Which Top Law School Has the Highest Percentage of Underemployed Graduates?

All hell breaks loose at the bottom of the T14 -- we're talking double-digit underemployment figures!

We know that our readers simply cannot get enough of these employment rankings, so we decided to bring you some more. This time, we’ll be taking a look at the law schools that people dream of attending: the 14 most elite schools in the nation, more commonly known among the legal community as the T14. Everyone knows that graduates of these fine institutions are able to get jobs — in fact, many of these schools are able to boast “employed at graduation” rates of over 90 percent.

But some graduates from these hallowed halls experience the same problems as those of their brethren from the lower echelons of law schools. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to find full-time, long-term employment as lawyers, not even graduates from the best-ranked law schools in country.

Wouldn’t you like to see which top law school has the highest percentage of underemployed graduates? Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled T14ers….

More and more people seem to be catching on to the fact that employment is a problem in the legal industry. A recent article from Jordan Weissmann of the Atlantic highlighted the grim reality that recent grads — even grads from celebrated law schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford — are currently facing:

The barren job market for law school grads has become a familiar reality by now. But here’s something that tends to get lost in the story: The problem isn’t just about no-name law schools churning out JD’s nobody wants to hire. Even graduates at some of the country’s top programs are struggling.

By “struggling,” Weissmann means that many of them are underemployed, or unemployed entirely. While the national underemployment rate is 27.7%, within the T14, underemployment hovers between 1.1% and 13.2%. Can you guess which school is the worst offender in this category?

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For reference, these underemployment rates were calculated by Law School Transparency, and include the number of 2012 graduates who were employed in a non-professional job, a short-term or part-time job, enrolled in another degree program, or flat out unemployed (but still looking for work).

And now, without further ado, here are the nation’s top underperformers in terms of employment:

It looks like the “HYS” band is relatively secure, as are the members of the “CCN” cluster. As for Columbia and UVA, those near flawless figures may have something to do with the very high number of graduates that were placed in school-funded positions (38 at Columbia; 55 at UVA) to avoid the underemployment problems that are so rampant in the lower portion of the T14.

Speaking of which, um, Cornell, it seems that some of your grads have spent too much time watching Cameron Knight pleasuring herself in your law school’s library. And take a look at Georgetown; that school is really putting the “14” back in “T14” this year. Perhaps there aren’t enough full-time positions in the PC police force at Northwestern. Michigan, is sheep-farming only a part-time job these days? We suppose Duke graduates were unable to find employment doling out fashion advice from the ’80s.

Sigh. This is why we can’t have nice things. What kind of a world are we living in when even the people at the tippy-top of the law school food chain can’t get jobs? Go ahead, flame (or praise) your underwhelming alma mater in the comments. You know you want to.

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The Jobs Crisis at Our Best Law Schools Is Much, Much Worse Than You Think [The Atlantic]