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Verdict's in: Law school's hot

By David Damron
Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer

August 19, 2003

Laura Pierre-Louis graduated from the University of South Florida three years ago with a bachelor's degree in art and spent the next three years in rewarding jobs that didn't pay well.

A classic starving artist, she is now among the hordes of college graduates rushing to law school to escape a struggling economy. Some are moving right from undergraduate stints. Others are bailing out of a dismal job market to add a strong degree to their resumes.

"Being an artist was very difficult," the 28-year-old incoming Florida A&M University College of Law student said during orientation Monday at the Orlando school. "If I had done very well financially, I would have postponed it [law school]. They say artists do well when the economy is good."

The Law School Admission Council reports that 90,853 people submitted applications to American Bar Association-accredited law schools last year -- an increase of more than 17 percent over the number who applied for admission in 2001.

The University of Florida's Levin College of Law set records the past two years: 2,558 applied for fall 2002, and 3,356 for fall 2003.

And it's not just limited to Florida.

"We're seeing our fair share of people fleeing from the dot-com bust," said Leo Martinez, academic dean at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

Hastings received nearly 7,000 applications this year, a record that easily topped last year's 6,059. The year before that, only 4,800 applicants tried to get in.

"Going to law school for a couple years is a good way to take yourself out of a bad economy," Martinez said.

Not all graduate schools are seeing increases, though. Medical schools have seen flat or slightly lower enrollments and applications, according to reports. And business schools are seeing broad declines.

Oddly, a bad economy is partly to blame in those cases, too: Lofty business- and medical-school prices are even further out of reach now.

In addition, lower foreign-student enrollments because of tougher visa restrictions have hit medical schools hard. The brazen corporate scandals of the past few years steered some students from higher business degrees, Martinez said.

But law schools continue to do a brisk business.

Orlando's two law schools, FAMU and Barry University's School of Law, have seen the same dramatic clamor to get in, partly because of pent-up demand in a region that hasn't had law schools.

FAMU is welcoming its second class, with 125 students -- larger than last year's group of about 85. And it suffered the same embarrassment of applicant riches, with 315 vying to get in last year and 465 this year -- a 47 percent spike.

Barry, now 7 years old, received provisional accreditation from the ABA just last year, so it's just now bouncing back from years of lost revenues and dwindling enrollment that came with that struggle.

In fact, of Barry's 410 enrolled students, 85 are going back through another two-year run of classes just to get an accredited degree that they thought they earned two years ago.

The state Supreme Court had ruled that it would not recognize any degree that Barry's law school granted before February 2001 -- a year before it received provisional accreditation from the ABA.

Still, Barry is seeing the same interest most other law schools are: 897 applications last year, up from 425 in 2002 -- a 111 percent increase.

"It was either get a job or go to graduate school," said incoming Barry law-school freshman Jessica Garfield, 23.

Garfield graduated last year from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a psychology degree in hand.

"You think you have a stable major," Garfield said. "But there were no jobs out there."