Stats Of The Week: Job Outlook Looking Up For Lower-Tier NYC Schools

NYC law school grads seriously outperformed the national average in job outcomes.

stat imageThis 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:

NYC law schools job outcomes

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.)

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