A decade ago, law school tuition appeared to be on an unstoppable ascent, much like Bitcoin's meteoric rise. However, with the total cost of attending top-tier law schools now topping out at around $325,000 for a three-year program, the tide seems to be turning. This plateau in tuition fees signals a crucial shift, possibly sparing future students from the daunting prospect of accruing half a million dollars in debt.

Professor Paul Campos, an authority on the law school tuition bubble, highlights a significant slowdown in tuition increases. Since 2015, there has been a mere 4 percent rise, a stark contrast to the previous decades' sharp increases. Data spanning from 1955 to 2025 shows that while past increases often reached double digits percentage-wise, the recent years have seen a significant deceleration.

This slowdown is not driven by law schools' sudden commitment to affordability or access. Instead, it's a consequence of declining demand. As tuition soared, accessibility diminished, cutting off many potential students and causing a ripple effect of shrinking enrollment numbers. This trend forced schools to offer more substantial financial aid, which in turn further highlighted the unaffordability crisis, creating a vicious cycle of high listed prices masked by frequent discounts.

The role of Biglaw firms in this ecosystem has also evolved. Previously seen as financial lifelines that justified high tuition through substantial salaries and bonuses, the reality of most lawyers' careers—short stints at big firms followed by precarious employment—has come to light. Furthermore, the advent of AI technology in legal practices threatens to reduce the number of high-paying jobs available to law graduates, intensifying scrutiny on the value proposition of expensive law degrees.

Moreover, the influence of law school rankings, such as those by U.S. News, which historically drove schools to increase spending (and thus tuition) to attract top students, has waned as these rankings begin to account for student debt levels. This has sparked a backlash from law schools, but the damage to the tuition bubble has already been done.

The broader implications of this shift are profound. The past decade has seen a notable number of law school closures and consolidations, trends likely to continue as the market adjusts to the new realities. Prospective law students are advised to tread carefully, watching for potential traps like "JD-lite" programs that promise much but deliver little at high costs.

As the law school landscape reconfigures itself, the legal education market may finally be correcting a longstanding excess. The bubble hasn't burst everywhere, but it's certainly stopped growing, driven by a market that's becoming increasingly skeptical of the return on investment offered by a traditional law school education.