No one wants to admit it, but there’s a whiff of anxiety that the legal field is dumbing down.

The source of this angst? The steep decline in law school applicants. Not since 1973, when there were 53 fewer schools in this country, has first-year law student enrollment sunk this low. According to the American Bar Association, there were 37,924 new law students in the fall of 2014—a 28 percent drop from 2010, when 1L enrollment (52,488) hit a historic high.