The ABA released preliminary data Nov. 28, which it collected in questionnaires completed by 201 ABA-accredited law schools. The ABA says it will release final numbers in the spring, but that initial analysis shows that first-year enrollment is down 9 percent nationwide for the 2012-2013 compared with 2011-2012.
Texas Wesleyan Law is the only one of Texas’ nine ABA-accredited law schools with entry-class enrollment for 2012-2013 exceeding enrollment the previous year. “We’re a good value, for one thing,” says Texas Wesleyan Law Dean Frederic White. The school’s full-time annual tuition and fees for 2012-2013 are $30,580 making it one of the five least expensive of the 120 private ABA-accredited law schools in the nation, he says.
“We also benefit from the economy in the Metroplex,” White says. “We’re in an area of the country that has weathered, comparatively speaking, the economic storm going on in the country.”
It’s a good time for the private Fort Worth law school to be bucking a national trend, given the June announcement that Texas A&M University System and Texas Wesleyan University had signed a letter of intent for Texas A&M University in College Station to own and operate the Fort Worth law school for about $25 million. The schools said they planned to open the law school as a public school in June 2013, but the schools will have to get approval from three accrediting bodies before the deal is done.
— Jeanne Graham
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