2025 1L Class Was Largest in Recent Years, but First-Gen College Grad Representation Declines Again
This post is part of a series related to LSAC’s Knowledge Report: The Composition of the First-Year Law School Class and Enrollment 2021-2025 Trends.
Being the “first” can be a lot.
In addition to your own goals and questions, you carry generations of sacrifices, pride, resilience, and dreams. That’s the case for thousands of first-generation college graduates who enroll in law school each year. In doing so, they’re blazing a trail — one that started with an unpaved path to college, then continued to law school. In the first-year class, more than one in five 1Ls are the first in their family to graduate from college.
While the representation of first-generation college graduates is important to bringing new perspectives to law school classrooms and helping to ensure our future legal profession reflects the full range of our society, we have seen a decrease in the percentage of first-generation college graduates in the entering law school classes for two consecutive years. This is a troubling trend, and one that the entire legal education community should take seriously.
The shifting representation of first-generation college graduates is just one of the many insights contained in LSAC’s newest report, The Composition of the First-Year Law School Class and Enrollment 2021-2025 Trends. The report dives into nuanced trends about who enrolled in law school between 2021 and 2025,[1] focusing on:
- Who is enrolling in law school
- Where they enrolled
- How class sizes have changed at the law school level over the years
During a time of rapid political, economic, and social changes in the U.S. — including major changes to federal Grad PLUS loans, which go into effect later this summer — more than 76,000 aspiring law students submitted applications to law school in the 2024-25 admission cycle. It was the highest volume of applicants since 2011 and an 18% increase from the 2023-24 cycle. As a result of this highly competitive admission cycle, legal education welcomed its largest first-year class since 2012,[2] an 8% increase over the 2024 incoming class.
However, as noted above, for the second consecutive year, the percentage of first-generation college graduate enrollment in law school is down, from 24.2% in 2023 to 21.7% in 2025. As changes to federal loans, school budgets, and access to higher education unfold, it is critical to monitor these early trends because they have major implications for who will be entering law school and who will not in the coming years.
First-generation college graduates in law school disproportionally expect to graduate with higher law school debt than their peers.[3] If law school becomes less financially feasible, these students will be some of the most affected. In today’s first-year class, 26.4% of first-generation college graduates are LSAC Fee Waiver recipients, compared with only 11.4% of the entire 2025 1L class. And 56.6% of first-generation college graduates report they received a Pell Grant, compared with about 26% of all 2025 first-year law students.
Given that the number of applicants who are first-generation college graduates is up again this year, the trends in this report should inform how we, the legal education community, continue to invest time and energy in supporting and recruiting future law school classes.
Take it from me, as the first person in my family to graduate from college, an LSAC PLUS alum who then went on to earn my JD and PhD: If it weren’t for that kind of support, I wouldn’t be here today.
Dig Deeper Into This Research
LSAC’s Knowledge Report: The Composition of the First-Year Law School Class and Enrollment 2021-2025 Trends provides deeper insights into who enrolled in law school between 2021 and 2025 and who will be the future of the legal profession.
To learn more about the snapshot moments along the prelaw to law school journey, check out any of LSAC’s Applied Research reports.
[1] The year refers to the year the academic calendar starts. For example, 2021 refers to the 2021-2022 academic year.
[2] ABA Enrollment Statistics Archives
[3] 20% of 2024 1L respondents indicated they expect to graduate with more than $150,000 in law school debt. Funding the First Year: How 2024 1Ls Paid for Law School | The Law School Admission Council
Elizabeth Bodamer (she/her/ella) has a PhD in Sociology from Indiana University Bloomington and a JD from Indiana University Maurer School of Law.