Latest Job Data From NALP Confirm That Class of 2010 Is Lost

“[T]he new NALP numbers confirm that the job market is terrible for young lawyers (aka the “lost generation”).” I wrote that last year about the class of 2009.

And last year things were way better than this year. This year’s NALP employment numbers are out, and they show that the class of 2010 had some of the worst employment outcomes of the last 20 years.

No wonder people are suing their law schools. Going to law school turned out to be a terrible decision for many of them….

You can still feel bad for the class of 2010 because when they started law school they had no idea the economy was going to tank in the way that it did.

None of these kids expected such a grim situation. The ABA Journal reports:

Only 68.4 percent of 2010 grads were able to land a job requiring bar passage, the lowest percentage since the legal career professionals group NALP began collecting statistics…

The classes of 2009 and 2008 had higher percentages of jobs requiring bar passage, at 70.8 percent and 74.7 percent respectively.

Overall the employment rate for 2010 grads is 87.6 percent, the lowest percentage since 1996 when the rate was 87.4 percent. Only 71 percent of the jobs were both full-time and permanent, according to an analysis (PDF) by NALP executive director James Leipold.

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Those numbers are ugly. This situation is ugly. And it’s not likely to get any better:

The job outlook is unlikely to improve for 2011 grads since legal employment tends to continue to decline in the years after a recession, Leipold says.

Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you. Well, actually I do know what to tell you, but nobody listens to me.

The class of 2010 is going to have to get creative just to find any jobs, much less legal ones. Hopefully these kids didn’t go to law school just because they couldn’t figure out anything better to do. Hopefully they have skills or talents they can fall back on now that their legal dreams have busted out.

Hopefully the class of 2010 can recover from their aborted starts and mountains of debt.

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P.S. You can read additional commentary and analysis from Jim Leipold over at the NALP website.

Employment for the Class of 2010 — Selected Findings [NALP]
A Record Low for 2010 Law Grads: Only 68% Have Jobs Requiring Bar Passage [ABA Journal]

Earlier: New NALP Numbers Are Out — and as Bad as Ever