St. Louis Law School Takes the Train in Chicago to Snag Young Professionals
Photo by Molly McDonough
St. Louis University Law School is trying to snag some potential law students from a neighboring state with ads touting its “intimate environment” posted in Chicago el trains and airports.
One ad features a second-year student identified as “Kara” who says, “You get the best of both worlds here—an intimate environment on more of a city campus.” The ad advises potential applicants to visit the school’s website.
A second ad has the law school’s phone number and features another second-year named Shane.”The student body is collaborative, supportive and loyal to the law school experience,” he says.
Kathleen Carroll Parvis, assistant dean for communications at the law school, says the ads on Chicago Transit Authority trains are running for one month, through the end of September. The school also advertises at O’Hare and Midway airports and will have a billboard beginning the end of September near the O’Hare oasis. Targeted ads will appear online as well on the New York Times website.
Parvis isn’t aware of any other higher educational institutions advertising on trains, but says airport advertising is popular.
“Chicago is a major recruiting market for SLU Law,” she told ABAJournal.com in an e-mail. “Approximately 20 percent of our law school student body comes from Illinois, so it is important for us to have a presence in the Chicago market.”
Chicago already has a rich legal education market: Loyola University, DePaul University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology all have law schools within the city limits, and the John Marshall Law School is also based in Chicago.
She says the train ads are designed to reach young professionals who either work downtown or travel on a regular basis. “The specific lines that we targeted on the CTA trains link to Midway and O’Hare airports, which also allowed us to target college students who were coming back to school in late August.”
