Study finds women continue to outpace men in law school enrollment
Women enrollment in Florida law schools climbed to 56% last year, up from 53% in 2017
Florida A&M University College of Law, with 68.75% women enrollment, ranked fourth among the top 20 majority female law schools in the nation, according to the survey.
Women enrollment in U.S. law schools outnumbered men in 2021, continuing a trend that began in 2016, according to a recent study.
The study by Enjuris showed that women in 2021 made up 55.29 % of all students enrolled in ABA-approved law schools nationwide.
The percentage of women who attend ABA-approved law schools increased by 1.2% from 2020 to 2021, the survey shows. That coincided with a 13% rise in overall enrollment, the largest applicant pool since 2004.
“Legal observers point to a number of possible reasons for the increase in female attendees, including the inventive attempts by many law schools to broaden their base of applicants,” the authors wrote.
The survey showed that of the 117,297 students enrolled in law schools nationwide last year, 64,848 were female, 52,072 were male, and 377 identified as “other.”
Nationwide, 82.91% of law schools have more female attendees than male attendees, up from 73.98% in 2020, according to the survey.
Women enrollment in Florida law schools climbed to 56% last year, up from 53% in 2017, according to the survey.
Florida A&M University College of Law, with 68.75% women enrollment, ranked fourth among the top 20 majority female law schools in the nation, according to the survey.
Only Northeastern University School of Law at 71.99%, Howard University at 70.88%, and NC Central University at 69.35%, had higher female enrollment than FAMU, according to the survey.
The trend also holds for the nation’s elite law schools, where 17 of the top 20 — as ranked by U.S. News and World Report — have more women students enrolled than men, according to the survey.
Yale, which leads the ranking, is 50.94% female, followed by No. 2 Stanford, 50.09% female; No. 3 Harvard, 52.03% female; and No. 4 University of Chicago Law School, 60.46% female.
No. 5 ranked Columbia Law School has slightly fewer women than men, 47.56%, according to the survey. Berkeley School of Law, ranked 11th in the nation, is 61.67% female, the survey shows.
“Experts attribute the [overall] increase in [law school] applicants to a number of factors, including a hiring slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the new option to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) online, and the death of U.S. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which focused attention on the U.S. legal system and the role attorneys play in society,” the authors noted.
The survey also notes that while “challenges remain in the legal field with respect to gender diversity, huge strides have undoubtedly been made in the last few decades….”
The authors point to 1960, when women comprised just 3.5% of enrollment in ABA-approved law schools in the United States. In 1970, women enrollment in the nation’s law schools had climbed to just 8.7%, according to the study.
Enjuris bills itself as an “independent legal resource” that is supported by a directory of personal injury attorneys.
