Preliminary results of a 10-year study show that lawyers had among the lowest unemployment rates of all management and professional occupations last year, according to Cooley Law School officials.
According to data reported in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey, the national unemployment rate was 9.6 percent for all occupations, while the unemployment rate for lawyers was 1.5 percent.
Cooley officials say they decided to release the study in a series of separate reports in order to insert the nation’s most authoritative data into the public dialogue about the national legal employment picture.
Report One covers the national employment data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Report Two will cover the national employment data for recent law school graduates released by the National Association for Law Placement.
Report Three, according to school officials, will review the salary information available from these and other sources.
Cooley President and Dean Don LeDuc said the data belies the assertions made about legal employment and contradicts statements that law school should be avoided because there are no job opportunities.
“The facts overwhelmingly discredit these assertions,” he said. “Legal education is actually one of the best choices.”
He said the vast majority of management and professional occupations showed higher unemployment rates.
Many, he said, showed unemployment rates that were much higher, such as:
• Astronomers and physicists who had double the unemployment rate of lawyers;
• Computer software engineers and accountants, who were experiencing more than triple the lawyer rate;
• Environmental engineers, which statistics show had an unemployment four times higher.
Among the ten categories of management and professional occupations established by the Bureau, legal occupations had a combined unemployment rate of 2.7 percent, the second-lowest rate.
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