Today, the ABA released the 9-month employment data for the Class of 2012 (ABA Release, March 29).
More importantly, the ABA has taken a long-needed step towards transparency by establishing an Employment Summary Report website with
Gary Rosin
The National Law Journal Just released their annual Go-To Law Schools Report on hiring at firms in the NLJ 250 during 2010. The report the top 50 law schools, based on success in placing class of 2010 graduates in NLJ 250 firms. Two thing jumped out at me. First, big-firm placement rates dropped off quickly from the top school, University of Chicago Law School, with 58.97% of its class of 2010, to the 50th-ranked school, Washington and Lee University Law School, with 10.85%. Second, two schools outside the top-50 law schools in the 2010 US News rankings, but located in or near major metropolitan areas, landed in the top 50 in the Go-To rankings: Rutgers School of Law–Newark (Tier 2) and Howard University School of Law (Tier 3), which ranked 49th and 31st, respectively.
posted by Gary Rosin
In earlier posts, The Market for J.D.s and Law School Debt Loads, I talked about the bi-modal distribution of starting salaries for recent law graduates, and the problem of increasing student debt-loads. Over the last year, there have been increasing calls for greater transparency in law school reporting of the types of jobs, and salaries, of recent graduates. At its meeting on Saturday, February 12, 2011, the Young Lawyer’s Division (YLD) of the ABA adopted a resolution throwing the YLD’s support behind the Truth in Law School Education resolution. The introductory paragraph of the attached Report says it all:
It is incumbent upon the legal profession and law schools to provide each and every potential and current law student with information that will accurately reflect the employment and financial realities that they will face upon graduation from law school. The American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division (“ABA YLD”), as “the home for young lawyers,” believes that the Truth in Law School Education (“TILSE”) resolution is the first step towards achieving that goal. The ABA YLD strongly believes that there is a disconnect between law students’ perception of their employment prospects upon completion of their law school education and the reality of what law students will realistically achieve. Those entering our profession should have an accurate understanding of the employment opportunities and salaries available to recent law school graduates. There is a greater need for publicly-available, accessible facts for prospective law school students, so that these individuals are able to make a more informed decision regarding their future careers.
For more information, read Karen Sloan’s National Law Journal article, available on Law.com on February 15, 2011.
Hat tip, Tax Prof.
posted by Gary Rosin
In his article “Hungry for Jobs” (Inside Higher Ed ), Scott Jaschik notes a rash of blogs with comments by recent graduates about the dismal job market for recent J.D.s–and their discontent with law schools. This on the heels of the release of the NALP Class of 2009 report, which shows an overall employment rate of 88.3% and the usual bi-modal distribution of starting salaries:
According to data drawn from the Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools 2011, the distribution of the percent of graduates reported by law schools as employed varies from 66% to 100%:
The comments reported by Jaschik are particularly critical of employment rates at lower-tier law schools. As the following chart shows, the percent employed generally declines as a school’s LSAT median declines. That said, there is still wide variation, in both the top- and the bottom half of law schools by median LSAT ( the median of median LSATs is 157).
posted by Gary Rosin
So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star?
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011Many law students enter law school with dreams of getting a job with one of the major law firms, but what are their chances of doing that? The NALP Salary Distribution, Curve for the Class of 2009 suggests that about 25% of reported salaries fell in the $160,000 range. But only 19,513 members of that class reported salaries. Using data from the 2011 edition of the ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools (online version), those law schools granted 43,859 JDs in 2008-2009 academic year. The 2009 Salary Distribution Curve included information on only about 44% of the members of the Class of 2009. To what extent is there a selection bias in the NALP survey? To what extent are graduates who get jobs with big law firms and high salaries disproportionately likely to report their salaries?
There is increasing evidence that there is a large selection bias in the NALP salary surveys. First, as I discussed in The Market for J.D.s, the percentage of recent graduates employed varies widely among the law school, but generally falls as the median LSAT of a law school falls. Second, the recent report on Go-To Law Schools suggest that there may be a lot. As I discussed in Go To Law, that report lists the top 50 law schools from which the National Law Journal top 250 law firms drew first-year associates in the 2010 hiring season. According to that report, in 2009, the 50 Go-To law schools placed 30.3% of the Class of 2009 with NLJ-250 law firms, or about 4239 graduates (using the numbers for the Class of 2010), as compared to 4,878 persons (25% of the 19,513 persons included in NALP 2009 survey).
Second, if the sample included in the NALP 2009 survey represented the distribution of salaries for all 43,859 persons getting JDs from ABA-approved law schools in 2009, then about 10,965 persons in that class would have big-firm level salaries. Taking out the 4,239 graduates of the Go-To law schools, 6,726 of the 29,870 graduates of the remaining ABA-approved law schools, or about 22.5%, would have received jobs with big law firms. Yet the 5oth-ranked Go-To law school sent only 13.2% of its class to the NLJ-250 law firms in 2009 (10.57% in 2010).
Admittedly, these are back-of-the-envelope calculations. I don’t know the size of the 2009 classes of the 2009 Go-To law schools, so I’ve used the size of the 2010 classes. Most glaringly, different law schools were included in the top 50 in 2009 than were included in 2010. Also, I don’t know whether the proportion of graduates of Go-To law schools who got jobs with the NLJ-250 law firms that responded to the NALP salary survey was higher–or lower–than students who did not get jobs with the NLJ-250. That, of course is the point of those, including the ABA’s Young Lawyer’s Division (see Truth in Law School Education), who are calling for greater transparency in reporting job and salary information.
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