The recently-released NALP report on hiring of the law-school Class of 2010 is not good news for law students--or for law schools. Julie Triedman has a nice comment on this on the The Am Law Daily: NALP Report: Law Grad Hiring Reaches Lowest Levels Since 1996. Year-over-year employment is flat: about the same number of hires for Class of 2009 as for Class of 2010. But, with the number law schools increasing, the employment rate fell. But this is not new. As I put it in my post on Law by the Numbers, Flat Demand and More Law Schools:
Flat Demand + More Law Schools = Trouble
Of course, this is just overall employment. As widely reported (see Karen Sloan's article, Law school sued over 'false' employment statistics), a graduate of Thomas Jefferson School of Law has sued that school for fraud, claiming that the overall employment numbers are materially misleading. As Ms. Triedman notes, BigLaw hiring has been down since 2008, which means that
fewer graduates are entering private practice. For the past 30 years, 55 to 58 percent of new law graduates pursued private practice within nine months of graduation.... This past year, only a slight majority--50.9 percent--did so. (emphasis added).
As I suggested in So You Want to be a Rock 'n Roll Star? (Law by the Numbers), the NALP's annual salary distribution charts, such as the one for 2009, are not a reliable guide to law graduate salaries overall. The chances of getting a BigLaw job are much lower for most law students, especially those attending schools not in what the National Law Journal calls the top 50 "Go To" schools. Probably no fraud here; graduates are more likely to report their salaries if they are getting a good salary.
Something to think about if you're considering taking on an additional $120,000 in debt to get a JD degree.
Update: The ABA Journal website also has an article on another aspect of this: Debra Cassens Weiss, A Record Low for 2010 Law Grads: Only 68% Have Jobs Requiring Bar Passage. Perhaps the other 32% became more employable with the JD, even if the job did not require it.
But that was 201o, hasn't hiring picked up? While there have been some signs of life in BigLaw, other economic signs point to at least a plateau in the recovery from the Great Recession, if not a possible "double dip." Consider the June 3, 2011 jobs report. The CNBC.com headline is only the good news: Paltry New Job Growth of 54,000 Sends Rate to 9.1%. In any event, acctroding to Weiss:
The job outlook is unlikely to improve for 2011 grads since legal employment tends to continue to decline in the years after a recession, [NALP Executive Director] Leipold says.
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