Andrew Wolfson

@adwolfson

Lawyers in Kentucky%3A 13%2C292

In Jefferson County%3A 4%2C582

Application declines since 2011%3A U of L 59%25%2C UK 39%25%2C NKU 41%25

Brandon McReynolds seemed an ideal fit for the University of Louisville's Brandeis School of Law.

McReynolds, 23, already had undergraduate and Master's degrees in sociology from U of L. He'd been chief justice of the student government association's Supreme Court. He had a passionate interest in addressing inequality. And he not only had applied to Brandeis, he'd gotten in.

But he decided not to go. The reason, he said: "There are too many lawyers out there." Even paying in-state tuition of $18,578 a year, he feared he'd be forever saddled with debt.

McReynolds is not alone. Prospective law students are staying away from the University of Louisville law school — and other law schools — in droves.

Mirroring a national trend, applications to Brandeis plummeted 59 percent over the past three years, to 618 from 1,495, while enrollment of first-year students dipped nearly 30 percent, to 94 from 132.

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Nationally, enrollment in law schools has declined 24 percent since 2010 as college graduates realize that law is no longer an automatic ticket to the good life.

"The message out there is that it is not a good investment," said Susan Duncan, interim dean of U of L's law school. She disputes that assertion, noting that Brandeis, founded in 1846, has been consistently named a "best value" by National Jurist and other magazines and that law opens doors to many professions.

The school is nonetheless taking several steps to reverse the tide, including advertising in college papers, emailing top undergrads, recruiting foreign students and offering programs for human resources professionals and others who want to learn about law without getting degrees.

Declining enrollments have forced some law schools to cut programs and lay off faculty and staff, but so far U of L has absorbed the tuition losses, Duncan said.

"The provost has been wonderful," she said of Shirley Willignhanz, who has demanded that the law school aggressively recruit students but "hasn't made me fill seats with unqualified people."

While academics describe the enrollment declines as a crisis, practicing lawyers in Louisville celebrate it, hoping it will reduce the number of attorneys in a market they say is glutted.

"This is great news," said Alex Fleming, a criminal defense lawyer and 1990 Brandeis grad.

"There are way too many lawyers, and some of them are starving," added Gus "Skip" Daleure, U of L law school class of 1978.

Fleming, who now wishes he'd become a pilot, said shows like "L.A. Law," which aired from 1986 to 1994, enticed huge numbers of people into law but "more and more people are now disenchanted with it. It is not the glamorous career that TV portrayed it to be."

John Tate, a partner at Stites & Harbison who in 2011 was named a "distinguished alumnus" of U of L law school, said: "I submit anyone with the intelligence to consider a legal education will have serious second thoughts about incurring massive debt in an uncertain future."

Prospective lawyers have reason for alarm, according to the National Association for Law Placement.

Only 85 percent of law school grads were employed in any job nine months after they graduated last year — the sixth straight year that number had dropped — while only 57 percent had full-time jobs that required passing the bar.

Louisville grads did slightly better: Eighty-six percent had a job within nine months of graduating while 65 percent had jobs that required a law degree.

Ironically, U of L's former dean, Jim Chen, may have been the first scholar to scientifically compute the value of a law degree in research and suggest it is at best a marginally worthwhile investment.

In a 2012 law journal article that reverberated through the profession, he wrote that borrowing money to go to law school makes sense only if you can count on earning three times annual tuition. He also said that even paying in-state tuition at a "bargain" school like U of L, graduates who borrow money to attend will find it "precarious" to afford a $100,000 home.

Some law grads have even sued their alma maters, alleging in class action cases that their alma maters fraudulently inflated their job placement rates. None of the suits name the three Kentucky law schools — U of L, the University of Kentucky, and Northern Kentucky University — and the American Bar Association has changed reporting requirements so that they are more accurate.

Duncan, Chen's successor, is most optimistic about law school enrollment.

She and others predict that law school applications and admissions will rebound as baby boomers retire and the supply of new lawyers doesn't meet demand.

"We have to ride out the wave," she said.

Dan Goyette, the Jefferson County public defender, said he believes the drop in enrollment is only temporary and that there is still a great need for lawyers to represent "under-served populations," particularly in civil legal services.

He said he is heartened that U of L hasn't compromised admission standards and he hasn't seen any decline in the applicant pool for new public defenders.

While polls show most Americans distrust lawyers, Duncan says they will care about declining law school enrollment "if the quality of legal services declines" or if they can't get "an expert lawyer when they need one."

She also said that it is in the country's best interest to ensure that "the best and brightest" go to law school.

She cited a statement from the American Association of Law Schools on the value of a legal education that says "progress begins with the rule of law" and that it is "the foundation of our society."

But that wasn't enough for McReynolds, the U of L sociology grad.

He said he decided to pursue a doctorate in sociology, for which he is getting a full scholarship, and hopes to become a policy analyst.

"I want to be comfortable," he said, "without the debt."

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189.

Lawyers in Kentucky: 13,292

In Jefferson County: 4,582.

Kentucky law school applications

U of L

2011: 1,495

2012: 1,109

2013: 749

2014: 618

Decline: 59%

UK

2011: 1,114

2012: 1,168

2013: 919

2014: 672

Decline: 39%

NKU

2011: 891

2012: 717

2013: 681

2014: 524

Decline: 41%