How to Grow and Increase Enrollment in Law Schools: Strategies, Tactics and Best Practices

First year enrollment in law schools has declined in the past decade dramatically. There are signs of slight rebound, but the arms race to recruit fewer law students is ongoing. Compounding this is the trend that one third of law applicants are opting out of candidate referral service. What must law schools do to compete in this fierce environment?

As an agency that has been helping underdog higher ed brands win an outsized share of a shrinking market,  here are our recommendations:

Strategies, Tactics and Best Practices

Strategies

To realize prosperity, a law school must play to win more of right-fit students and partners.

1. Understand situational context. Begin with performing SWOT and benchmarking peers.
2. Pick the right strategy lever. Where should the law school play and how will it win? To offset the decline in JD programs, consider offering one year master’s, LLM degrees, certificates in emerging areas and dual degree programs.
3. Identify pockets of receptive alumni and mission-aligned students. Understand right-fit demographic and psychographic micro-segments. How will you meet and exceed their needs?
4. Engage in integrative marketing with omni-channel micro-segmentation, A/B testing, SEO, GEO, and social media marketing powered by thought leadership content marketing informed by intentional editorial calendars and Keyword Guides.
5. Apply all levers to influence US News rankings because prospective students still use them as short-cuts. Ensure communicating with peers and US News survey recipients to influence their perceptions.

Strategic Vision

Thoughtful students carefully read and evaluate strategic plans to understand the school’s roadmap for navigating emerging challenges and to see if there is an alignment with their personal goals. As such, they must:

1. Articulate strategic priorities.
2. State how the law school curriculum, pedagogy and resources are being directed to meet the needs of the changing legal landscape.
3. Identify how and where is the law school unstoppable.

Brand

In the sea of sameness, brands win. A brand is the DNA of an institution that affirms its purpose. The practice of branding demands that a law school:

1. Define core promise that is enduring, immutable and indisputable.
2. Articulate a distinct and memorable brand image.
3. Position the law school vis-a-vis peers.
4. Pursue a big idea, without which the law school will be ignored.

Keyword Guide and Editorial Calendar

Page one is destiny for both Google and Generative Engines like ChatGPT, perplexity and Google Gemini. If prospects can’t find the law school, they won’t enroll. If corporations can’t find the law school, they won’t recruit or partner.

The journey to Google and Generative Engine page one presence begins by creating an institutional Keyword Guide with the following groups of keywords a law school needs to claim and own:

1. Programs keywords.
2. Brand keywords.
3. Reputation keywords.
4. Thought leadership keywords.
5. Location keyword.
6. Decisioning keywords.

Because fresh content is the fuel of Google and Generative Engines, create an editorial calendar. Never create a piece of new content without identifying the keyword first. You become the story you choose to tell.

Website

A website is the digital soul of an institution. All roads lead to it. Here are some guidelines worth following:

1. Merchandise hope.
2. Separate public facing and internal facing websites.
3. Don’t be a bore. A law school can’t bore people into enrolling, or buying into its brand ideals. You must inspire prospects to inquire, visit and apply.
4. Secure Google page one rankings for all the law school’s programs. If a program can’t be found, prospects won’t consider enrolling in it.
5. Romance prospects with high-fidelity academic program pages. We call them money pages. Feature courses, clinics, institutes, centers, talented faculty, students, successful alumni, internships, career traditional and non-traditional paths, recent employers and placement stats. Spotlight special scholarships.
6. Create online viewbooks and microsites that distill the argument for the law school.
7. Streamline admissions process. Avoid frustrating prospective digital native students with arcane process. Develop an accepted student microsite.
8. Make students and alumni the hero of the institutional journey, not the institution. Celebrate successful alumni.
9. Express Gen-Z and millennial diversity — religious, racial, and gender in your photography.
10. Feature brand anthem video to tell your brand story and why the law school matters.
11. Create a law resource channel as an extension of the law school website. Feature symposiums, summits, graduate addresses, keynote speakers, and emerging law topics such as technology and cyber/AI law, environmental and climate law, healthcare law, space law, international law, sports and eSports law, social justice and equity law, fintech and cryptocurrency law, cannabis and psychedelic Law, and more. Promote all this via social media.

Social Media

Turn on the charms and enhance a law school’s likability with social media.

1. Tell better stories of impact and consequence of students, talented faculty and successful alumni.
2. Partner with influencers.
3. Promote social posts.
4. Create an editorial calendar.
5. Measure metrics.
6. Keep an eye on peer institutions.

Integrated Marketing Campaigns

Law schools must fish where the fish are. They must:

1. Implement precise paid advertising campaigns with story landing pages and A/B testing. They must have the discipline to feed the winning ads and landing page alternatives, and starve the losers.
2. Conduct persistent content/SEO/GEO marketing campaigns with educational, career counseling and thought leadership content.
3. Amplify via social media.
4. Execute charming email marketing campaigns.
5. Run traditional media advertising if they have spare budgets.

Boots-on-the-Ground and Follow-Up Plan

If marketing lights the spark, then boots-on-the-ground activities fuel the fire, and follow-up shows genuine care. To be successful, law schools must orchestrate all three. They must:

1. Invest in first impressions – both digital and physical.
2. Curate tours and visits.
3. Treat accepted students like royalty.
4. Create a large variety of law clubs and organizations to mirror areas of competitive advantage and emerging specialties.
5. Befriend faculty at undergraduate program feeder schools.
6. Create experiential opportunities legal clinics, externships and internships, moot court, mock trials, pro-bono projects, negotiation and mediation competitions, research assistantships, writing for law journal and reviews, working on policy advocacy projects, study abroad programs, public speaking and debate forums, and more.
7. Attend extracurricular events where law school prospects hang out such as bar association events, moot court and mock trial competitions, academic and legal conferences, judicial clerkship and court visits, trial observations and legal workshops, law firm open houses and information sessions, and more.
8. Create speaker series that attract surrounding communities with topics like technology and cyber/AI law, environmental and climate law, healthcare law, space law, international law, sports and eSports law, social justice and equity law, fintech and cryptocurrency law, cannabis and psychedelic Law, and more. Host hybrid events and promote them through digital and traditional platforms.
9. Influence ranking and rating agencies such as US News.
10. Respond to inquiries promptly and efficiently.

Budgets

Success requires investment — commit adequate marketing funds to drive impact.

13 Best Practices

We address this challenge by employing an investigative mindset to uncover concrete evidence and proofs, combined with a creative mindset to infuse brand appeal and craft persuasive arguments.

1. We begin our work by taking a close look at a law school’s first year foundational 1L curriculum. We highlight how these and other student experiences shape their foundation, bolster mental discipline, and develop broader legal habits. We make the case that core courses nurture the development of ten key skills for legal success: legal analysis and reasoning; critical reading; legal research; legal writing; oral advocacy; issue spotting; problem-solving; time management; interpersonal communication; and persuasion and argumentation.
2. We develop sophisticated, high-fidelity, academic program pages.
3. When applicable, we emphasize STEM designation to attract international students eligible for 36 months of extended practical training after graduation. This includes programs like cybersecurity and data privacy law, compliance and risk management, environmental law all of which require data analytics, technology, and scientific concepts.
4. We focus on faculty imparting attention to detail, resilience, professionalism, inquiry, self-reflection, ethical awareness, discipline, discernment, and perspective — the things that lead legal professionals to greater success. 
5. We connect the classroom to various facets of experiential learning, including legal clinics, externships and internships, moot court, mock trials, pro-bono projects, negotiation and mediation competitions, research assistantships, writing for law journal and reviews, working on policy advocacy projects, study abroad programs, public speaking and debate forums, and more.
6. We look for and tell rich stories of interdisciplinary centers of excellence and symposia funded by corporations, major foundations and other government sources.
7. We connect the success of law school graduates with collaborative and teamwork aspects of their education in ways sufficiently concrete that they make sense to prospects and their parents.
8. We make a compelling case for why a law school education is unmatched in helping students to transition into the world of meaningful work and the work of the future. 
9. We highlight how faculty and alumni open doors for students to gain internship/clinical experience, find job opportunities, and explore innovative career paths.
10. We underscore what employers prize in the graduates they have hired.
11. We punctuate the argument with placement details: top employers, starting salaries.
12. We inspire students to aim for leadership roles in their chosen areas of specialization.
13. We create brand lines like “Opportunity, Inc.”, “Future Fit”, “Be Central”, “Talent to Shape Tomorrow”, and “Flourish!” backed by high octane communications to give tailwinds to all marketing efforts.

It takes a village to nurture law schools and marketing imagination to bring vibrancy to the life of law schools.

We hope we get the chance to use our talent and experience in marketing of law schools to advance the cause of law education at your institution. Please review our higher education marketing capabilities and consider partnering with us.