Applications to study law at UK universities and colleges have fallen sharply, figures released today show - but not as sharply as applications for university places overall.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) said the number of people applying to start a law degree in the coming academic year has fallen by 4,113 compared with this time last year. The drop of 3.8% from 107,726 in 2011 to 103,613 in 2012 was greater than the 3.1% drop in applicants for medicine and dentistry. However, candidate numbers for non-European languages dropped 21.5%, technologies 17.8% and sciences combined with social sciences or arts 17.7%.

Overall, the number of applications for all disciplines fell by 8.7%.

Junior Lawyers Division chair Hekim Hannan said: 'Looking at the figures, and given the increase in tuition fees coupled with the tough economic times, students are shying away from non-vocational courses. Law, along with medicine, hasn’t suffered as badly as non-vocational courses, which is what we would expect.'

UCAS chief executive Mary Curnock Cook said that demand for higher education will continue to outstrip the number of places available in 2012. ‘Applications are already 50,000 ahead of the number of acceptances in 2011 and last year UCAS received over 100,000 further applications between January and the close of the cycle.’