10 Law Schools That Receive the Most Part-Time Applications

For those who want to go to law school but are restrained by finances or personal commitments, a part-time law program may provide an avenue to earning a J.D. With classes extended over a four-year period, a part-time law student can more easily balance a job, a family, or other obligations that keep them from fully focusing on their studies. 

Part-time programs also often have slightly lower LSAT and GPA requirements, which may put a top-notch legal education in closer reach for some applicants. In the fall of 2008, the American Bar Association reports, 16 percent of U.S. law students were in part-time programs. 

[See the U.S. News specialty ranking of part-time law programs.] 

Fewer than half of the nation's law schools offer a part-time law degree. In an annual survey of more than 190 law schools conducted by U.S. News, 92 institutions reported part-time application data. Of these schools, the most in-demand part-time program, based on number of applications, was the Loyola Law School Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. The law school received 2,566 part-time applicants in 2010, a figure more than twice as large as all but three other schools. 

Georgetown University Law Center, the law school that received the most full-time applications in 2010, also attracts a high number of part-time applicants. In 2010, 2,393 people applied to the part-time program at Georgetown, garnering the school the second spot on this list. Other Washington, D.C. schools that net a high number of part-time applications are George Washington University Law School, at No. 6 on this list, and American University Washington College of Law, at No. 7. The George Mason University School of Law, located in a Virginia suburb of Washington, comes in at third for number of part-time applications. 

[Explore the U.S. News Applying to Law School guide.] 

Application information factors into the rankings methodology for the U.S. News Best Law Schools. Acceptance rates, which are calculated using the total number of full- and part-time applications a school receives and the number of students admitted, accounts for 2.5 percent of the weighted formula used to calculate the law school rankings. (The part-time law specialty rankings, however, are based 50 percent on peer evaluations. The part-time J.D. rankings don't use a part-time program acceptance rate in the methodology.) 

Here are the 10 law schools that received the most applications to part-time J.D. programs in 2010, based on schools' self-reported data to U.S. News:

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Law School Compass to find full- and part-time application data for every school, salary information, and much more. 

U.S. News surveyed 190 fully accredited law schools for our 2010 survey of law programs. Schools self-reported a myriad of data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News 's data the most accurate and detailed collection of school facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Law Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data comes from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News 's rankings of Best Colleges or Best Graduate Schools.