The Class of 2024 just made history. New data from the National Association for Law Placement shows law graduate employment hit a record 93.4%, with salaries climbing to a $95,000 median — shattering previous highs and beating industry expectations in nearly every category.
This is an 0.8 percentage point increase over the previous year, according to NALP’s upcoming annual report, “Jobs & JDs: Employment and Salaries of New Law School Graduates, Class of 2024.”
The national median salary for the Class of 2024 also reached a record high of $95,000, up 5.6% compared to the median of $90,000 for the previous class.
The new data shows that this graduating class defied widespread legal industry predictions — breaking numerous employment records set just one year earlier by the Class of 2023.
Nikia Gray, executive director of NALP, said when this class enrolled in 2021, many in the industry including NALP issued warnings about how its larger size would affect the entry-level employment market.
“In the end, it turned out to be over 3,700 additional jobs they needed to source compared to the Class of 2023 but the 2024 graduates — and the NALP community — met that challenge, resulting in the highest overall employment rate as well as the highest employment rate in bar admission required jobs NALP has ever recorded,” Gray said. “And with only 6.8% of those employed continuing to look for other positions, all signs point to graduates being satisfied with the jobs they were able to obtain.”
Additional highlights
The unemployment rate, which includes both graduates seeking and not seeking employment, was just 5.1%, a new all-time low.
The percentage of graduates securing jobs for which bar admission is required or anticipated (attorney positions) improved by 2.2 percentage points to 84.3% for the Class of 2024 — the highest level recorded since NALP introduced the job classifications in 2001.
Among employed graduates, 58.9% secured positions in private practice — a 0.7 percentage point increase and the highest percentage since 1992.
Salaries increased across all employment sectors, except in private practice where the median salary declined by 3% this year to $160,000. However, few law firms have decreased their starting salaries. Rather, the lower median salary is the result of multiple factors, including shifts in the distribution of jobs across firm sizes, the heightened merger and acquisition activity that can change how firms are categorized from year-to-year and better overall salary reporting from law graduates working in small and mid-size firms.
By firm size, median salaries ranged from $80,000 in firms of 1-10 lawyers to $225,000 in firms of more than 500 lawyers.
Firms of 501+ lawyers accounted for 34.2% of all law firm jobs this year, down slightly from 34.3% for the Class of 2023. Meanwhile, the share of private practice positions at the smallest firms of 1-10 lawyers fell to its lowest level in 35 years, resulting in a greater concentration of law firm jobs in firms of 11-250 lawyers.
Public service jobs, including military and other government jobs, judicial clerkships, and public interest positions, accounted for 32.7% of jobs obtained by employed graduates — a level surpassed only by the Class of 1975. With a larger class, all three public service sectors saw an increase in the number of graduates entering each employer type. However, the percentage of positions that were judicial clerkships declined by 0.4 percentage point to 10%, public interest held steady at last year’s record high of 9.7%, while government employment grew by 0.9 percentage point to 12.9%.
Just 6.8% of employed Class of 2024 graduates were seeking a different job than the one they are currently employed in, a record low.
Nearly two-thirds of employed graduates (65%) were employed in the same state in which they attended law school.
NALP gathered employment and salary data as of March 17, 2025, about 10 months after graduation for May 2024 graduates. The dataset includes more than 97% of U.S. law graduates from ABA-accredited schools. The full report will be released in October 2025.
