If Alaska were to fund a law school for its citizens, it would be a costly project. Alaska would want to attract students by getting accreditation from the American Bar Association (ABA), which ranks schools and provides members with career and professional benefits and opportunities. ABA standards require the law school to have a professional library. John Sebert, an ABA consultant, estimates the cost of a legitimate library to be between $1.7 and $4.5 million. Besides this, the building of the school and library, according to the Institute of Social and Economic Research, would be about $30 to $40 million, and the costs of professional faculty salaries would be around $100,000 a year each. The state would also have to set aside money for operating costs and student financial aid. Because of the expensive costs of a law school, Alaska would need a demand for lawyers and law students in order to justify building the school.
Bar examinations are tests lawyers must continually take to prove they are qualified to practice law. Bar examination data in Alaska can help determine how many lawyers there are in Alaska and whether the number is increasing or decreasing. According to the Institute of Social and Economic Research, between 1998 and 2003 there were about five retiring lawyers per year. Because of few job openings, the number of new Alaskan Bar exam takers has been declining since the mid 1980s. In addition to this, the Alaska Department of Labor's forecast for lawyer demand in 2010 was limited. Because the demand for lawyers in Alaska in not increasing, and many job openings for new lawyers will come from retiring lawyers, Alaska will most likely not be opening a law school for supply and demand reasons.
It has been estimated by the Institute of Social and Economic Research that it would take about 250 full time students to support a law school that would meet the requirements of the American Bar Association and allow students to graduate within the standard three years. The number of Alaskans who took the LSAT, a required exam to get into law school, from 1997 to 2003 was mostly below 100 students. This is not nearly enough students for the estimated minimum cost of a law school. However, this does not take into account how many students would be interested in law school if there was a local law school available to them.
In the Fall of 2002, data from the Institute of Social and Economic Research shows that 64.8 percent of Alaskan graduate students went to school part time. With this information it can be argued that an Alaskan law school could be supported by both the full time students and the part time students. The argument against this is that part time students would require more college staff to meet the needs of different schedules.