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Bad News If You Are Actually Trying To Start A Legal Career

No matter what type of legal job you're looking for, the odds are stacked against you.

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The latest employment data was released Friday by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, and it doesn’t look good if you are starting out in the legal profession. No matter what type of legal job you might be looking for — from academic to public interest to law firms — the entry-level job market is shrinking.

As reported by the ABA Journal, the number of entry-level jobs in each of the listed segments of the legal job market saw a dip:

The year-over-year percentage decreases in jobs for the class of 2017 by type:

• Academia: 18 percent decrease.
• Business and industry: 15.4 percent decrease.
• Government: 5.7 percent decrease.
• Law firms: 2.3 percent decrease.
• Clerkships: 1.9 percent decrease.
• Public interest: 1.2 percent decrease.

According to data released by the ABA, 75.3 percent of the law school class of 2017 were employed in full-time long-term bar passage required or J.D. advantage jobs ~10 months after graduation. Percentage wise that’s an increase over the class of 2016, which saw 72.6 percent of graduates in similar jobs, but that percentage bump is only because there were actually 6 percent fewer graduates in 2017 over 2016. The actual number of people with these jobs fell slightly year-over-year.

If you break out only the full-time jobs that require a J.D. but are not solo practices, there is actually a slight increase of 1.2 percent in the numbers. According to Bernard Burk, a former professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, entry-level jobs can be expected to “grow roughly proportionate to the gross domestic product, which is basically flat .”

He also added that tales of a strong market turnaround are wildly overblown:

“The job market for entry-level lawyers is 25 percent smaller than it was 10 years ago, and we are in the midst of a very strong economy. There is no reason to believe that the number of entry-level ​law jobs ​will increase any faster than the economy grows, which is roughly 2 percent a year,” he says. “Anybody who tells you that the job market for entry-level lawyers is good​ or is getting much better ​is wrong. There is no intellectually honest argument for that.”

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That may not be great news for prospective lawyers, but at least it’s honest.

headshotKathryn Rubino is an editor at Above the Law. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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