A decline in student enrollment at Gonzaga University’s School of Law has forced the administration there to start offering buyouts to tenured faculty members.

Law school dean Jane Korn says the elimination of some tenured positions will be implemented over the next two years. So far, four of the law school’s 17 tenured faculty members have accepted buyouts. She says others are still considering the buyout offers.

Though Korn is a tenured faculty member, she is ineligible to accept a buyout offer as it represents a conflict of interest, she says. She declines to disclose the law school’s annual budget.

“They’re going to be staggered over time. It’s not a situation where they will just be gone overnight. Applications are down 30 to 40 percent. The world has changed for the moment, and we have to adjust accordingly,” she says.

The decline in total enrollment and first-year law school classes at Gonzaga University is reflective of a trend that is taking place across the U.S. Law firms were hit especially hard with layoffs during the Great Recession and the law profession has yet to fully rebound, Korn says.

Peak enrollment for first-year law students in the last decade at Gonzaga occurred in 2007, with 207 students. However, that number since has slipped to 132 in 2012, 108 in 2013, 128 in 2014, and 127 this year, Gonzaga law school data shows.

Gonzaga’s law school averaged 191 incoming students from 2005 to 2011, compared with average of 124 per year since 2012, the figures show.

“We have a department that has historically been built for 175 students per entering class, and now we have 30 percent fewer students,” Korn says. Total enrollment is down to 350 students now from previous ranges of between 475 to 500 students, she says.

Meanwhile, law school enrollment across the U.S. has dropped four straight years. Total enrollment in juris doctorate programs—including both full- and part-time students—at the nation’s 204 ABA-approved law schools fell to 119,800 in 2014, down 7 percent from 2013 and down 19 percent from a peak of 147,500 in 2010, says the American Bar Association.

Enrollment of first-year law students also fell in 2014 for the fourth-straight year, to 37,900, down 4.4 percent from 2013 and down 28 percent from the all-time high of 52,500 in 2010, the ABA says.

Korn says she and law school administrators have been carefully planning for adjustments to staff since she took over as law school dean in July 2011. She says conversations have been ongoing with Gonzaga’s central administration since she started.

“We had a decision to make, and that was, we are not going to lower our standards to enroll more students who may not be in a position to succeed once they’ve been admitted,” Korn says.