American Bar Association Journal: “Following a reported 13% increase in law school applications, five of 196 ABA-accredited law schools expanded their first-year classes by more than 50% for the 2021 admissions cycle, and 36 saw growth between 20% and 41%. Overall, there was an increase of almost 12% for students admitted during the 2021 law school admissions cycle, according to ABA 509 Information Reports released in December. Schools with the largest growth were Wake Forest University School of Law, which had a nearly 90% increase of 1Ls; and George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, where the first-year class grew by 76%. Schools are coming off an unpredictable admissions cycle, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, says Ken Randall, GMU’s law school dean. Its 2020 first-year class had 149 members, compared with 262 in 2021. “We do not expect to have that large of a class for next year, even though applications are up. We are built for a student body that is closer to somewhere between 180 and 200,” says Randall, whose school added a fifth section for the 2021 entering class. It has not hired new tenure-track faculty members but did add adjuncts to teach legal writing. Among other law schools with significant 1L increases were Baylor Law School, where there was a 51% increase; Loyola University Chicago School of Law, which saw a 52% increase; and Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, which had a 62% increase. “Our building can accommodate the size of the student body. Next year we hope it will be a little bit larger, but who knows,” says Charles Campbell, the dean of Faulkner Law. The school has 108 2021 first-year students, compared with 67 in 2020, and Campbell says it recently has hired a tenure-track professor and a visiting professor. He wants to increase enrollment and improve metrics concurrently. Between 2020 and 2021, the law school’s median LSAT score went from 148 to 150, but its median undergraduate grade point average slightly decreased, from 3.28 to 3.23…”