Situation

For over 30 years, the University of La Verne College of Law has operated in Southern California, one of the most competitive law school markets in the nation, where 17 law schools are located within a 45-mile radius. In order to gain market share, the College of Law needed to achieve national ABA accreditation with the American Bar Association. To earn provisional ABA accreditation, the law school needed to increase its number of incoming full-time students, the quality of those students and the overall bar pass rate of its graduates.

Approach

To generate leads among qualified prospective students, increase the number of applications received and boost student enrollment, our agency reviewed significant research about the target market and competing Southern California law schools. To isolate the law school’s brand, a thorough brand discovery process was conducted. Those findings resulted in the creation of an integrated strategy to fine-tune the law school’s brand and key messages and subsequently generate brand awareness of the law school’s unique educational experience. The integrated strategy included a customized direct mail campaign driven by LSAT dates, advertising spots in print, radio and online, a search engine marketing campaign and an aggressive public relations campaign to generate support of the local, regional and legal communities.

Achievements

When our group began working with ULV College of Law, the law school reported 72 matriculating students and 414 applications for the 2002-2003 academic year. Since then, the integrated marketing campaign has generated a collective 206% increase in applications and a 139% increase in matriculants for the law school. More importantly, upon reporting these increases to the American Bar Association, the College of Law received positive site evaluations by the ABA, contributing to its receipt of provisional ABA accreditation in February 2006. Statistics from the 2006-2007 academic year revealed that the College of Law continues to increase its enrollment despite increased competition against the 193 other ABA-accredited law schools nationwide and a national trend of declining law school applications.