A gain of 5,000+ year-over-year isn't too shabby, just nowhere near enough to absorb recent graduates. Meanwhile, law school applications are headed the opposite direction. That piece quotes heavily from a subscription-required National Law Journal article so it's context-free, but the delusion is palpable. One professor states, "Law school just isn't the path into the middle class that it once was." Translating, the professor means that once-upon-a-time — the ship had sailed by the mid-80s — most of a graduating class could expect a good outcome. Today, only a small handful of "winners" can.
To illustrate the concept, a mouse-click over the ABA Journal has an article on a 101-year-old lawyer. They also interviewed his 72-year-old lawyer son.
Meanwhile, in Texas, an unaccredited new law school is raking them in with $14K-year tuition. While I'd like to wish the students luck and success, it appears many of them are URMs and non-trads whose career will be over as soon as it starts.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm
| Not seasonally adjusted | June | 2013 | 1,140,600 | |
| April | 2014 | 1,132,200 | ||
| May | 2014 | 1,131,500 | ||
| June | 2014 | 1,145,700 | 5,100 | |
| Seasonally adjusted | June | 2013 | 1,131,000 | |
| April | 2014 | 1,136,300 | ||
| May | 2014 | 1,135,200 | ||
| June | 2014 | 1,136,400 | 5,400 | |
| Change from May-14 to Jun-14 | 1,200 |
