The schools are offering retirement packages to law professors and cutting back on contract lecturers in a bid to save money. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the crisis in the law school economy is hitting second and third tier institutions hard.

Entry requirements easing

However, the top tier has not seen any major drop in law student intake with the likes of Harvard, Yale and Stanford faring better than the non-Ivy league colleges. However, it is thought they may be easing up on entry requirements. For example, Harvard let in 16% of applicants for the class of 2015, up from 11% just three years earlier. The Wall Street Journal reported that some schools were seeing declines of as much as 55 per cent of their intake.