Saturday, April 25, 2015

Matt Leichter, Class of 2014 Employment Report (Leaked Edition):

I’ve been peeking daily at the ABA’s employment summary Web page. On Friday morning, the class of 2014 data appeared ... Yet when I returned Friday afternoon, I found it was gone … But not before I downloaded the spreadsheet. ... I’ve run the numbers, so I just have to leak the results.

58.7 percent of graduates held full-time jobs requiring bar passage, up from 55.9 percent for the class of 2013. However—and this is very important—the actual number of graduates in such jobs fell to 25,292 from 25,762 last year, about a 1.8 percent decline. [43,115 graduated from an ABA-accredited law school outside of Puerto Rico in 2014, compared to 45,824 in 2013, a 4.8% decline.]

[Here is] the comparison table for each law school, sorted by their 2014 percentage of graduates in full-time bar-passage required jobs less school-funded positions:

Full-Time/Long-Term in Bar-Passage-Required Jobs

(Excluding Law-School-Funded Jobs) Rank Law School ’13 ’14 Change 1. Pennsylvania 85.7% 91.4% +5.7% 2. Cornell 81.3% 90.1% +8.8% 3. Duke 85.1% 87.9% +2.8% 4. Columbia 88.3% 87.2% -1.1% 5. Chicago 86.5% 87.1% +0.6% 6. NYU 86.2% 86.0% -0.2% 7. Harvard 84.9% 85.5% +0.6% 8. UC-Berkeley 78.4% 85.4% +7.0% 9. Stanford 85.1% 85.0% -0.1% 10. Virginia 79.7% 84.8% +5.1% 11. Michigan 81.2% 81.8% +0.6% 12. New Mexico 73.7% 80.2% +6.5% 13. Kentucky 74.4% 80.2% +5.8% 14. Northwestern 77.5% 78.4% +0.9% 15. Iowa 76.3% 77.8% +1.5% 16. Boston College 64.0% 74.4% +10.4% 17. Minnesota 68.2% 73.7% +5.5% 18. Nebraska 66.1% 73.5% +7.4% 19. Vanderbilt 78.2% 73.2% -5.0% 20. Washington University 66.0% 72.9% +6.9% 21. Alabama 71.7% 72.5% +0.8% 22. Ohio State 60.4% 72.4% +12.0% 23. LSU 67.4% 72.4% +5.0% 24. Washburn 62.9% 72.3% +9.4% 25. Seton Hall 68.9% 72.3% +3.4% 26. UCLA 66.6% 71.7% +5.1% 27. Texas 75.1% 71.5% -3.6% 28. Georgia State 62.6% 71.2% +8.6% 29. Georgia 68.4% 70.6% +2.2% 30. Arizona State 61.8% 70.2% +8.4% 31. SMU 70.9% 69.7% -1.2% 32. Georgetown 72.4% 69.6% -2.8% 33. Yale 74.4% 69.6% -4.8% 34. Wake Forest 58.5% 69.5% +11.0% 35. Florida 66.4% 69.3% +2.9% 36. Mercer 65.6% 69.2% +3.6% 37. North Carolina 68.1% 68.7% +0.6% 38. Oklahoma 66.3% 68.5% +2.2% 39. Tulsa 58.0% 68.4% +10.4% 40. Idaho 62.4% 68.3% +5.9% 41. Miami 60.7% 68.2% +7.5% 42. BYU 64.6% 68.1% +3.5% 43. Kansas 64.2% 68.1% +3.9% 44. South Dakota 62.0% 67.9% +5.9% 45. Boston University 61.2% 67.9% +6.7% 46. Fordham 63.4% 67.8% +4.4% 47. Baylor 70.5% 67.6% -2.9% 48. Montana 69.1% 67.5% -1.6% 49. Florida State 69.6% 67.2% -2.4% 50. Colorado 67.0% 66.7% -0.3%

The bottom 10 law schools are:

190. Charlotte 34.6% 34.1% -0.5% 191. San Francisco 35.5% 33.0% -2.5% 192. Western State 37.4% 32.7% -4.7% 193. Florida A&M 38.5% 31.0% -7.5% 194. UMass 25.2% 30.9% +5.7% 195. WMU Cooley 26.9% 30.0% +3.1% 196. Thomas Jefferson 29.0% 29.7% +0.7% 197. Whittier 26.7% 27.3% +0.6% 198. District of Columbia 25.0% 26.2% +1.2% 199. Golden Gate 22.4% 24.6% +2.2%

Update:

Brian Tamanaha (Washington University):

Overall the news is good. Employment percentages are rising because the size of the graduating class is shrinking. The general percentage in full time long term JD jobs went up to 58.7% (55.9% last year). The actual number of JD jobs declined, however, which suggests that the legal employment market is not improving as much as we had hoped. These data are 10 months out, compared to 9 months in prior years, but it doesn't look like the extra month made much difference. It's good that the percentage in full time JD jobs is improving, but it still remains less than ideal. The more hopeful news is that this percentage should rise significantly in coming years owing to the ongoing decline in the number of applicants.

There is one more key piece of good news/bad news: the unemployed-seeking rate is down 9.5%, though still very high.

Matt Leichter:

Helpfully, Professor Seto commented on my post with a link to Derek Muller's analysis for California. Muller looked at FT/LT bar-passage-required and J.D.-advantaged jobs, both funded and not, which is broader than what I did. I replicated Muller's methodology with the ABA data and the results were nearly identical—only six fewer Stanford graduates.

https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2015/04/class-of-2014.html