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."