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Report: Law school applications from women exceed those from men for the first time

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- This year, the number of female applicants to law school has surpassed the number of male applicants, the Law School Admission Council said Wednesday.

Preliminary figures show 34,891 women are seeking to enter law school this fall, compared to 34,463 men. Women edged men 50.1 percent to 49.6 percent, the LSAC said. The remainder of the applicant pool -- 0.6 percent -- did not indicate gender.

"We've anticipated this day for a long time," said Janice L. Austin, dean of admissions and financial aid at the University of Pennsylvania. "This is no surprise, but it's gratifying to see the gains that women have made over the past three decades."

One reason for the spike in female applicants could be that men are applying in fewer numbers, said John Henry Schlegel, chairman of the law school admissions committee who also teaches at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York..

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He said he has not seen an increase of female applicants at his school this year. For the last 10 years at SUNY-Buffalo, men and women have applied to the law school in equal numbers.

The number of female applications has been steadily rising since the early 1970s, when 10 percent of those applying were women, the group said in a statement.

The overall number of applicants increased by 3.4 percent this year, marking a second consecutive yearly increase. In the 1990s, law schools saw an application decline, the group said.

Minority groups, which historically have been poorly represented in the legal profession, did not apply in far greater numbers this year.

Blacks comprised 11.2 percent of the applicant pool, up from 11.1 percent the year before. Hispanic and American Indian applicants remained steady at 4 percent and 0.8 percent respectively. Asian-American and Pacific Islander applications increased to 7.2 percent from 6.8 percent.

Other findings: - White applicants made up 66.7 percent of the applicants this year, up from 65.2 percent a year before. - The percentage of applicants 22 years old or younger rose to 27.5 percent this year from 24 percent in 1995.

The LSAC, a clearinghouse for law school applications and information, administers the Law School Admissions Test, which is an application requirement for all schools approved by the American Bar Association.

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