Goodwin Liu California Supreme Court Associate Justice Goodwin Liu.
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Without a boost in Asian American enrollment in law schools, the number of such lawyers in the United States will stagnate by 2030 after four decades of growth.

That's the key takeaway from a new article by California Supreme Court Associate Justice Goodwin Liu and two 2019 Yale Law School graduates—Miranda Li and Phillip Yao—set to appear in an upcoming edition of the University of California Davis Law Review.

The number of law students nationwide has declined 25% since the Great Recession, the paper notes, and Asian Americans have posted the single biggest enrollment decline among any racial or ethnic group in that time. That decline came despite an increase in the number of Asian Americans earning undergraduate degrees during that period. The authors theorize that Asian American students may be more influenced by economic considerations than other racial and ethnic groups, leading fewer to opt for law school.