The two Inland Northwest law schools—Gonzaga University School of Law and the University of Idaho College of Law—are enrolling fewer students into their three-year programs this year than in recent years, due largely to a declining number of applicants.

For the coming academic year, the Gonzaga University has enrolled 132 law students from a pool of 1,157 applicants.

"That's lower than we typically have," says Susan Lee, director of admissions at the Gonzaga's law school. "The important piece is we have students that have strong credentials and we believe will be able to pass the bar."

In the fall of last year, Gonzaga enrolled 176 first-year law students in its law school out of a pool of 1,389 applicants, and in 2010, the law school enrolled 183 new students out of 1,924 applicants.

Meantime, the University of Idaho has admitted 102 first-year law students this fall, down from 130 and 132 during the last couple of years, says Jeffrey A. Dodge, associate dean of students and administration at UI's law school. The school received 595 applications this year, down from 663 applications last year.

The number of people taking the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) is down, Dodge says. "There's just a smaller population of people even taking the test."

The Law School Admissions Council, which administers the test four times annually, reports that the number of LSATs taken in 2011 and 2010 was down 16.2 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, from the prior years.

The number of LSATs administered in June of 2012, though, was down 5.9 percent from a year earlier.

"We saw less of a decline in numbers of LSAT takers from last summer to this summer," Dodge says. "We might be seeing somewhat of a leveling off."

All law schools accredited by the American Bar Association require that applicants first take the LSAT.

Gonzaga has to consider applicants that would have good prospects of becoming successful lawyers, rather than focus on its class sizes, Lee says.

"We have to think of the ethical component, realizing it's a lot of money for a student to be able to take loans and pay them off."

Applications to the Gonzaga law school were down 17 percent this year from a year earlier, compared with a decline of 12.5 percent in the Pacific Northwest region and 13.7 percent nationally, she says.

Often school enrollment rises in a down economy, but with student loans and the job market, law school is a challenge to take on, Lee says.

Schools are required to post an estimated cost of attendance, which includes tuition, books, fees, room, board, transportation, and personal expenses.

At Gonzaga, the estimated cost is $52,000 annually, compared with $47,677 a year for in-state University of Washington law students and $60,647 for nonresidents at UW. The total estimated cost at Seattle University, which, like Gonzaga, is a private school, is $60,839 a year.

At the University of Idaho, the annual estimated cost of attendance at the law school is $31,264 for Idaho residents, and $44,092 for nonresidents.

Faced with a national decline in applications, most law schools had to make a choice to fill their seats or protect their credentials, says Jane Korn, dean at Gonzaga's law school.

"In other words, they could admit people they normally wouldn't admit to fill seats, or have a smaller class," Korn says.

Gonzaga chose not to fill all of its seats at the law school.

"We would have had people with difficulty in law school, passing the bar, and finding jobs," she says. "It's not an ethical thing to do."

Law school applications are down for a variety of reasons, likely led by the recent recession and slow recovery from it, Korn says.

"It's hard for young lawyers to find jobs, and there's been a lot of bad press about the situation," she says. "I think it's a market correction."

For the class of 2011, 86 percent of the Gonzaga law school graduates seeking work found jobs, the school's website says. That's in line with the national employment rate for law school graduates, which the Wall Street Journal reported in June was at an 18-year low.

The 2010 Gonzaga's employment rate was 89 percent for its law school students seeking post-graduate work.

Starting salaries have fallen in the last few years, the GU's law school website shows. Median annual salaries for Gonzaga law school graduates hired at law firms fell to $54,000 in 2011 from $60,000 in 2009. Median salaries for Gonzaga law school graduates hired for government work fell to $52,189 from $56,000 during that period.

Gonzaga has a mentorship program which matches students with veteran attorneys.

"In a difficult job market, networking helps," Korn says. "Having advice from people who've gone through it helps."

Korn says she's not ready to say when or if class sizes will return to prerecession levels.

"I've been in legal education for 26 years," Korn says. "There have been downturn cycles before. Experience tells me it's temporary, but I just don't know. This downturn is larger than before."

Gonzaga can handle the financial consequences of a smaller class size, Korn says.

"We're going to deal with it," she says. "We're all going to tighten our belts."

The law school isn't a big revenue generator for Gonzaga as such a program might be at other universities, Korn says.

"I haven't seen that here," she says. "It's cheaper to run a law school than a medical school because you don't have all that research equipment, but it's not a cash cow here by any stretch of the imagination."

UI's Dodge, who oversees law school admissions there, says, "Maintaining academic standards won out."

The law school this year experienced a 10 percent drop in applications and a 13 percent drop in admissions compared with last year, he says.

"We tried to maintain as close to median LSAT and undergraduate GPA," he says. "We had to accept fewer people to get the same quality."

Dodge says the UI anticipates a median LSAT score of 153 among this year's admitted law school applicants, or one point below last year's median LSAT score.

The median GPA for UI's incoming law school class is 3.21, roughly level with last year's median GPA of 3.25, he says.

"The university is supportive of enrolling fewer people to maintain academic quality," Dodge says. "It's certainly a concern that fewer people mean less revenue to the institution, but by no means is the school in dire financial straits."

For UI's class of 2011, 84 out of 102 law school graduates, or 82.4 percent, indicated they had found employment.

"Of those who are employed, 78.4 percent reported they were employed in positions that required bar admittance, and an additional 8.3 percent said they were in positions in which a law degree was an advantage, but not a requirement.

UI's 2011 law school-graduate employment numbers were up from 2010 and 2009, when 74.3 percent and 78.7 percent of graduates, respectively, reported they were employed.

Dodge says he's optimistic about the future of the UI College of Law.

"We have a lot of room for growth. Being the only state accredited and only public law school in the state, we are being strategic about this next year. We are motivated to increase the applicant base at the school."