all by market forces, we should be shutting one or two law schools,” he said.
Dolin said law schools often try to hide the most telling and relevant employment and economic statistics about their graduates. He said law schools should prominently display on its websites information about the number of graduates employed at full-time jobs requiring a juris doctorate, and the amount of debt students will have to assume to receive a legal education.
“The law schools have been less than forthright in this area,” he said.
In 2010, about 63.3 percent of 2010 graduates from UD law school held full-time, juris doctorate-required jobs, said Mc- Greal, the dean.
This compares to 53 percent at the University of Akron, 52.6 percent at the University of Cincinnati, 67.1 percent at Cleveland State University, 61.4 percent at Ohio State and 40.3 percent at the University of Toledo law schools, according to Dolin’s report.
UD’s full-time, juris doctorate-required, nontemporary job rate was 57.6 percent, compared to 48.2 percent at Cincinnati and 59.2 percent at Ohio State law schools, according to McGreal and Dolin. Information was not available for the other schools.
McGreal said the job market for law school graduates is certainly tougher than it has been in a long time, but law school is still a good investment for many people.
He said law schools have an obligation to be transparent with applicants about their potential future earnings and the amount of debt they will accrue from student loans. He said only then, can applicants make informed decisions about the return on the investment for a law degree.
“The more information we can get out to applicants — and hopefully it will be accurate information — the better decisions they will make,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-0749 or cfrolik@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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