Love this article.

Credit goes to the New York Times

Applications to Law Schools Are Declining

By JONATHAN D. GLATER

Published: February 9, 2006

Has law school lost its appeal?

Last year, for the first time since the 1997-98 admission cycle, the number of applicants to law school declined, by 4.6 percent, and so far this year, the number has declined by 9.5 percent.

With falling numbers even among the top schools, admissions officers and career counselors say they are not sure what is causing the drop. They suggested that in an improving economy, college students may prefer jobs to law school, or that rising undergraduate debt loads have discouraged some students from borrowing still more to pay for a law degree.

It may be that a surge in popularity a few years ago has, perversely, led to the current decline in interest in law schools, said David E. Kelley, creator and producer of the television show "Boston Legal" and himself a lawyer. "The more lawyers there are, the more people are out there to encourage others not to go to law school," Mr. Kelley said.

He added: "I personally still have a very glamorous view of the law. But maybe that's because I'm out of it, and I get to write about what I would like the practice of law to be."

At Columbia, 8,020 would-be lawyers applied to start law school last fall, compared with 8,355 a year earlier. At New York University School of Law, the number fell to 7,872 from 8,220. At Stanford, the numbers fell to 4,863 from 5,040. At Harvard Law School, the numbers fell to 7,127 from 7,386.

At Yale Law School, however, there were just five fewer applicants last year, a drop to 3,778, from 3,783.

"You've got to expect those cycles to happen, whether that's tied to the latest hit TV show" or some other factor, said Marshall Tracht, vice dean at Hofstra University School of Law, which has seen a slight decline.

"There are some people who go to law school because they don't know what else to do," Mr. Tracht said, "and there are a lot of other people who are really committed to going to law school because of what they want to accomplish with their lives."

The drop may also be a correction to numbers that had soared a few years ago, Mr. Tracht and several law school admissions officers said. In the 2003-4 admission cycle, the number of applicants hit 100,600, according to the Law School Admission Council. The biggest increase occurred in the 2001-2 admission cycle, in the wake of the dot-com bust.

The number of applicants — 95,800 in the 2004-5 admission cycle — is still far greater than it was 10 years ago, when about 75,000 people applied. At this point in the current admission cycle, the numbers have fallen to 60,397 from more than 66,000 at this time last year.

James Calvi, a professor at West Texas A&M University and chairman of the Prelaw Advisors National Council, said fewer people may be applying to law school because more are applying to medical school.

"That is the running joke among prelaw advisers," he said. "There might be a grain of truth, if applications to medical school are up."

Medical school applications rose in 2005, to 37,364 from 35,735 the previous year, according to data collected by the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the entrance examination for business schools, does not gather data on applications directly, but it reports that in the past three years, more than half of two-year M.B.A. programs had declines in applicants.

Ursula Olender, associate director of career services at Dartmouth College, said that students are "borrowing more money for undergraduate school, and law school is certainly quite expensive."

She added: "Before you take on that kind of debt, it's going to be really important that that's what you want to do."

James Langerud, an associate dean at Grinnell College, said some students might go to law school later.

"When times are good, and there are other things to do for a few years, I think they do" those other things, he said, "and then they go."

Not exactly what I expected.

So you would think that announcing your acceptance into law school would be greated with excitment, offers of congratulations, and a general sense of positivity. On the whole, that's the experience that I've gotten with a few exceptions.

I received the following responses:

"Why? Don't you want to work and start earning some money?"
"Oh Adeline, why would you do that? It's so much work. You should just become a teacher. Or you could find a job earning 30-40K a year, it's enough."
"Ottawa, that's really far away. Will you be able to make it out on your own?"

Hey, I'm nervous/anxious/scared enough about moving to a new city and embarking on a three-year course that will see me having to memorize volumes of cases, etc. And it's not like Ottawa is all that far from Toronto. It's about a 5 hour drive. They still have technological devices (i.e. the Internet and the phone!). I'm not the first person in my extended family to be going away for school, so it's not like moving away from home has never been done before! Ugh! People, you just can't win. There are 3 professions that are widely accepted by Chinese parents - doctor, accountant and oh yes...lawyer! See? It's there people! Where's your spirit?!

And the world spins madly on.

Incidently, the title of this post corresponds to a song by The Weepies which is folky sounding but I love it. It's Wednesday night and Wednesday nights = One Tree Hill and One Tree Hill = new music. I'll always say it, but now I'll commit this thought to print, One Tree Hill has an amazing music department.

So it's been a whole year since I last wrote and even more surprisingly things have happened since that time.

The future, that simple world conjures so many feelings.

Feelings of happiness at having accomplished one of my life long goals. Going to University and earn a degree. Check.

Feelings of regret at having not done better that I did (not that I did all that poorly). Of certain decisions that were made and certain actions that remain untaken.

Feelings of pride at having survived and having met and established great friendships that I hope will last a lifetime.

Feelings of fear over the unknown. Where will we all end up? Will we fulfil all of our dreams? Where will we be in 5 years? 10 years?

This last question - where will we be in 5 years - I've actually turned into an activity that a few of my friends and I are working on. I was inspired by my favourite TV show and the movie A Walk to Remember and devised a questionnaire that allows the person filling it out to evaluate where they want to be and through this identification of life goals and hopes and dreams, devise a plan to attain it. I just finished filling mine out this evening and I'm dying to see what the others have written. But we won't be revisiting these answers for another 5 years. Patience is still not a virtue that I possess which definitely doesn't make this easy.

One of my life goals is to attain an Ivy League education. The comment about regret over actions not taken is directed towards my laziness and thus, failure to take the SATs. If I had taken them and done well on them, who knows where I would be right now. The only caveat is that I wouldn't have met all these great people at Schulich and met some of my best friends. So it's a give and take. Life is all about what-ifs, I must learn to not dwell on it. So, school is ending in a few months. But I have happy news. The girl without a plan now has a plan. I checked Infoweb on Monday morning (as I do everyday, several times daily) and the message finally changed. For those of you who don't know, Infoweb is the University of Ottawa's application tracking system. Anyways, the message changed on Monday. It now featured the word admit. So guess what? I'm going to Ottawa in September and will have a new home for the next three years. That's a huge change. As soon as I found out the news that I was accepted, a wave of relief washed over me with happiness mixed in. And now, I'm scared shitless. I guess it's true what they say, life is one big adventure. I'll just go with the flow. And I know that I didn't say it in my personal statement but I'll say it now, I love the University of Ottawa (and I really do, if for nothing else but the fact that they were willing to take a chance on me). Come visit! I'm up to watching a few Leafs vs. Sens games...let's hope that the Leafs get better so that they make the scoresheet during those games.

While I will likely become the newest student at the University of Ottawa, I still yearn to go to the States and go to an Ivy League school. I seriously don't think that I'll be done with my education until I do that. At this point, I think that even a summer course would suffice and satisfy my desire for this. So I think I'm going to give it a go for the MBA. I don't care that Schulich (my home school) is the 18th ranked business school in the world and that my MBA would only take me 8 months as opposed to 16 and that Schulich is the cheapest MBA school in Canada. Nope, it's still not the dream. Schulich? I've been there and done that for my BBA. So what does that mean? I guess that means that I want to be a student for life. How will I finance all this? I have no clue. I have to actually work sometime to pay off all these debts.

I don't know if I'm ready for this big change. All my friends are going out into the world and becoming productive members of society. They will have positive cash flows whereas my cash flows will equal -$20K per year for the next 3 years. Regardless, law school is a means to an end. See? I do have a plan!!!