U.S. law schools have taken different approaches to Non-J.D. Programs. The pandemic has highlighted those differences as schools where Non-J.D. Programs were made up entirely or mostly of residential international LL.M. students faced different challenges from those that were mostly online, mostly for domestic LL.M. students, and/or those mostly for non-lawyers.

Yesterday I took a deeper look at the ABA data from 2019-2021 for J.D./Non-J.D. Enrollment. The 2019 information was from the last year before the pandemic, 2020 information was from when many law schools were entirely online or had remote options, and 2021 is from the current year as schools have shifted back to in-person.

Numbers I found (feel free to e-mail for updates/corrections) from the self-reported info from 2019 to 2021:

• 101 have reported a decrease in Non-J.D. students.
• 62 have reported an increase in Non-J.D. students
• 3 have reported the same number of Non-J.D. students
• 30 have reported 0 Non-J.D. students all 3 years
• 7 are no longer listed as of 2021.

More Thoughts:

1. First, caveats. (i) This is all self-reported data that I have not seen audited. For example, Regent University reported 597 Non-J.D. students in 2019, 641 Non-J.D. students in 2020, and 0 Non-J.D. students in 2021. Their website still lists two M.A. in Law and two LL.M. programs. (ii) The ABA data is separated by years, but the numbers don’t always align as some schools are removed and others are named differently (e.g. NEVADA – LAS VEGAS, UNIVERSITY OF (2019) and UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA – LAS VEGAS (2020 and 2021). It would be great if the ABA created an Excel sheet of Non-J.D. enrollment by school over a period of years. (iii) Some schools went from 1-2 Non-J.D. students in 2019 to 0 in 2021. I’m curious about these schools.
2. No surprise to me (and readers of this blog) that the schools with Master’s degrees for non-lawyers are seeing tremendous growth. These programs, mostly online, are the biggest growth area I’ve seen in Non-J.D. shops are are leading the “Great Differentiation” between U.S. law schools and their operations.
3. I’m curious to see how many of the 30 schools that identified 0 Non-J.D. Programs students over the 3 years are now starting to enter the space. I know of at least one public law school that had planned to launch a Master’s degree for non-lawyers from reviewing publicly available information. How long can some schools hold off on entering the space when their counterparts are growing these programs that benefit their schools in numbers of direct and indirect ways?
4. The ABA should break out the Non-JD info by degree so that consumers can see the size of the programs they’re specifically interested in. At the very least, it’s time for schools to break down this information into master’s degrees for lawyers, master’s degrees for non-lawyers, and doctoral degrees. As Non-J.D. shops evolve from degree programs to certificates and other programs, it’ll also be interesting to see how the tracking changes (or doesn’t).
5. 2 of the 7 schools no longer listed (closed, closing, or non-ABA now) had Non-JD Programs in 2019.
6. Arizona (2021: 1989 Non-JDs) is poised to be the first program to report more than 2000 Non-J.D. students. The next closest is NYU at 1017. One of the interesting things to look at is a chart on Excess of Democracy that shows the 9 schools where Non-J.D. students make up more than half of total law school enrollment (bottom of page).

What’s clear to me: U.S. law schools focused entirely on programs for residential international LL.M. students are already becoming a thing of the past. Non-J.D. operations had evolved before the pandemic, but the last 2+ years has really demonstrated this difference in how schools have fared in their Non-J.D. programming.