With Private Practice Employment Lowest In 20 Years, Job Prospects Not Looking Rosy For Future Law School Graduates

Yikes!

Man Holding "Hire Me!"It makes sense that a smaller group of law school graduates secured a smaller number of jobs, but I was surprised to see that the private practice number was so low. You have to go back to 1996 to find a comparably small number of private practice jobs.

Most jobs are not earmarked for new law school graduates, and graduates will continue to compete with other junior lawyers for most jobs other than entry-level associate positions at large law firms, some judicial clerkships, and some government honors programs. In the law firm environment, for law firms of every size, growing efficiencies created by technology and business systems and increased competition from non-traditional legal services providers will both likely continue to put downward pressure on overall law firm lawyer headcount in the coming years and even decades.

The overall jobs profile for the Class of 2015 has improved considerably from that for the Class of 2011, the class that faced the worst overall post-recession job market. Nonetheless, in this flat jobs market there is no evidence that the entry-level legal job market will continue to improve, or at least there can be little confidence that it will return to what it was before the recession. Certainly the members of the smaller graduating classes expected over the next few years will face somewhat less competition amongst themselves for the jobs that do exist, but the ongoing changes facing the industry make it all but certain that the job market will continue to change for new law school graduates in the years ahead.

James Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement (NALP), commenting on the organization’s findings as to employment for the Class of 2015, and the job prospects for future law school graduates. NALP reports that the employment rate for new law school graduates remains flat, at 86.7 percent, with 76.8% having obtained jobs for which bar passage was required. Only 51.3 percent of the Class of 2015 was employed in private practice, the lowest percentage in about two decades.

(Chart courtesy of NALP)

(Chart courtesy of the National Association for Law Placement)


Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. Follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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