In legal education, we have become delusional about our prospects. We are paralyzed by a combination of denial and confidence — denial about the nature of the problems and confidence in our own ability to compete.
The public is smarter than professors would prefer to give them credit for. People are avoiding law school. The fact is that the pool of applicants has decreased at an unprecedented rate. Prospective students who would have been rejected outright prior to the recession are being offered scholarships now. Law schools have cut their enrollment, but not enough: at many institutions, the average credentials of those who matriculate are not equivalent to their predecessors.
