Last Year’s Law Grads Faced Toughest Job Market in 15 Years

NALP  released its Employment Report and Salary Survey for the law school class of 2010.  Nine months after graduation, the employment rate stood at 87.6%, the lowest since 1996.  Several other disturbing trends emerged in the survey.   Only 68% of those graduates who got jobs obtained positions that require bar passage, the lowest percentage ever since the NALP began collecting data.   The survey notes the interruption of employment patterns for new law grads that were undisturbed for decades.  The employment rate has fallen more than four percentage points since the recent 20-year high point of 91.9% reported in 2007.

NALP Executive Director  James Leipold observed that, "The  tail of the 'Great Recession' is long and there are few bright spots in the employment profile for the Class of 2010.... Most of the structural weaknesses in the job market faced by the Class of 2009 intensified for the Class of 2010, and new high- and low-water statistical marks have been set. And, in most cases, the changes that have occurred over two years' time, from 2008 to 2010, are the most dramatic."

Other significant findings reported by the NALP in "Jobs & JDs: Employment and Salaries of New Law School Graduates-Class of 2010:

• A bare majority of employed graduates obtained a job in private practice. At 50.9%, this percentage dropped a full 5 percentage points from 2009 and is thus a considerable contrast to the previous 17 years, when the percentages ranged from 55-58%.
• Employment in business was 15.1%, the highest that NALP has measured. The percentage of jobs in business had been in the 10-14% range for most of the previous two decades, except in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it dipped below 10%. About 32% of these jobs were reported as requiring bar passage, and about 29% were reported as JD preferred. Just over 8% of these business jobs represent graduates working for agencies that place individuals in temporary legal, law clerk, or paralegal jobs, similar to the Class of 2009 and down from just over 11% for the Class of 2008.

Leipold noted that the worst impacts from recessions traditionally hit the legal profession several years after the nation's economy feels the pain, noting that "there is likely more bad news to come...we can expect that the overall employment rate for new law school graduates will continue to be stagnant or decline further for the Class of 2011, with the curve probably not trending upward before the employment statistics become available for the Class of 2012." 

To read the complete survey and findings,  follow this link.

Source:

NALP

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