Law Schools

The Law Schools With The Most Unemployed Graduates (2017)

Which law schools landed themselves on this unenviable list?

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How is the employment scene looking for recent law school graduates? We’ll start with the good news: compared to the class of 2016, a larger percentage of 2017 law school graduates were able to find full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required or for which a law degree offered an advantage within 10 months of receiving their degrees. About 75.3 percent of 2017 graduates landed these plum jobs, up from 72.6 percent in 2016. Hooray! Congratulations, one and all.

Now, for the bad news: the good news we just discussed wasn’t so good after all, as the total number of desirable law jobs recent graduates landed declined by 2.34 percent — that’s 630 fewer jobs. The only reason that the overall employment rate increased is because fewer law school graduates were trying to secure jobs, by a measure of about 6 percent. This is the fourth straight year that the declining number of law graduates has propped up the employment rate while the number of law jobs actually declined.

So, with fewer law school graduates competing for jobs, one would assume (or hope) that would mean that fewer law school graduates were unemployed 10 months after receiving their degrees, right? Wrong.

Law.com produced several helpful charts based on law school employment data for the class of 2017. Today, we will highlight the most alarming chart of all, the law schools with the highest percentage of unemployed graduates. Here are the top 10 law schools on that chart for your sadistic viewing pleasure:

  1. Inter American University of Puerto Rico: 35.09 percent
  2. University of LaVerne: 34.21 percent
  3. Thomas Jefferson: 29.31 percent
  4. Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico: 27.01 percent
  5. Florida Coastal: 24.79 percent
  6. Elon: 23.08 percent
  7. Whittier (RIP): 22.82 percent
  8. Valparaiso (RIP?): 21.60 percent
  9. University of San Francisco: 21.57 percent
  10. DePaul: 19.13 percent

That was depressing. (For what it’s worth, we suspect that two Puerto Rican law schools landed so high on the list due to the fact that the island was completely devastated this past fall. You try applying to jobs without electricity.)

Click here to see the rest of the law schools with the highest percentage of unemployed graduates, as well as other informative charts detailing the law schools with the highest percentage of graduates working in Biglaw and in state and federal clerkships.

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Are you a recent law school graduate who hasn’t been able to find a job? What has your law school done to help you? We’re interested in learning about your experiences — good or bad — and may anonymously feature some of your stories on Above the Law. You can email us, text us at (646) 820-8477, or tweet us @atlblog.

Law Grads Hiring Report: Job Stats for the Class of 2017 [Law.com]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky has been an editor at Above the Law since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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