Law Schools

The Law Schools With The Most Unemployed Graduates (2020)

This isn't a ranking you want your law school to be on.

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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 2019 (80.6% employed in full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required or for which a law degree offered an advantage), and given that we’ve been dealing with a pandemic, the employment statistics for the class of 2020 really aren’t that bad. Ten months after graduation, 77.4% of 2020 graduates from accredited law schools were employed in full-time, long-term bar passage required or J.D. advantage jobs. On top of that, the size of the class of 2020 was about 1.4% larger than that of the class of 2019, which may have contributed to these percentage changes. Coronavirus crisis and all, the entry-level market was resilient.

Now, for the bad news: there were some troubling employment developments that may have been caused by COVID’s impact on the hiring scene — we’re talking trends like large increases in part-time employment of all varieties and a 30.5 percentage point increase in unemployed graduates. Yikes.

Law.com produced several helpful charts based on law school employment data for the class of 2020. Speaking of unemployment, 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 list:

1. Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico: 41.04%
2. Inter American University of Puerto Rico: 31.69%
3. Western State College of Law: 28.89%
4. University of Puerto Rico: 28.81%
5. Southern Illinois University: 24.75%
6. California Western School of Law: 22.71%
6. Western Michigan University: 22.71%
8. Santa Clara University: 21.05%
9. UNT Dallas College of Law: 20.45%
10. North Carolina Central University: 20.34%

This is very discouraging, and when compared to last year’s unemployed, we’re talking about schools that are constants on this list (and one of them has a double-digit percentage point increase in graduates without jobs).

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 clerkships.

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.

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Law Grads Hiring Report: Job Stats for the Class of 2020 [Law.com]

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked 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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