The Best Law Schools Are Attracting Fewer Students

In 2010, Sarah Zearfoss, director of admissions at the University of Michigan’s law school, got a tip from an employee that she simply could not ignore. It was just two years after the housing crisis, and Zearfoss and her staff were concerned about the increasingly bleak job market for new lawyers. The advice, she thought, might help: Shrink the school.

“The single best thing we could do to help our students is to make the class size smaller,” Zearfoss said.

She began to set the plan in motion. Since 2011, Michigan Law, considered one of the country’s top law schools, ...