Gonzaga University School of Law has attracted increased interest in its program, with a rise in applications and enrollment over the last six years, says Jacob H. Rooksby, dean of the law school. 

Year-over-year, the total number of law students enrolled at Gonzaga has ticked up steadily with a 58% enrollment increase in six years. For the current academic year, the student body in the law school is 554, up from 510 for the 2022-2023 school year, 457 students in 2021-2022, 432 students for 2020-2021, and 391 students in 2019-2020. In 2018, when Rooksby became dean, the law school had 350 students enrolled. 

With the deadline still a month away to apply for this fall's cohort, the application volume for the 2024-25 school year has already surpassed the 1,023 received for the 2023-24 school year, Rooksby says. This year's activity ends a two-year decline in interest, from 1,137 in 2022 to 1,370 in 2021, but activity is well above that of the 962 applications in 2020 and 883 in 2019. 

Before 2021, the last time the law school received over 1,000 applications was in 2012 when it received 1,145, Rooksby says.

According to data from the Law School Admissions Council, more aspiring lawyers are applying to fewer schools. For the current school year, of the 196 American Bar Association-accredited law schools, 105 saw a decrease in applications. 

Bucking that trend, Gonzaga University School of Law is among the schools in which more students are applying—and more are accepting offers. 

“Our application volume has increased by 7% (since 2018), and the number of students accepting our offers of admission and attending has gone up 5 percentage points in that time as well,” Rooksby says. “We feel we have a good thing going in terms of attracting students to Spokane for a legal education. We are excited about our market position and where we are headed.” 

The yield of students who accepted an admissions offer for the current school year at the Gonzaga law school was 31%—the highest since 2006, compared to 28% a year prior, 25% in 2021, and 27% in 2020 Rooksby says. 

For the first time in the school’s 112-year history, the law school was recognized among the top 100 law schools by U.S. News and World Report, coming in at 99th. 

“For the last six-year period, the number of people taking the LSAT has remained basically the same,” Rooksby says. “We’re proud of the attention that the law school is receiving and the results I believe we are delivering.” 

At the University of Idaho College of Law, the only ABA-accredited law school in the Gem State, the law school has kept a steady pace in applications, accepting about 150 first-year students each year. Typically, the law school brings 100 students to its satellite location in Boise and 50 to its Moscow campus. 

“We’re the only law school in the state of Idaho, so we’re really spoiled with the near-exclusive access to the (state) Supreme Court, the Legislature, the business community, and the nonprofit community," says Jason Owen, assistant dean of admissions for the college of law. 

The school also has been nationally recognized in preLaw Magazine as a Best Value Law school, offering in-state tuition to 16 western states and territories as part of the Western Regional Graduate Program. 

Both schools also have created programs and legal clinics to help address the shortage of lawyers in rural counties. According to an ABA study, about 40% of all counties in the U.S. are "legal deserts" with fewer than one lawyer per 1,000 residents. 

In Idaho, for example, half of its 44 counties have fewer than 10 attorneys. Five counties have no private counsel; and three counties have no attorneys at all, notes Johanna Kalb, dean for the UI College of Law in an Advocate article.

“For many Idahoans looking to adopt a child, start a business, invest in a piece of land, or draft a will, legal services are simply inaccessible,” Kalb says. 

To mitigate this problem, last year, the UI law school launched the Idaho Heritage Project, a scholarship fund providing financial support to students serving summer internships or externships within an underserved community in Idaho. Additionally, the university also launched the Hopwood Endowment, which provides financial support to law students working summer internships with nonprofit land trusts located in the Pacific Northwest. 

Similarly, in Washington, 10 of the state’s 39 counties have 30 or fewer active attorneys, with the highest concentration of attorneys in more populated areas, according to the Washington State Bar Association. 

Rooksby says the institution is looking for ways to service the legal needs of rural communities. 

One solution is the school’s partnership with the other two law schools in the state—Seattle University School of Law and the University of Washington School of Law—and Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington. The partnership has a goal of creating “homegrown” attorneys who can serve Central Washington communities. Started in 2022, the program aims to create a pipeline of Latino and Native American students who will enroll in law school and then return to Central Washington to practice. Heritage University is one of only two universities in the country designated as both a Hispanic Serving Institution and a Native American Serving Non-Tribal Institution. 

“There’s a lot of different things we are working on, and hope we can make a dent in that need,” Rooksby says. 

Historically, students from diverse backgrounds have been less represented in higher education. Gonzaga University School of Law for several years has been working to amplify a diverse student body, as well as a diverse faculty cohort. Over the last six years, diversity in first-year law students has climbed to 27.5%, from 12%, Rooksby says. Of its full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty, 33% have a diverse background, making it the most diverse faculty of all three law schools in the state, according to data from the American Bar Association Standard 509 Information Report. 

“I think it’s something for us to celebrate given the narrative that Spokane is less diverse and unable to attract diverse talent, unlike the Seattle and Puget Sound area,” Rooksby says.