Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

UNLV law school high on applicants’ lists

When Chris Orem was shopping around for a law school, UNLV was picking and choosing too -- among him and more than 1,700 other applicants who were vying for 286 seats in this year's class.

So many applications came in this year that the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' William S. Boyd School of Law earned a spot among the nation's most selective law schools.

"We didn't realize it was so selective, but we were really proud to get accepted," said Orem, 26, who moved to Las Vegas this month from Utah with his wife.

With the flood of applications, competition from out-of-state students is increasing along with the selectivity. School officials called it an upward spiral: The school should be able to attract higher caliber students and so its graduates will be more attractive to prestigious law firms.

"Obviously, it's a great luxury to be able to be that selective," said Richard Morgan, dean of the law school. "I think we are getting student bodies that are very, very good. We are able to pick the best and the brightest."

Orem also was accepted to law schools at Arizona State, Utah, Notre Dame, Idaho and Houston. He chose to come to Las Vegas, however, because of the city's job market, the favorable cost of living and the school's growing reputation, he said.

A look at the nation's top 50 law schools in U.S. News & World Report's 2003 graduate school rankings showed that only four schools had a lower -- that is, more competitive -- application acceptance rate than UNLV. Those schools were Yale, Stanford, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.

The U.S. News rankings reflect 2002, when UNLV had an acceptance rate of 24.1 percent. UNLV's acceptance rate in 2003 was 16.6 percent.

Boyd School of Law officials believe a stronger group of candidates has led to higher average Law School Admission Test scores at UNLV. In 1998 first-year law students had a median LSAT score of 153 out of 180. The median score this year was 155.

Those scores still have to climb, however, if UNLV wants to compare favorably to highly respected, established schools such as the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California, which had median LSAT scores of 167 and 166 this year respectively.

Boyd officials attribute the large number of applications this year to a number of factors: Enrollment has surged at graduate schools nationwide due to a lackluster economy; UNLV's law school recently received full accreditation in record time; and the school's reputation is attracting positive attention from other law schools, officials said.

"I think we are continuing to gain more notability," said Frank Durand, the law school's assistant dean of admissions and financial aid. "That has resulted in more people taking an interest in us. Of course we are delighted about that."

Morgan said some of the attention has come from the school's ability to lure faculty members from other schools who are at the top of their field.

That attention has a downside for Nevada residents, however. Over the years a smaller percentage of Nevada residents are getting into the law school because of increasing competition from out-of-state students.

In 1998, 93 percent of the school's inaugural class was made up of Nevada residents; this year that figure has fallen to 77 percent.

Durand said the law school is still targeting Nevada residents as its core group of students.

"Where we are seeing growth is in the nonresident portion of the applicant pool," Durand said. "But Nevadans will always have a distinct advantage."

Durand said the school plans to reserve 75 percent to 80 percent of seats for state residents, but will continue to admit out-of-state residents.

Still the passage rate on the bar exam of UNLV students is lower than the rate at many other schools around the country. Of the 127 UNLV students who took Nevada's bar exam in 2002, 53.5 percent passed. Overall 599 people took Nevada's bar and 59 percent passed.

The lowest pass rate of any of the top 50 schools was 71 percent from George Mason University in Virginia, which fell below the 73 percent statewide pass rate there.

But most other top institutions scored much higher than the state average. At U.C. Berkeley for example, 94.3 percent of the school's students passed the bar, compared with the state pass rate of 64 percent. Similarly, Stanford University's pass rate was 83.3 percent.

The disparity between those rates and UNLV's can be explained in part due to the difficulty of Nevada's bar exam, Morgan said.

"Nevada has one of the most rigorous bar exams and lowest passage rates in the nation," Morgan said. "If this were situated in Utah, for example, the passage rate would be much higher."

Morgan said the school has hired a director of academic support to work with students on study skills in general, as well as on study skills for the bar exam.

"We're working on that and I have no doubt we'll get our scores up," he said. If this were situated in Utah, for example, the passage rate would be much higher."

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