Employment data for the Class of 2015 is out, and analysts are saying it’s “sobering,” “a cautionary tale,” and it’s sending “mixed signals.
The good news is that full-time, long-term jobs that either require bar passage or are J.D. advantage positions inched up to 70.1 percent from 69 percent for the Class of 2014.
But, the number of positions dropped. Both law firms and government employers hired 8.8 percent fewer graduates, and business and industry positions dropped 12.9 percent.
That is largely due to fewer graduates. There were 39,984 Juris Doctor graduates in the class of 2015, 3,848 fewer than the year before, or 8.8 percent less.
“For those thinking that the recent news about the improving situation with respect to applicants to law school is the beginning of an upward trend that will gradually return law schools to first-year class sizes in the 45,000 to 46,000 range, this employment outcomes data provides a cautionary tale,” wrote Jerry Organ in The Legal Whiteboard.
Deborah J. Merritt came to a similar conclusion on the Law School Café blog.
“Smaller classes merely kept pace with a contracting job market,” she wrote.
The percentage of unemployed graduates seeking jobs declined slightly to 9.7 percent from 9.8 percent for the 2014 cohort. Some observers had expected a much bigger drop, given the smaller class size.
The American Bar Association tracks employment data for graduates 10 months after they leave campus. Accredited schools report their statistics to the ABA.
Recent changes in the definition and reporting of law-school funded positions is causing discrepancies in this year’s data.
Organ’s analysis shows full-time law school funded-positions, both long-term and short-term, declined by about 33 percent from the Class of 2014 to 2015.
“With the change in reporting framework and definition, some law schools may have concluded that further investment in law-school-funded positions was not justifiable,” Organ wrote.