Interesting article in this week’s National Law Journal:  Applications at Top Law Schools Decline; Third Consecutive Year of Decreases, by Leigh Jones:

A snapshot of application totals at several top law schools across the country shows a 4.6% drop for this year’s class, indicating a third consecutive year of decreases in the number of people applying to juris doctor programs nationwide. Nine out of 10 top-tier schools surveyed by The National Law Journal reported a downturn in applications for the new school year compared with 2005, when all law schools accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) received 6.3% fewer applications than in 2004, according to the Law School Admission Council (LSAC). In 2004, when the total number of applicants was 95,800, all schools received 4.8% fewer applications, which marked the first year of application declines since 1997. The trend likely will not pinch top schools or elite law firms, but observers say it could have a trickle-down effect….

The schools surveyed by The National Law Journal this year were UCLA, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, NYU, Chicago, Michigan, Georgetown, Texas, and Florida….

One school with remarkable results was Iowa, which was not included among averages of the 10 other schools. The Iowa City, Iowa, school reported that it received 1,809 applications, a 35% increase from last year’s 1,339 applications. The school’s dean, Carolyn Jones, … wrote in an e-mail message that the increase occurred because the school hired a full-time admissions dean.

Eight of the 10 schools surveyed supplied data about minority applicants. The average decrease in minority applications at those schools was 2.6%…. The average number of women applicants at those schools declined by 4.4% for the 2006-2007 academic year, and none of those schools experienced a rise in the number of women applicants over last year.