This week, the ABA released its data on law school employment outcomes for the class of 2015. The “headline” is that the percentage of graduates finding full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required jobs showed a modest improvement. However, commenters such as law professor Jerry Organ immediately pointed out that if we strip out school-funded positions and account for declining class sizes, we find that the number of “real” legal jobs is actually down by more than 7 percent.
On the other hand, the job market for graduates of New York City-area (very broadly defined to include White Plains and Hempstead) law schools is looking a bit rosier in relative terms. According to the indispensable Law School Transparency, the percentage of all 2014 law school grads landing full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required, non-school-funded jobs was 58%, and increased slightly to 59.3% for the class of 2015. However check out the school-by-school numbers for NYC metro-area law school grads:
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The percentage of NYC-area law grads who secured real (FT/LT/BPR/NSF) legal jobs was a full 10 percentage points higher than the national average at 69.3%. Moreover, the rate of increase over last year was higher: 2.11% vs. 1.3%. Finally, if we exclude Columbia and NYU, who held steady with their gaudy 93ish% employment stats, the average rate of increase was a striking 8%. (Pity poor Fordham, the outlier in this group, who saw their number slip by a single percentage point.)