JD enrollment up but 1Ls down, new ABA data shows
Fall 2023 had a slight increase in JD enrollment but a small decrease of first-year students over the previous year, according to data released Friday by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. Image from Shutterstock.
Fall 2023 had a slight increase in JD enrollment but a small decrease of first-year students over the previous year, according to data released Friday by the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
This academic year had 116,851 JD students enrolled in the 196 ABA-accredited law schools, just 0.11% more than a year earlier. Meanwhile, the number of first-year students decreased slightly to 37,886, a decrease of 0.46% from 2022, according to the overview of the data released Friday.
An additional 21,966 students enrolled in non-JD programs, such as LLM, master’s and certificate programs, bringing total law school enrollment to 138,817 for 2023. That’s a decrease of nearly 1.5% in terms of total law school enrollment compared to the previous year.
The data, culled from Standard 509 Information Reports provided by ABA accredited law schools, shows that enrollment at 105 schools had the same or increased first-year enrollment compared to the previous year, while 91 schools had a decrease during that same time span, according to the information posted on the section’s website.
