On a recent rainy spring day, students and professors at the University of Minnesota Law School looked ahead to year-end exams and May 14 graduation as they bustled between classes. But behind the academic routine, Minnesota’s administration, as at other law schools across the country, was striving to respond to the public’s growing lack of interest in law careers.

The number of law school applicants nationwide has plummeted, to 51,000 as of April from 88,700 in 2006, according to the Law School Admissions Council. The Great Lakes region has been hit particularly hard, catching respected institutions like Minnesota by surprise when applicant numbers went into a tailspin.

It is the reverse of a trend that began during the enrollment boom of the early 2000s, when law schools were doing so well that some began moving to become self-financing entities supported by tuition and private donations. Now, as student enthusiasm for the law wanes, financially pinched schools need to decide whether sagging applications are a temporary blip or a fundamental course correction.

David Wippman took over as dean of Minnesota’s law school in July 2008, when packed classrooms were the norm. But it was not long before newly minted lawyers in Minnesota and elsewhere, some of whom had fled to law school during the economic downturn, found that their hard-earned professional pedigree did not necessarily land them jobs that would cover the six-figure cost.

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Statistics released by the American Bar Association in April showed that only 60 percent of 2015 law graduates were employed in the legal industry 10 months after graduation. Some law graduates, angered over their inability to find suitable jobs, have sued law schools for overstating how well their students fared in the job market. Booming technology startups have also been a draw for job seekers over more traditional industries.

Resisting the temptation to admit more students to bolster tuition receipts, the University of Minnesota, which has one of the nation’s highly ranked law schools, has gone in the opposite direction. It decided to shrink enrollment, and take in less tuition income, to preserve its national standing as a top law school. It did this even as some argued for broader inclusion of students who would fall outside the school’s admissions parameters.

During Wippman’s tenure, Minnesota has gradually admitted fewer students, shrinking its first-year class to only 174 in the 2015 academic year from more than 250 a few years ago. It offset the sharp loss in tuition income with more public subsidies, which in Minnesota are decided by a Board of Regents.

Minnesota’s law school has closed its deficits with university money — expected to total $16.1 million through 2018 — according university officials.

“The law school is a crucial part of the university,” said Karen Hanson, the university’s provost. “We did not want to hurt the law school’s standing.”

As it revamped its enrollment, Minnesota’s national ranking slid two places this year, to No. 22, a slot it shares with the law schools at Emory University and Notre Dame. Applications for the fall are flat. More worrisome is that Minnesota in recent years has had one of the largest declines in applicants among the top 20 law schools, but no one knows exactly why.

“We’re trying to figure that out,” said Wippman, who is leaving for another job at the end of the academic year. He said the school was trying to identify potential students more precisely and to publicize its offerings more broadly.

Garry W. Jenkins is expected to take over as dean of the law school effective July 31, pending approval by the Board of Regents in June. He most recently was associate dean for academic affairs at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.

In the Great Lakes and Midwest region, the dire outlook for legal education has been magnified by the sheer number of accredited law schools. Minnesota and Indiana each have four, and Ohio has nine.

The region’s rapidly aging population and the loss of its traditional manufacturing activity have eroded an economic base that could support a “strongly upwardly mobile middle class of the kind that sustains high-level educational activity,” David Barnhizer, a professor emeritus at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, wrote in a March research paper.

“Virtually all law schools across the U.S. pumped too many lawyers into a system that was already filled to the brim and now is overflowing,” Barnhizer said in an interview.

He warned that the region’s lesser-ranked law schools — he did not include Minnesota in that group — will “simply wither away” as fewer students seek admission.

As the number of applications shrank, Wippman had to decide whether to admit those whose law school admission test scores and grade-point averages were lower than Minnesota’s traditional standards. The success of such students can be riskier. A surplus of graduates who do not find jobs can eviscerate a law school’s reputation.

Raising tuition was not much of an option in an era when students are wary of taking on high debt, Wippman said. Dismissing faculty, especially those who are tenured, is difficult. And Minnesota’s law school has hometown competition, including the William Mitchell College of Law and the Hamline University School of Law, which recently merged, and

St. Thomas Law School.

“It’s been a question of fewer students or a larger number with slightly lesser qualifications,” said Fred Morrison, a law professor who joined the Minnesota faculty 47 years ago and has had two stints as the law school’s dean. “Many that we would no longer admit have turned out to be successful lawyers,” he added.

As part of a major university system, Minnesota had some options not available to every law school. It has been able to tap into taxpayer funding, at least temporarily, to maintain its stature without altering its core admissions standards. A high ranking is an important factor for attracting students from around the country. Almost three-quarters of Minnesota’s first-year students are from out of state and pay higher tuition and fees, $50,373 annually, $8,000 more than residents pay.

Even with taxpayer money coming in the door, Minnesota has been offsetting its expenses by shedding staff and leaving faculty openings unfilled. It has also explored new ways to strengthen graduate employment rates, which are another factor in maintaining its national reputation. The law school is adding a Minnesota Law Public Interest Residency Program, in which third-year students work full time in public interest and government jobs and earn a full-time paid position with the same organization for a year after graduation.

More than 50 percent of the school’s graduates stay in Minnesota, typically working at a locally headquartered corporation like Target or General Mills. Another slice of graduates joins small firms with two to 10 lawyers, or large law firms, or enters the public interest sector. As law firms have merged, however, there are fewer jobs, said David Potter, a Minnesota law graduate who is active in raising money for the school.

Other strong supporters in the local legal community include former Vice President Walter Mondale, an alumnus and a senior counsel at Dorsey & Whitney, a major Minneapolis law firm. Mondale actively backs the school — the dean’s office is in Mondale Hall — but even efforts like a recent $73 million fundraising campaign cannot sustain a law school with a $54.8 million annual budget.

Some $13 million of that campaign was slated for needy students because Minnesota, like most schools, has expanded its financial aid, giving varying amounts to 90 percent of its students so they do not pay full price.

“People are turned off on legal education because of a lack of suitable paying jobs,” Mondale said. “I don’t think you can underestimate the havoc that these law school debts can cause.”

The execution of Wippman’s strategies will fall to his successor when he leaves for a new job as president of New York’s Hamilton College, a private liberal arts college — another area of higher education that has been buffeted by declining student interest and lower enrollment.

“Things seem to be going well there,” Wippman said. “But I’ve learned that it’s hard to predict the new normal.”