Law school admission is more competitive, overall tuition decreased and the racial and ethnic composition of law school applicants has remained relatively stable from last year.
This comes from AccessLex Institute, which details these results — and many more — in its latest Legal Education Data Deck, an easy-to-digest slideshow. AccessLex calls the Data Deck a living document because it is updated in the spring and fall. Given its mission of promoting access, affordability and value when it comes to legal education, it focuses the data to those three areas.
The sources behind the deck come from many places: Law School Admission Council, the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the National Association for Law Placement, the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar and the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Labor.
Key findings in the latest update include:
- The overall tuition for law students decreased in 2021. Average private school tuition and fees dropped to an amount not seen since 2016. Public resident tuition and fees dropped to approximately 2014 levels, and non-resident tuition and fees for public law schools fell below 2013 levels. The median tuition discount amount remained stable at $22,100.
- Female applicants make up an increasing share of law school applicants and enrollees. Admission rates for men have historically outpaced rates for women, but in 2021 women were admitted at a higher rate than the previous year, breaking the streak of equal admission rates by gender from 2014 – 2020.
Tiffane Cochran, AccessLex’s director of research, said 2019 was the first year we saw rise in women applicants, so this is a continuation of that trend. With the ABA collecting more information on gender identify, these data results could also be because of applicants noting non-binary, she added, where they would have otherwise noted male or female.
- Law school admission is becoming more competitive. Applications and matriculants increased fairly substantially over the previous year, but overall admission rates declined to 68%.
- The racial and ethnic composition of law school applicants remained relatively stable from last year but is more diverse than in years before 2020.
- The percentage of J.D.s awarded to minority graduates increased to 33%, a 2-point increase over last year.
