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In the first °®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý report examining the 2024 1L class[1]—the first full 1L class cycle to be admitted after the June 2023 United States Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard decision, this report focuses on first-year law school enrollment between 2021 through 2024,[2] highlighting:  

1. Who is enrolling in law school
2. Where they enrolled
3. How rates of enrollment of racially and ethnically minoritized[3] students varied across law schools

Providing more details on the composition of the classes entering law school, this report’s key insights include:

• Gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic, and age composition have generally remained unchanged over the years, but some groups have steadily been increasing.
  • Since 2015, the majority of the first-year class have been women, but there is a notable steady increase in the representation of gender diverse students,[4] doubling between 2021 and 2024 from 1% to 2%.
  • 15.7% of the 2024 1L class identify as LGBTQ+,[5] up from 12% in 2021.
  • Consistently, less than a quarter of the 1L class each year are first-generation college graduates[6] and a little more than a quarter are Pell-grant recipients. The representation of °®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý fee waiver recipients in the first-year class has doubled between 2021 and 2024 from 5% to 10%.[7]
  • The median age of 1Ls at enrollment has remained consistent across the years with the majority starting the academic year somewhere between 23 and 26 years old. About 1 in 5 1Ls are 27 years old or older.
• The level of racial and ethnic diversity increased between 2021 and 2023 and leveled off in 2024.
  • From 2019 to 2023 racial and ethnic diversity steadily increased, growing by 2 percentage points between 2021 and 2022, and by 1.2 percentage points between 2022 and 2023, before leveling off between 2023 and 2024, remaining at 41.8% this year.[8]
  • The steady increase in the representation of racially and ethnically minoritized students from 2021 to 2023 had been largely driven by Asian, Multiracial or ethnoracial (2 or more) students, and to a lesser extent Middle Eastern or North African/Arab and Hispanic or Latina/é/o/x students. Black/African American law student representation slightly declined each year by a tenth of a percentage point.
  • The representation of white identifying students has decreased from 55.6% in 2021 to 50.8% in 2024.
  • Meanwhile, the percentage of students not reporting their race or ethnicity increased from 5.8% in 2021 to 7.4% in 2024.
• Not all law schools and law school programs experienced the same racial and ethnic representation in their classroom despite 41.8% of all 1Ls today being from racially and ethnically minoritized groups
  • The top 25% highly selective law schools are less racially and ethnically diverse than other law schools.[9]
  • Enrollment rates of Asian and white 1Ls at the top 25% highly selective law schools are higher than any other groups.
  • American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, and Hispanic or Latina/é/o/x 1Ls experienced enrollment changes across law school selectivity quartiles in recent years, often starting before 2024. 
• More law schools experienced a decrease in the enrollment of racially and ethnically minoritized students in their 1L class in 2024 than in previous years.
  • In 2024, 95 law schools experienced a decrease in enrollment of racially and ethnically minoritized students in their 1L class, up from 74 law schools in 2023, and 72 law schools in 2022. 
  • Of the 95 law schools that experienced a decrease in 2024, 72 experienced a decrease of less than 5 percentage points. On average, a decrease of 5 percentage points or less translates into 2-3 fewer students than the year before, depending on school and class size.
  • Sixteen law schools experienced a decrease between 5 and 10 percentage points; seven law schools experienced a decrease of 10 percentage points or higher.
  • Proportionally, in 2024, more top 25% highly selective law schools and private law schools experienced a larger decrease in racial and ethnic representation in their first-year classes compared to other law schools.

The legitimacy of the profession and public trust in the judicial system are in part dependent on who enrolls in law school and their development throughout law school. °®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý will continue to monitor how existing demographic trends unfolded before and after the United States Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard decision.

We also will continue to monitor what trends develop in the coming years. °®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý will continue to collaborate with law schools and other stakeholders to support all aspiring lawyers as they navigate their individual journeys to and through law school.

To learn more, download the report here. If you have any questions related to this project or future work informed by the results, please contact °®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý Applied Research at StrategicResearch@°®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý.org.

[1] An in-depth 2024 1L Profile report is forthcoming during the time of this report’s publication.

[2] The year refers to year the academic calendar starts. For example, 2021 refers to the 2021-2022 academic year.

[3] The term “minoritized� refers to populations that have been treated as less important than the dominant population in terms of access, power, and other aspects of social processes. Minoritized incorporates an understanding of social structures rather than being numerically/statistically smaller/fewer. Minoritized can be used to describe various populations and is not synonymous with or limited to racially/ethnically underrepresented populations. This term is used interchangeably with marginalized in this report. For the purpose of this report, racially and ethnically minoritized students includes anyone who identifies as American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic or Latina/é/o/x, Indigenous Person of Canada, Middle Eastern or North African/Arab, Multiracial or ethnoracial (2 more more), or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

[4] Gender diverse students including anyone who identifies as nonbinary, transgender, and/or another gender identity.

[5] LGBTQ+ refers to people who identify with any sexual orientation other than heterosexual and/or people with any gender identity other than cisgender man or woman.

[6] First-generation college graduates include students who reported that their parents or guardians� highest education attainment was associate’s degree, some college, high school completion/equivalent, or less than high school completion. In other words, first-generation college status is defined as no parent or guardian having earned a bachelor’s degree.

[7] The growth in representation of °®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý fee waiver recipients between 2021 and 2024 should be considered in the context of the significant changes to the program °®ÓÎÏ·ÌåÓý made in 2021, which expanded income eligibility.

[8] Percentage point change measures the absolute difference between two percentages. To learn more, please refer to footnote 22.

[9] Each school is assigned a selectivity index score used to create quartiles of law school selectivity. Selectivity is based on the admission rate, median LSAT of admitted students, and median UGPA of admitted students of a given year. The top 25% of highly selective law schools are in quartile1 (Q1). Each quartile holds about 49-50 law schools.