In this and subsequent posts, I will push back against certain aspects of this conventional wisdom. At the outset, however, I want to be very clear about what I am NOT arguing. I am not arguing that the current legal job market is great – it is not. I am also not arguing in defense of the status quo in legal education – as I’ve explained in prior posts (here, here, here, and here), I worry about many facets of legal education, not least the student debt problems caused by ever-increasing tuition.
In this post, I will argue that it is highly likely that more recent graduates throughout the country are getting law jobs than the conventional wisdom assumes. My argument will be based on data about what graduates from my school actually are doing now. In my next post, I will briefly discuss the claim that the poor job market is due to structural changes in the legal job market. [Update: the second post is here]. I will explain why I am skeptical that the structural changes in the legal job market are significantly different than those that have occurred in the past, and why I am therefore skeptical that the current anemic state of the legal job market is the result of structural, rather than economic, factors. In my third post, I will briefly discuss Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the legal job market, and will explain why caution must be used in interpreting this data in discussion of legal employment. [Update: the third post is here].
If you want to see the entire series of blog posts now, I have collected them in this document. The rest of the first post is below the fold.
As some readers may know, Widener has two law school campuses, one in Harrisburg, PA and one in Wilmington, DE. I’m on the Harrisburg faculty, and the study is of Harrisburg graduates. I chose to focus on Harrisburg exclusively because the Harrisburg class sizes are significantly smaller, making it easier to do as thorough a study as possible. Focusing on Harrisburg also makes the study more accurate because I know many of the alumni personally. I don’t have any reason to believe that the outcomes for our Wilmington campus would be substantially different, but I want to be clear that I have been looking exclusively at Harrisburg campus graduates.
The goal of my study was to find accurate employment data on each graduate. I worked on the study with research assistants and our faculty secretaries. We began with a list of the graduates from each class. We had some existing employment data, but we sought publicly-verifiable employment information for each person. The listings of lawyers admitted to practice maintained by state bar associations were especially helpful. As an example of how these sites work, you can go to the directory maintained by the Pennsylvania Bar Disciplinary Board and put in my name. You will be able to find basic information, including my current employer and phone number. At least two people independently searched for information for each graduate, and we followed up on any inconsistencies. If there was no publicly-available information for a particular graduate, we tried to contact that person individually. I’m sure that the results of our study are not perfect, but I am confident that we have developed a reasonably accurate snapshot of current employment for these alumni.
In the end, we were able to find solid job data on most of the graduates from each of these two classes. We couldn’t find solid data on 7.7% of the graduates. We hope to find data on these people as we progress. We included the missing people in our totals, so they are counted in the percentages that I report below. In other words, if we did not find solid data for a person, that person is effectively treated as unemployed in our percentages. I’d make an educated guess that at around half of these people are employed in good jobs, but we took a conservative approach and assumed unemployment unless we had good data that proved otherwise.
The following table summarizes the results of our preliminary study, using the categories used by NALP and the ABA. The corresponding nine-month data is provided for each class.
|
2010 – 9 month |
2010 – Current |
2011 – 9 month |
2011 – Current |
|
|
Bar Pass Required – Permanent |
58 (47.5%) |
99 (80.4%) |
58 (46.8%) |
92 (74.1%) |
|
Bar Pass Required – Non-Permanent |
11 (9.0%) |
0 (0.0%) |
2 (1.6%) |
2 (1.6%) |
|
JD Advantage |
10 (8.2%) |
8 (6.5%) |
18 (14.5%) |
8 (6.5%) |
|
Professional |
12 (9.8%) |
6 (4.9%) |
10 (8.0%) |
8 (6.5%) |
|
Non-Professional |
1 (0.8%) |
0 (0.0%) |
6 (4.8%) |
2 (1.6%) |
|
Employed – Undeterminable |
1 (0.8%) |
0 (0.0%) |
1 (0.8%) |
0 (0.0%) |
|
Graduate Study |
6 (4.9%) |
0 (0.0%) |
1 (0.8%) |
0 (0.0%) |
|
Unemployed |
16 (13.1%) |
1 (0.8%) |
21 (16.9%) |
2 (1.6%) |
|
Unknown/Unlocatable/Insufficient Information |
7 (5.7%) |
9 (7.3%) |
7 (5.4%) |
10 (8.1%) |
I should note that the 2010 Nine Month numbers reflect 122 graduates while the 2010 Current numbers reflect 123 graduates. The discrepancy is due to one student who finished her third year at our Delaware campus, leading to some confusion about where she should be counted. There were 124 graduates in the class of 2011.
I should also note that the current numbers include some jobs that could cause underemployment concerns. For example, the Bar Pass Required numbers include solo practitioners. I will provide a further breakdown of this data below, and talk further about underemployment issues. Before I do that, I first want to talk about the comparison between the study data and the nine-month data.
What Nine-Month Job Data Does, and Does Not, Tell Us
The data from my study is significantly different from the nine-month data for each class. This should not be surprising, because the two sets of numbers reflect different time periods. The nine-month survey reports employment nine months after graduation. My study is reporting employment now – almost three years after graduation for the class of 2010 and almost two years after graduation for the class of 2011.
It makes sense that the data taken later in time is more positive on employment than the nine-month data. Some people who don’t have jobs after nine months get jobs later. Indeed, the timing of the bar exam makes it likely that at least some students will get jobs more than nine months after graduation. A student who graduates in May might not get bar results until five months after graduation. Employers often wait for bar results to come out to hire new lawyers, and students sometimes don’t even start searching for jobs until after they find out they pass the bar. (For the record, this isn’t a good approach).
Some students fail the bar the first time. It should not be surprising that you can’t get a job as a lawyer without passing the bar. Roughly half of these students will pass on the second time, but will not be admitted to the bar until more than nine months after graduation. To illustrate this point, consider a jurisdiction with an 85% first time pass rate. 15% of graduates will fail the bar the first time. If 50% of these graduates pass the second time, then an additional 7.5% (50% of the 15% who failed the first time) of the graduates will be admitted to the bar almost a year after they graduate. In jurisdictions with lower first-time pass rates, the proportional increase in graduates able to practice over time will be even more pronounced.
As an aside, I note that many California schools dropped in this year’s U.S. News rankings. It may be that this drop is due to increased emphasis on nine month job data in the rankings. Because of California’s low bar pass rate, fewer graduates of California schools are admitted to the bar nine months after graduation than in most other jurisdictions. If, as I suggest, bar timing is contributing to lower job numbers, then California schools are being punished in the U.S. News rankings for California’s low bar pass rate. (For the record, like most legal professionals, I think that the U.S. News rankings are deeply flawed.).
I would also note that the distortion caused in the legal job market by bar exam timing was one of my major motivations in proposing that students be allowed to take the bar exam in the summer after their second year of law school. Regardless of the current state of the job market, students would benefit from being able to start work earlier if they had already passed the bar exam when they graduate from law school.
None of this is to say that nine-month numbers are not useful or important. They provide an important snapshot of graduate employment. It is perfectly reasonable for students comparing schools to look at nine-month data. It is also reasonable to look at changes in nine-month data over time to track changes in the legal job market over time.
It is not reasonable, however, to treat the nine-month numbers as the final word on employment for a particular class of graduates. Consider three types of claims that could be made about the nine-month data:
(1) The nine month data for schools around the country are lousy compared to prior years. Therefore there is at least some evidence that the legal job market is lousy as compared to prior years.
(2) School X consistently has better nine-month job numbers than School Y. Therefore, School X tends to have better job placement than School Y.
(3) The nine month data show that only X% of graduates of a particular class got legal jobs. Therefore, only X% of that class ever got legal jobs.
The first two claims are fair. The third claim is not, but claims of this form have become increasingly common in commentary on law schools. As a fairly innocuous example, take this recent post by Brian Tamanaha. In this post, Professor Tamanaha discusses schools with high student debt that list relatively low legal employment. In the post, he observes: “Making these extraordinary debt levels all the worse, at the majority of law schools on this list less than half the class obtained full time lawyer jobs.” It would be more accurate to add the words “within nine months of graduation” at the end of the sentence. I should note that I don’t think that this clarification would alter the core point that Professor Tamanaha is making in his post. [Update 5/1 - as discussed in the comments, using this post from Professor Tamanaha as an example wasn't particularly fair because he references nine-month outcomes elsewhere in the post. There are many other examples out there on the internet, and I should have picked another one.]
In other contexts, conflating nine-month job data with ultimate job performance might be more troubling. It is not at all unusual to see statements to the effect of “law schools are failing because only X% of graduates are getting legal jobs,” where X% is based on nine-month job data. The idea that a huge percentage of law school graduates are not getting jobs as lawyers comes up in places as varied as scamblogs to the editorial pages of the New York Times. Nine month data, however, simply does not tell the whole story of the employment outcomes for any particular graduating class. The timing of the bar exam is part of the story here. So is, I think, the economy. My anecdotal impression, which I think is backed up by the data from my study, was that many of my former students were getting good jobs, but it was taking some of them longer than it had in the past to get these jobs because of the poor economy. This phenomenon – job searches lasting longer in a poor economy – should not be surprising, at least to anyone who has tried to get a job in poor economic conditions. I graduated from college in 1991, in the middle of a very poor job market. I and many of my friends had a hard time getting jobs right out of school, especially compared to people who graduated five years later. We all got jobs eventually, and looking at the careers my college friends have had reinforces for me that it is a mistake to be unduly fixated on initial job outcomes in evaluating any higher educational program.
Taking a Closer Look at the Numbers
I have broken out my study data into a few additional categories, combining the numbers for the classes of 2010 and 2011:
Classes of 2010-11 Combined (N = 247)
Bar Pass Required (excluding solo and temp) N = 173 (70.0%)
Private firm: 91 (36.8%)
Private - In house: 12 (4.9%)
Judicial clerks: 25 (10.1%)
Prosecutors: 16 (6.4%)
Public Defenders/Legal Aid: 13 (5.3%)
Other Government: 16 (6.5%)
Bar Pass Required (including solo and temp) N = 193 (78.1%)
Solo: 18 (7.3%)
Private - temp: 2 (0.8%)
JD Advantage: N = 16 (6.5%)
Professional: N = 14 (5.7%)
Unemployed/Underemployed N = 5 (2.0%)
Cannot Locate/Insufficient Information N = 19 (7.7%)
Bar Pass Required (excluding solo and temp). These are what many people consider core legal jobs – people working in jobs that require a law license. Following convention, judicial clerks are included in this group even though in many circumstances bar passage is not required for a clerkship. I exclude solo practitioners and temporary positions from this number because concerns about underemployment can be raised about these categories. I will discuss these issues further below.
Private Firm. The vast majority of the graduates in this category are working in small firms. I would note two things about small firm work. First, most of my former students who are working in small firms are having a far better professional experience than I and my peers did in Biglaw. As just one example, I recently had coffee with a former student who is working in a small firm. He has had more courtroom experience – and significant experience at that – in one year of practice than most big firm associates have in six or seven years. Biglaw has its advantages, including higher salaries. But people shouldn’t reflexively knock small firm practice. Second, Kyle McEntee and Derek Tokaz of Law School Transparency raised an important point about the 2-10 attorney firm category – it might capture “a group of recent graduates [who] band together to start their own firm.” (p. 321). If we have concerns about graduates entering solo practice, we might have concerns about this category of graduates. It appears that only a couple of the graduates counted in my study would fit this description – recent graduates who grouped together with other junior attorneys to start their own firm.
Private – In-house. These positions are reasonably varied. The one thing that jumped out at me was the relatively large percentage of people in this category who are working for real estate title companies. My impression is that in the not-so-distant past, real estate title work was often done by attorneys at law firms. More recently, title work has shifted to specialist title companies. This may be an instance of the type of structural shift in the legal job market that Bill Henderson has discussed in various contexts. I will discuss structural changes in the job market in my next post.
Judicial Clerks. Some graduates who had judicial clerkships right out of law school have now moved on to other jobs. I don’t have comparative data to know for sure whether the number of students still in clerkships is unusually high. My anecdotal impression is that the number of people still in clerkships is fairly standard. Many clerkships on both the state and federal level last one or two years. Many others, however, last longer. It is not at all unusual in Pennsylvania for state court clerkships to last for several years. On both the state and federal levels, some clerk positions are permanent or quasi-permanent. My impression is that permanent clerkships are more common on the state level than the federal level. There also may be a good amount of jurisdictional variation on clerkship length. For example, my understanding is that all or most New Jersey state court clerkships are one year in length. [Update 5/1 - in response to the first comment below, I wanted to clarify that I didn't mean to suggest that many of our graduates get Federal clerkships - my reference to Federal clerkships was intended to be a general comment on clerkship duration. The 25 clerks in the study break down as follows: state trial court - 19; state intermediate appellate court - 3; state Supreme Court - 2; Federal District Court - 1].
Prosecutors/Public Defenders/Legal Aid. These are very good entry-level legal jobs. They don’t pay as much as firm work, but they provide excellent experience. They provide useful illustrations of why it is wrong to fixate on starting salaries. A person with three years of experience as a prosecutor or public defender typically can move to significantly higher-paying job if she chooses to do so.
Other Government. Most of the alumni in this category work for the Pennsylvania state government. As you might expect for a law school located in a state capital, Widener-Harrisburg tends to have a good number of graduates take positions with the state government. The percentages of graduates working for the state from the classes of 2010 and 2011 strike me as unusually low. A state hiring freeze significantly slowed state hiring in the last few years, and in better economic times I would expect these percentages to be higher.
Solo. Solo practice positions are tricky to evaluate. I generally agree with the view that most (but not all) people who become solos right out of law school would have preferred to spend at least a couple of years getting experience working for someone else. I know some former students who always wanted to go into solo practice – some of these people had extensive experience as small-firm paralegals that put them in a good position to open their own firm. But my impression is that these people are a minority, and that most people who start as solos do so due to a lack of other options. I therefore think it is appropriate to view solo practice, on the whole, as a less desirable employment outcome for lawyers fresh out of law school. This said, I don’t think that people who start out as solos are doomed to failure. The students who I keep in touch with who started as solos tend to be making a pretty good go of it, and their practices unsurprisingly improve over time.
Private-Temp. The two alumni in this category are both working for agencies doing document review projects.
JD Advantage. This category is highly variable, both in terms of the kind of work involved and the desirability of the positions. Here are specifics on some of the jobs in this category. Two students from each class (1.6%) are doing regulatory compliance work. I would expect this percentage to go up over time, as some attorneys move from private practice into compliance work. At least when I was working in Biglaw, it was fairly common for people to move into compliance positions after a few years of experience as an associate. Two members of the class of 2010 (0.8% of the combined classes) are doing government relations/lobbying work. One person from each class is working in legal recruiting. One graduate is working in a permanent position in our admissions office (the only “law school funded” job for the combined classes). One graduate is working as a hearing officer for the federal government. Three graduates are working in jobs titled “Law Clerk” or “paralegal”. Even these jobs vary widely – one is a law clerk position in a government agency with a history of hiring attorneys through its law clerk positions; another appears to be a fairly standard paralegal position at a law firm.
Professional. Like the JD advantage category, the Professional category is highly variable. It includes what are probably the two highest salaried graduates in the study – graduates who did other degrees after receiving their JDs (one an LLM in tax, the other an MBA) and who are now working at financial firms. One graduate is an accountant. Another is a former evening student working for the same employer she had in law school (an education NGO). Two graduates are working in policy positions for political groups. One is an organizer for an animal rights group, and another is a researcher for a prisoner’s rights NGO. Another is working for BarBri in what, as near as I can tell, is more of a professional position than a JD Advantage position. One graduate is a billing manager for a private company, and another is working at an employee benefits firm. On the government front, one is working as a regional manager for a U.S. Senator, one is in a contracting position, and another is in a policy position for a state government agency. Some of these jobs are on the underemployed end of the spectrum. Many of the others are great jobs.
Some of the jobs in the Professional category might be fairly considered JD Advantage jobs. The line between the two categories is very blurry. Where there was ambiguity, I went with my instinct but tried to err on the side of putting graduates in the Professional category. Many people before have noted the wide range of jobs that fall into the JD Advantage and the Professional categories. Some of these jobs are outstanding, and some are not so great. I have two overall impressions from looking at this data set. First, the majority of the jobs in both of these categories are good jobs, and are in areas where it is not surprising to see law graduates. Second, it seems to me that the Professional jobs are, as a whole, about as desirable as the JD Advantage jobs.
Unemployed/Underemployed. I was only able to identify five graduates who are either unemployed or working in non-professional jobs. Two of these have not yet passed the bar. The one graduate who did pass the bar and is currently unemployed had an attorney job at one point, and has had a remarkable string of bad luck on the job market. I’ve also included a fourth graduate in this category who is working as an unpaid intern in public relations, as part of an effort to get into that industry. I thought that this fit better as Underemployed than Professional. The fifth graduate in this category had been doing some work as an attorney, but now is substitute teaching on an infrequent enough basis that I put this person in Underemployed rather than Professional.
Can’t Locate/Insufficient Information. For the bulk of the graduates in this category, I simply either can’t locate the person or can’t find reliable current job information for them. One person in this category had been in a paid position with the Obama campaign, but I haven’t been able to find out what this person is doing now.
In my next post, I will discuss the argument that the legal job market is undergoing structural change. For those who don't want to wait for the subsequent posts, the whole series is available here.
Update 5/1, 2:00 EDT: In the comments, Professor Tamanaha and others mentioned that it would be useful to have some salary data. In this update, I will do what I can to provide some information about salaries. Before I get to that, I want to mention a few caveats. First, I think it is wrong as a general matter to focus on entry level salaries. When I graduated from Colgate University in 1991, I made $16,500 in an entry-level job at MacMillan Publishing in New York City. I don’t think anyone would try to value my undergraduate education by looking at that salary. Second, I think it is important to consider variations in cost of living. A given salary goes a lot farther in Harrisburg, PA than in New York City. It also goes a lot farther in a rural county in Central PA than it would in Harrisburg. My wife and I both took more than 50% pay cuts when we moved from NYC to Harrisburg, but our financial situation is better here because of the difference in cost of living. I don’t think you can generalize and say that a law graduate needs to make $X per year to service $Y amount of debt. There is too much variation in cost of living throughout the United States to allow us to paint with that broad a brush. I should add that not all Widener-Harrisburg graduates live in low cost of living areas – some, for example, go to New York, Philadelphia, or D.C.
That said, here are some thoughts on salaries for the people included in the study. I will start with the one group I have reliable salary data for – people working for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The pay scale for attorneys working for the state is available on-line. The low-end entry-level salary for an Attorney 1 is $48,822. The rest of the table shows the progression of salary ranges for more senior grades. Most entry-level attorneys move from Attorney 1 to Attorney 2 after just a couple of years. The rest of the grade promotions typically take significantly longer. Note also the wide range of salaries within each grade. It is also relevant that people working for the state qualify for the Federal Public Service Employees loan forgiveness program. Biglaw folks take note of the heading of the table – these salaries are based on a 37.5 hour work week, and a lot of Commonwealth attorneys actually work those hours.
I don’t have good salary data for other job categories. Based on anecdotes from former students and conversations with some colleagues, including our director of career development, I can make some educated guesses. I can’t emphasize enough that these are JUST GUESSES, though I think they are in the right ballpark. As I noted in the post, most of the people in the study working in private practice are at small firms. My guess is that entry level salaries at that kind of firm in the Harrisburg area are around $50,000 per year, though I think there is a lot of variation. Some could be as low as $35,000 per year, and some could be as high as $80,000 per year. There are also some graduates included in the study who are working at larger firms, and who have higher starting salaries. For in-house jobs, the sample size is lower, and these numbers are even more of a guess, but I think they would start in the $50,000 - $60,000 range. It is likely that the starting salaries are significantly lower at, say, small title companies, than they would be at one of the area’s larger employers, such as Hershey or Rite Aid. State judicial clerk salaries vary by region because they are county, not state, jobs. In a very rural area of Pennsylvania, I would not be surprised if starting judicial clerk salaries were around $32,000. In the Harrisburg area, I think that they are in the $38,000 to $45,000 range. Entry-level prosecutor salaries also vary throughout the state, probably in a range from the low $30,000s to around $45,000. Public defender and legal aid jobs probably start in the $35,000 range.
I’d repeat again that these are starting salaries. I understand that people need to make their loan payments after they graduate, and that there are some negative consequences of using some of the flexible-repayment plans that are available. Personally, I think that it is more important to focus on skill development and future marketability when thinking about entry-level jobs than it is to focus on entry-level salary. I worry a lot less about someone going on a flexible-repayment plan if they are, say, working as an assistant district attorney than if they are, say, working as a document review attorney, because I am confident that the ADA will have good employment options later. I’d like to try to get data on typical salaries for lawyers five years out of law school, though I’m not sure how to go about it methodologically. My impression is that it isn’t that hard to get to the $75,000-$90,000 range fairly quickly in private practice in this area, but I have no hard data at all to back that up. Finally, I’d repeat my point about cost of living. You can get a really nice house in this area for $300,000.
Comment Policy for this thread: I welcome pushback and criticism. I have a pretty thick skin. But please try to keep your comments civilized, and try to focus on the actual content of this post. I will delete comments that are just empty name calling. I will also delete any comment where it is clear that the comment author has not read this entire post.
Brandon, your point about whether this is generalizable is well taken. My instinct is that it is, but that is just instinct. One thing that might make Widener-Harrisburg different from other schools is that we are a strong regional player without a lot of local competition. Penn State is the only other law school with a major presence in the region. Larger urban areas would have more legal jobs, but would also have more competition between schools. That's only speculation, though. It would be great if other schools could do similar studies.
Anon, a couple of points on your question. First, the bar websites were just examples of sources of data we used. We would also look to other sources, including law firm websites. Google searches revealed a lot. We also looked on LinkedIn for information on people. If the information looked solid, for example if someone was listed as an associate on a firm website, we did not follow up individually. Second, I have been tinkering with this project for almost two years, and had done a good amount of research on the class of 2010 more than a year ago. The employment information for most people stayed stable, with the exception of some people who left judicial clerkships. Even if I had information from a prior search, at least two other people independently searched for data on each person for the current snapshot in time that I report on above. If there were discrepancies or questions, we tried to resolve them. I also requested follow up on anything that jumped out at me as odd. Finally, I know a lot of the class of 2011 personally. I don't know as many of the class of 2010 because I missed their first year when I was visiting at another school. I make no claim that the data is perfect, but I think it is pretty robust. I'd repeat my point made above in response to Brandon - more data from other schools would be great.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 01, 2013 at 09:08 PM
Would be interesting to follow up on what happened in the interim- between taking the bar and finding permanent, bar passage required employment. Presumably these folks had to eat for six months. Were they taking on CC debt? What accounts for the large increase? Did they convert part time or short term gigs to full time ones? How did students who were entirely unemployed fare versus temp or part-time workers?
Posted by: BoredJD | May 02, 2013 at 01:39 AM
BoredJD - that is an interesting question. I'll think about how to get at it. I think there are two issues. (1) How long, exactly, did it take people to land their permanent job if they were not employed after 9 months. 10 months after graduation? 22 months after graduation? My instinct is that the 10-15 month window is where most of them got their jobs, but it would be interesting to know for sure. (2) What did people do between graduation and getting a permanent job? This would be interesting to know even for people who got their job within 9 months, at least the subset who didn't start a job right after the bar exam. It is relevant to one of my pet issues, the second-year summer bar exam, because one of the key reasons for that proposal is to minimize the opportunity cost of waiting after graduation for employment.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 02, 2013 at 08:57 AM
I'm not sure how much this matters, really. Average debt for 91% of Widener grads is %24123,071, meaning a minimum monthly payment of %241,416.31, assuming no interest accrued between graduation and finding a job. Sustaining that kind of payments would require a salary much higher than the ones you're quoting. And your closing line about owning a %24300,000 home on that kind of salary and with that kind of debt is kind of ludicrous, frankly.
Posted by: Plonk | May 02, 2013 at 09:58 AM
Something changed my dollar signs. Oh well. Point is, law remains a bad gamble for most students without substantial reforms to decrease its cost.
Posted by: Plonk | May 02, 2013 at 10:06 AM
Plonk, as I've said many times, I agree with the worry about the debt. I don't think you are engaging in my point about entry level salaries. Yes, people might have to use one of the flexible repayment options short term. As I said in the post, I don't worry about that as much if they are developing their skills and future marketability. The reference to homes was just an illustration about cost of living. And, FWIW, a lot of my former students who I keep in touch with are buying homes. I realize that it might be the subset that has lower debt.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 02, 2013 at 10:14 AM
One further point on entry level jobs and increasing salaries. Your supposition seems to be that even if a grad takes a low-paying "small law" job, they are gaining valuable skills that will exponentially increase their salaries over time. The problem with that formulation is that you need to take into account small-law salary structures. It would be nice to think that somebody starting at 40 or 45K is going to someday elevate into the high salaries needed to adequately service debt. It's unclear if small law salaries can be charted on an upward trajectory. will some grads eventually make a nice salary of say 150 or 200K? yes some will and some will make even more - but the question is where do the majority top out? something tells me that many will hit a plateau and not rise much above it over the course of their careers. as someone who worked in biglaw, you know that these folks cannot lateral there and get the huge salary. (unless they have a portable book of business) you are well aware that the legal employment hierarchy is on a track - once you put onto that track it is hard to get off (excpetions would be a DA or US attorney who laterals over into biglaw) but if you are private sector small law - the options are limited
Posted by: Tyler | May 02, 2013 at 10:56 AM
Tyler, I don't think that small law salaries increase exponentially over time. As I said in the post, I don't think it is hard to get to the $75,000 - $90,000 range in small law in the Harrisburg area. Even if it tops out there, I think people can service the debt. Not to say at all that this is ideal. Less debt is certainly better.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 02, 2013 at 11:33 AM
In my experience (admittedly at a school where most students are employed before graduation) there was a three to four month period where students took the bar and then went on a bar trip. If they could not get an advance from their firm, they took a high-interest bar loan of between 5-10K to cover expenses during that period.
I'd suspect many jobless returned home to live with family, or returned to pre-law school temp or part-time work, maybe getting a job in their local area.
As for the loans, there is a grace period for six months after graduation, although some of the loans still accrue interest during that time. For those with permanent employment, that happens to be a reasonable amount of time after the beginning of permanent employment to begin making payments (after a security deposit, first+last month's rent, and other relocation expenses). I'd think (hope) that students who don't have a permanent position go on IBR immediately after that. But IBR participation rates are low, and many students I talk to offline do not even know about the program.
Posted by: BoredJD | May 02, 2013 at 11:35 AM
Given the glut of lawyers, I would be genuinely astonished if $75-$90k is "not that hard" to get in Central Pennsylvania.
No matter, assuming that these $90k jobs are plentiful, is that salary sufficient to service $150,000 in educational debt?
Even worse, if it takes X number of years to acquire the skills necessary to get these jobs, what does that initial $150k look like after interest for those X years? $200k? $250k?
Even staying the same, I am skeptical that even a $90k salary leaves enough for the $150k debtor to save for other life events, such as a house, or a car, or a child? For retirement?
Posted by: Stan | May 02, 2013 at 01:03 PM
Stan made my point better than I did by factoring in the accrued interest on loans over time. when you speak about servicing debt, your assumptions leave out the need to have money left over for the simple trappings of a middle class life (i.e. homeownership, vehicles) - moreover, even at the salaries you mentioned, it's entirely possible that a bank could determine that a person's debt to income ratio is too high, even if you are currently "servicing" the debt
again, real data on the salary structure in a given metro area is important - and even those numbers are skewed because the high earners are more likely to report to schools; and BLS numbers are skewed by the high earning biglaw partners and PI guys who hit some jackpots
Posted by: Tyler | May 02, 2013 at 03:49 PM
Ben, I agree with a number of your commenters that there is a lot we don't know about what is happening to recent law graduates, especially in that period after the nine-month cutoff, and that your work is a valuable step towards filling that void. I would, however, caution any reader to take the broader view advocated by Brian and his very articulate student. The fact that some of this is better news than prevailing information with only a nine-month horizon might have led us to believe does not mean that it is good news. Nor does it even remotely suggest that anything is improving. Leaving aside a few quibbles I have with your counting, at least one in four of your class of 2011 has been unable to find any law job after two full years. The fact that others remained unemployed or underemployed for a year or more before getting a job is almost as distressing.
We all need to know a lot more about how career trajectories are changing in the so-called New Normal. But the fact that more graduates than we might have imagined may not spend their entire adult lives in indentured servitude is hardly reason to break out the champagne. I'm not suggesting that you are popping the cork yourself, Ben; but beware those who might misinterpret.
Congratulations on some really important contributions.
Bernie Burk
Posted by: Bernie Burk | May 02, 2013 at 06:06 PM
As a straight-to-solo law grad two years after graduation and 18 months after bar admission, I barely survive from client to client, and I live with my in-laws! I came from a mid-T1 school in New York City, and I know of only one person from my class and the class after me to have a full-time legal job, and she graduated at the top of the class and had a family connection. Also, her family is rich.
I know of no one from the generation of lawyers just before me, i.e. those 10 years out of law school, who make $90K, even in the high-salaried NYC area! Making that much money just is not common outside of big law unless you own a successful boutique-firm (usually when a group of solos band together servicing a niche area).
So, I find many of the assumptions in this post problematic.
Posted by: Adam B | May 02, 2013 at 07:57 PM
Bernie, thanks. Two questions for you. (1) I'm curious about your quibbles on categories. I found that process hard. (2) Why do you dismiss all of the JD preferred and professional jobs? Some of them aren't great, but some of them are really good.
Adam, I think the assumptions are solid, but they are just assumptions. Better data is needed.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 02, 2013 at 09:13 PM
Here's some more anecdotal criticism...I am in your neck of the woods. I personally know more than a dozen recent Widener grads from your campus who have struggle to find full-time employment and have suffered through long bouts of unemployment or employment in non-professional fields.
Your info fails to address whether the salary of graduates is sufficient to meet their student loan debt. Moreover, how do you define a "good job"?
Posted by: anon | May 02, 2013 at 10:44 PM
Anon, your anecdotes are consistent with the data in my post. Yes, it is taking people a long time to get jobs. Yes, that sucks. I think that I am clear in my post that I am NOT saying "don't worry, everything is okay here." Things are not as much of a disaster as the 9 month data alone suggest, but they are not good.
Good question on how to define a "good" job. I don't have a good answer. I know that there are some things that I don't consider good. It does not excite me to see a law grad working as a paralegal, for example.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 03, 2013 at 08:04 AM
Barros - You say your assumptions are solid because you feel like it?
Ask any of us that are in the thick of it -- excluding the rich kids who graduated in the top 10% of a top 10 schools -- and we will tell you the truth: there are few recent graduates in career positions and even past graduates from the early 2000s are not doing very well.
If you want to use a dowsing rod, you can always convince yourself that you're headed in the right direction. Don't mind those of us that actually keep up with this stuff on a daily basis, especially if we prove your self-serving study wrong.
Posted by: Adam B | May 03, 2013 at 08:20 AM
Adam, my data and my assumptions are based on my experience in my area. I talk a lot with former students. Some are doing well, some are not. The data speaks for itself. I've been clear about when I'm talking about data and when I'm talking about assumptions. I've made no statements whatsoever about your area, because I have no personal knowledge about it.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 03, 2013 at 08:57 AM
On the one hand, you claim not be saying "don't worry, everything is okay here." On the other hand, pretty much every "assumption" you make seems to be one intended to make the situation appear as rosy as possible. Your motives seem to be showing through, as much as you try to disclaim them.
Posted by: LTR | May 03, 2013 at 11:03 AM
LTR, which assumptions are you talking about? Be specific. What evidence would you point to in support of your position?
Having my integrity questioned in an anonymous Internet comment is not even on my list of things to care about in life. I am, however, interested in getting the facts right.
Posted by: Ben Barros | May 03, 2013 at 11:23 AM