‘A safer move': Massachusetts law schools see record applications amid economic uncertainty

Boston Globe

28-04-2025

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'Getting a JD or a professional degree now feels like such a safer move,' said Lily Power,
a political science undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst graduating in May. She has shifted her longtime plans of pursuing a PhD in political science to applying to law schools next year.
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'After seeing funding being cut, academia doesn't feel like a good field to go into right now,' Power said. 'Part of me wants to still pursue it, but I have to think about my own stability too.'
Many of Power's professors are promoting law school, she said, to avoid the uncertainty around higher education while still pursuing a related career that can make a difference. After seeing Trump administration attacks on immigration,
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The last peak in law school applications came in 2021, when the COVID pandemic and lockdowns were ravaging the economy. Since then, applications nationwide ticked down, before this year's spike.
This year's rise in applications means law school hopefuls are facing even stiffer competition.
At Boston College Law School, applications reached an all-time high this year with 7,668 people vying for roughly 215 spots, a spokesperson said. The applicant pool size is a 20 percent increase compared with last year's.
Boston University School of Law had
an even larger jump,
one of the largest in the state, with approximately 30 percent more applicants in 2025 than in 2024, a spokesperson said.
Harvard Law School, meanwhile, saw a similar increase of roughly 20 percent after receiving more than 8,700 applications this year, a 20-percent bump,
said Kristi Jobson, assistant dean for admissions and chief admissions officer, compared with 7,235 last year.
At UMass Law, applications increased nearly 22 percent this year compared with last, said Sam Panarella, the law school's dean.
Three main forces are likely driving the spike, in Panarella's view: an increase in perceived importance of the law amid news coverage of Trump-related constitutional issues; heightened feelings of uncertainty about jobs and the economy; and the recent removal of the much-dreaded
'logic games' section from the Law School Admission Test.
Amid economic instability, he said, graduating students and career-switchers see law school as a 'professional school that has a job at the end of it that feels certain to some degree.'
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Indeed, law school has traditionally represented a solid path to relatively high-paying employment. By last spring, nearly 86 percent of the prior year's law school graduates had full-time legal jobs, according to
However, even before Trump took office, legal industry observers were predicting employment numbers beginning with the class of 2024 were likely to look less positive. Nikia Gray, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, said in a
last year that pandemic-era hiring booms at law firms were slowing, and
'there are suggestions in the data that the market is starting to contract and that future classes may not fare as well.'
Across New England, students are reconsidering their plans and seeing law school as a smart career move. Applications in the region jumped 22 percent this year compared with the previous cycle.
University of Vermont senior Lucas Martineau has been passionate about work that focuses on the intersection of public service and culture for years. A recent job posting
for a program manager in Boston's Office Arts and Culture would be a 'dream job' a few years down the road, he said, but as he prepares to cross the graduation stage, banking on opportunities like that one still existing in the future feels like a larger gamble than before.
The University of Vermont in Burlington, Vt., in 2020.
Charles Krupa/Associated Press
'In a way, it feels like this administration had hit me directly,' said Martineau, who will graduate this May with a bachelor's degree in political science, art history, and psychology. 'Law school feels like the closest thing that's still safe.'
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Amid the uncertainty and federal
a job where he can make an impact on people's lives
while still having relative job security.
'Having a pathway to be able to make actionable change, after graduating first in a pandemic and second in a potential recession, is really top of mind for me,' Martineau said.
The decision to pivot to law school in the hopes of a secure career that is also fulfilling is a well-founded one, said Andrew Perlman, dean of Suffolk Law, which saw a 20-percent jump this year.
'For economic and job stability, legal careers have long been a great path,' Perlman said. 'It's a good investment.'
Maren Halpin can be reached at