(Reuters) - The next set of law school graduates might be full of future bankruptcy attorneys - or at least attorneys who have taken a bankruptcy class.

Enrollment in bankruptcy law courses is surging for fall 2020 at some schools, professors said, drastically up from last year, before the coronavirus pandemic and the economic turmoil that ensued had begun.

Columbia Law School professor Ronald Mann said in an email that there are more than a hundred students enrolled in his fall 2020 bankruptcy course, "three times as many as last year."

University of Michigan Law School bankruptcy law professor John Pottow has also seen an uptick, he said in an email.

"It seems like everyone and her sister is now interested in my dark corner of the legal universe!" Pottow wrote.

A background in bankruptcy law could come in handy for law school grads.

The second quarter of 2020 was a bull market for bankruptcy lawyers, with demand for their services up 6.2% year-over-year, according to a report from the Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor Index. Major companies such as J.C. Penney Co Inc, Chesapeake Energy Corp, LATAM Airlines and Hertz Global Holdings Inc have filed for bankruptcy because of the pandemic.

And since March several law firms, including Latham & Watkins, Greenberg Traurig and Boies Schiller Flexner, have hired restructuring attorneys.

Meanwhile the economic fallout from the pandemic dried up litigation and deal work. Dozens of large law firms implemented cost-cutting measures, including shortening summer associate programs and pushing back start dates for incoming associates. Nearly half of 167 law schools surveyed by the National Association for Law Placement in June said some of their 2020 graduates had job offers rescinded.

Still, not all students are jumping on the bankruptcy train. New York University School of Law professor David Yermack said in an email that he hasn't seen an uptick in enrollment for restructuring classes.

But it's "very hard to tell due to the unusual circumstances" because many students are taking time off and "NYU has a lot of Chinese students who can't reenter the U.S. and would have to take my course from 2:00 - 3:20 a.m. where they are located," he said.

Stanford Law School professor George Triantis said he isn't teaching bankruptcy law until the spring, so he won't know enrollment stats for months.

University of Chicago Law School professor Randal Picker, who teaches bankruptcy law, said students at that school haven't started enrolling yet.

"I assume that we will see an uptick," Picker said in an email. "But (I) don't know for real yet."