CHICAGO, Dec. 19, 2022 – Information about fall 2022 admissions and other consumer matters reported by American Bar Association-approved law schools to the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is now 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, are available at https://www.abarequireddisclosures.org/. Some of this information has been collected and summarized on the section’s website in its Statistics section under 2022 Standard 509 Data Overview. It shows that total J.D. enrollment for 2022 was down .66% from the previous year. First-year enrollment decreased by 4,698 students, a decrease of 10.98%.
“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, employment outcomes, bar passage 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.
Release of updated bar passage data for 2022 bar examination outcomes is usually reported in February or March. Employment outcomes, which report employment for the class of 2022, are typically released in April. 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 14,000 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 also studies and makes recommendations for the improvement of the bar admission process, and the section and its governing council operate for accreditation purposes as independent arms of the ABA.
The ABA is the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.