Law School Enrollment Strategy in a Slowing Job Market

By James Leipold

Law school enrollment is a complex matter with lots of drivers and levers, and target enrollment goals are often the result of compromises between competing interests. I believe admission and career services offices should always be a part of the conversation about setting enrollment goals, and as we head into a potential market slowdown of sorts, at least as far as law firm hiring is concerned, I think this is even more important than it has been in some time.  

I recently had a chance to take up these issues during an LSAC webinar discussion with two senior leaders in the field: Jennifer A. Henfey, associate dean for professional development and leadership at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, and Shawn McShay, assistant dean, graduate enrollment management, at Boston College Law School.

As we opened our conversation, we all agreed on a couple of things that set the stage. First, we have been enjoying a remarkably strong job market for law school graduates, with year after year record-setting employment figures. Second, we know from the latest National Association for Law Placement (NALP) recruiting data that recruiting at the largest law firms is measurably slowing down. Third, we know that the 1L class that entered last fall was the largest class in 13 years, coming in on the heels of what has also been a remarkably strong law school admission cycle, with year over year application volume up at most schools for multiple years in a row. Finally, we know from having lived the historical experience of the Great Recession that a slowing economy and slowing legal job market along with growing class size in American law schools can be a recipe for disaster. If ever there was a time to be certain that both admissions and career services have a voice in setting target law school enrollment goals, we all agreed that time is now!

An Overview of the Current Legal Job Market

As we got started, Jennifer provided a helpful overview of the current market, reminding us that the class of 2024, a large class, reported the highest overall employment rate ever recorded by NALP, but that the entry level job market is still 5% smaller than it was in 2007, with some 1,800 fewer jobs reported for the class of 2024 compared to the class of 2007, the last true pre-recession class. She also noted that contrary to what many people might assume given all the headlines about large law firm growth and profits, much of the recent job growth has been in small firms of 100 or fewer lawyers and in the government and public interest sectors, both markets that are facing downward pressures.

She noted that for the class of 2025, the class whose employment outcomes are just now being collected and reported, the market seems stable, but, she cautioned, the class of 2027 and the class of 2028 are both large classes and predicted that this is where we are likely to see a more significant impact from the current slowdown. She reminded our webinar participants that the median number of offers made for summer 2026 2L programs (members of the class of 2027) was the lowest on record, and that firms have already signaled that they are hiring for smaller classes for the summer of 2027 (members of the class of 2028, our current 1Ls). Finally, she invoked the uncertainties promised by rapid AI adoption in the legal industry and suggested that while its impact on job numbers so far has been small, by the time the class of 2029 graduates from law school (the class that is just now being admitted), there is likely to be a much larger and measurable AI impact on the entry level job market.

How Can Law Schools Respond?

Law schools should strive to admit smaller classes for the next couple of years, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Most law schools, and universities for that matter, cannot just suddenly turn down the spigot. Shawn reminded us that law schools have been through tight job markets with large classes in the past and that the most important thing when a slowing market is foreseeable is to make sure that the law school has all the support services and resources in place to appropriately help the classes that graduate in tougher times. This means making sure that the school has adequate staffing and resources for its career development office, but also for academic support and bar support, so that a high percentage of students are able to enter the market with the advantage of a bar license. It means making sure that robust experiential learning opportunities are in place so that students can graduate with polished legal skills that are transferable to many sectors. And it means making sure that the school has thought through any post-graduate assistance that may be necessary, such as stop-gap on-campus law school fellowships that can provide short-term bridge employment in a tough market. Finally, as Jennifer reminded us, it means having done the hard work ahead of time to expand the school’s market share, in effect creating new opportunities for graduates in a tough market.

It also means admitting the right people to law school. But what exactly does that mean? This was perhaps the most resonant part of our conversation. There is a temptation out there right now to find ways to prescreen law school applicants for employability, animated in part by the recent moves to very early recruitment where many students are having to jump into the employment market for post-graduate jobs after just one semester of law school. Our panelists agreed that prescreening for employability was a bad idea for many reasons, not the least of which is that it introduces bias into the system. The job of law schools, in some ways, is to make students more employable through their legal education, and screening for employability on the front end short-changes that entire process and undermines one of the core purposes of legal education.

What our panelists could agree upon was that law schools should instead be pre-screening for students who have a strong sense of why they want to go to law school. While this has always been a good idea, it takes on even more importance at a time when the job market is changing. As Jennifer said so well: “When students are grounded in their purpose and their why, they move through the law school experience with intention. They are also prepared to not be knocked off track by early recruiting, for example, or by a changing job market. They will be more resilient in the face of disappointment. They remain motivated by their intrinsic motivations not extrinsic ideas of success.”

Collaboration Between Admission and Career Development Offices

Another important point both panelists agreed upon is that the admission office and the career development office need to work closely together, even if they don’t have seats at the table for critical enrollment planning decisions. Admission office leaders need to share the contours and composition of the incoming class as it is being shaped so that the career development office can anticipate the needs of incoming students, and the career development office leaders need to regularly share information about the employment market, the skills and competencies currently being sought by employers, and the rapidly changing timelines of various recruiting cycles. For better or for worse, every admission professional, including temporary seasonal recruiters, needs to be well versed in the nuances of the employment market for the graduates of the school they represent. Failure to have this strong two-way flow of information can create a serious mismatch between what a student expects and what a career development office can provide, and nothing leads to student unhappiness faster than feeling misled. And, because of the super early recruiting cycles that are emerging, increasingly students can face a premature sense of personal failure as early as the end of the first semester unless they have come to law school with an informed and realistic sense of the job market.

It takes time and intention to build trust and confidence between these two offices that are often siloed, overworked, and under resourced. But cooperation and collaboration are not optional. Neither office can best serve the law school without the help of the other, and that is particularly true when the market tightens. That means that in addition to formal briefings and exchanges of information, finding other ways to socialize and cooperate and help each other are critical. Make time for interdepartmental lunches. Find ways to help each other out during the respective busy seasons. Shawn asks members of the career development team to sit on his admission committee, ensuring that the career development team is vested in the admission decision-making process right from the start.

And finally, the development of a super early recruiting market is forcing the admission and career development teams to work together even at schools where that has not previously happened in an organic way, as schools are increasingly providing pre-matriculation career programming for incoming students, often now called 0L career programming. While no one is a fan of having a market that moves so early, before students have had a fair shake at any real professional development, the fact that it is happening and needs to be responded to is as good a prompt as any to ensure that both the admissions and career development teams are working together from the very beginning.

The issues presented by early recruitment are many, and at the LSAC Annual Meeting and Educational Conference in Spokane, Washington, from May 27 to 30, we will have an entire session devoted to this challenging development that, love it or hate it, seems here to stay.

Meanwhile, as the final shaping of the class of 2029 is underway, it is important to be mindful of the slowing job market, and it is more important than ever to be working with your colleagues down the hall to ensure that your incoming class, whatever its size, will be informed about the job market they will face and confident that the law school they have selected will have the tools and resources to help them develop into graduates and lawyers who will thrive, no matter what kind of market challenges they will face.