Jeffery Dubinski-Neessen, assistant dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at UNM, said that contrary to a recent story run by the Albuquerque Journal, applications to the University’s law school are actually on the rise.
When looking over a five-year period, application numbers have gone down; but this year, UNM School of Law applications are up 9 percent.
“Our applications are not dropping,” Neessen said. “This year we’re kind of seeing that, hopefully, last year was the bottom and we’re starting to see an upward trend.”
Nationally, applications are down 4.7 percent. Neessen said it’s because the recent recession has caused a downturn in the job market.
The only decline at the UNM School of Law has come from non-resident applicants, he said.
“However, New Mexico resident applications are constant and steady, if not improving, from last year,” he said.
Out of the graduating class of 2014, 96.4 percent were employed in full-time professional positions in a variety of law careers, he said.
As it stands, he said, having a focus on New Mexico and the state’s only law school, UNM is able to focus on residents coming into law school.
“I think it’s that combination of being able to offer students a really good opportunity to network and learn from really great faculty members, but also to make sure they can do it at an affordable cost so they’re not graduating with heaps and heaps of debt,” Neessen said. “We are actually the least expensive out of our competitor schools in the region by quite a bit.”
This coming year, he said, tuition will be $15,940 for in-state students, which is affordable compared to schools in the region and nationally.
Matthew Reisen is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
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