The legal employment market hit several highs for the Class of 2022, making it the best job market for entry-level graduates since 1987.
“This year’s data demonstrates that the vigorous market recovery combined with the so-called ‘talent wars’ propelled the Class of 2022 beyond even the impressive employment outcomes of the Class of 2021, in several cases shattering employment and salary records altogether,” said Nikia Gray, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP).
The employment rate for the Class of 2022 improved to 92.1% compared to 91.9% for the Class of 2021. This is the best employment rate recorded since the Class of 1987, when the rate was just slightly higher, at 92.2%.
The percentage of graduates taking jobs for which bar passage is required grew by 1.7 percentage points, increasing to 79.9% for the Class of 2022 — a new all-time high for the period since 2001 when NALP began using the current job classifications.
For graduates working in private practice, the national median salary soared to $150,000, a 14.1% increase as compared to $131,500 for the Class of 2021. The median salary is up due to higher pay and also because more graduates are landing jobs at larger firms, which pay more. Graduates at firms of more than 500 lawyers earned $215,000.
The percent of graduates at law firms who landed a job with a firm of 500 or more lawyers rose by one percentage point to 32.8%, another all-time high. In contrast, the percentage of jobs in firms of one to 10 lawyers accounted for 28.5% of all law firm jobs, the lowest this figure has been since 1989. Just 7.8% of employed Class of 2022 graduates were seeking a new job, a record low.
“As remarkable as the last two years of employment outcomes are, however, they should be viewed with a wary eye; 2023 has been marked with news of a cooling legal market, associate layoffs, and delayed start dates suggesting that we have been experiencing a brief market correction after the pandemic recovery and that future graduates may face a more challenging — or at least average — job market,” Gray said.
Occupations in public sectors increased this year, up to 30.7%, a small increase from the Class of 2021’s 30.5%. Public interest employment reached record highs in terms of both percentages (9.2% of all occupations) and overall job counts.
NALP releases its data a year after graduation, in order to reflect full employment outcomes for each class.
The American Bar Association released its own data in April, showing that 84.6% of 2022 graduates of ABA-approved law schools found full-time jobs. That figure was up 1.6% from the previous year. The two-year employment rate jumped about 7.5% following the havoc in legal hiring three years ago. “This is the second consecutive year of positive job growth,” said Bill Adams, managing director of ABA accreditation and legal education. “While modest in the number of new jobs nationwide this year, when added to the previous year’s increase, the job market for newly minted attorneys has clearly recovered.”
