American Bar Association website updates data on law school admissions, tuition, other matters

Information about fall 2023 admissions and other matters reported by American Bar Association-approved law schools to the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is now publicly available. The information is required to be made public under Standard 509 of the Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools.

The spreadsheets, explanatory information and the ABA’s database of Standard 509 reports, as they are known, are available at www.abarequireddisclosures.org. Some of this information has been collected and summarized on the section’s website in its Statistics section under 2023 Standard 509 Data Overview. It shows that total J.D. enrollment for 2023 was up by .11% from the previous year. First-year enrollment declined by 174 students, a decrease of .46%.

“As with past years, this information was reported to the ABA by law schools and is being made public as a matter of consumer information under the authority of ABA Standard 509,” said Bill Adams, managing director of ABA accreditation and legal education. “This series of public reports — including bar passage and employment reports to be released separately next year — provide important consumer information for students considering whether and where to attend law school and for others with an interest in legal education.”

The material released today covers admissions, tuition and living costs, financial aid, class and faculty demographics and other areas. The data can be easily searched and sorted, allowing for school-by-school comparisons and analysis and should be useful to prospective law students, pre-law advisors, media outlets and others who study and write about legal education.

Bar passage data for 2023 bar examination outcomes are expected to be released in March 2024. Employment outcomes for the class of 2023, measuring law graduate employment on March 15, 2024 (approximately 10 months after spring graduation), are expected to be released in April 2024. For now, both are on schedule.

The Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the national accrediting agency for programs leading to the Juris Doctor degree, or J.D. The section’s more than 15,000 members strive to improve legal education and lawyer licensing by fostering cooperation among legal educators, practitioners and judges through workshops, conferences and publications. The section and its governing council operate for accreditation purposes as independent arms of the ABA.