According to a recent surgey by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), the overall employment rate for new law school graduates is, at 85.6 percent, the lowest it has been since 1994, when the rate stood at 84.7 percent.
In addition to an overall employment rate that fell two percentage points from that for the previous class, and that has dropped each year since 2008, the class of 2011 employment figures reveal a job market with many underlying structural weaknesses.
The employment profile for this class also marks a continued interruption of employment patterns for new law school graduates that had, prior to 2010, been undisturbed for decades.
The NALP “Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2011” measures the employment rate of graduates as of February 15, 2012, or nine months after a typical May graduation. Analyses of these data reveal an employment rate that has fallen more than six percentage points since reaching a 23-year high of 91.9 percent in 2007 and marks the lowest employment rate since the aftermath of the last significant recession to affect the U.S. legal economy.
The class of 1994 was the last class with an employment rate lower than that for the class of 2011, and since 1985 there have only been three classes with an overall employment rate below 85.6 percent. All of those occurred in the aftermath of the 1990-1991 recession: 83.5 percent for 1992, 83.4 percent for 1993, and 84.7 percent for 1994.
“For members of the class of 2011, caught as they were in the worst of the recession ... the entry-level job market can only be described as brutal,” said James Leipold, NALP executive director. “When this class took their LSATs and applied for law school there were no signs that the legal economic boom was showing any signs of slowing, and yet by the time they graduated they faced what was arguably the worst entry-level legal employment market in more than 30 years.”
Low as it is, the overall employment rate of 85.6 percent of graduates for whom employment status was known actually conceals “a number of negative trends in the job market that were first apparent for the class of 2009 but have since become more prominent,” he said.
For instance, of those graduates for whom employment was known, only 65.4 percent obtained a job for which bar passage is required.
This figure has fallen over 9 percentage points just since 2008 — when it was 74.7 percent — and is the lowest percentage NALP has ever measured.
Conversely, an additional 12.5 percent obtained jobs for which a JD provides an advantage in obtaining the job, or may even be required, but for which bar passage is not required.
This compares with 10.7 percent for the class of 2010 and is the highest since NALP began comparable tracking in 2001. The percentage of graduates employed in other capacities was 7.2 percent.
The percentage of jobs reported as part-time stood at almost 12 percent, up from about 11 percent in 2009 and 2010, and in contrast to 6.5 percent for 2008 and about 5 percent in the years immediately prior to that.
Almost 7 percent of jobs were both temporary (defined as lasting less than a year) and part-time.
As was the case in 2010, 3 percent of 2011 graduates were continuing their academic studies full-time, leaving 12.1 percent who were neither working nor continuing their studies as of Feb.15.
Other key findings include:
• Not quite half (49.5 percent) of employed graduates obtained a job in private practice, a drop from 50.9 percent for the class of 2010, which in turn was a full 5 percentage point decline from 2009.
• Employment in business was 18.1 percent, the highest that NALP has measured, and up from 15.1 percent for the class of 2010. About 29 percent of these jobs were reported as requiring bar passage, and about 37 percent were reported as jobs for which a JD was an advantage.
“I am often asked if there are signs that the entry-level job market is recovering,” noted Leipold. “Absent another significant national or international economic setback, I would expect to see some aspects of the employment profile for the next two classes begin to inch up, though there is nothing to indicate a rapid recovery or a likely return to pre-recession employment levels any time in the near future.”
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