Legal employment outcomes in California in 2013
The ink is hardly dry on the 2015 U.S. News & World Report rankings--which, for branding purposes, are for 2015, but, for data purposes, include the Class of 2012 employment data--and they're already obsolete. That's because the Class of 2013 employment data has been released for most schools.
Some deans at California schools have complained bitterly about how USNWR calculates its employment formula. They argue it penalizes California schools, because the economy in California has recovered at a slower rate than the rest of the country. What do the new figures show about California in 2013?
The USNWR methodology gives "full weight" to "graduates who had a full-time job lasting at least a year where bar passage was required or a J.D. degree was an advantage." They also use this figure in the ranking tables. They give other positions lower weight, but these positions are not included in the ranking tables.
Imperfect a measure as it may be, I took this metric and calculated the differences in 2012 and 2013 data for 18 of the 19 California ABA-approved schools and 2 California provisionally-accredited schools. Here's what the data show.
(Note: Berkeley has not released its data as of March 30, 2014, so figures are for all California schools except Berkeley. Figures may be updated when Berkeley discloses. SEE UPDATE BELOW.)
First, there were more graduates. Total graduates from these 20 schools increased 1.7%, from 4802 graduates in 2012 to 4884 graduates in 2013.
Second, more graduates obtained full-time, long-term, bar passage-required or J.D.-advantage positions. In 2012, there were 2575 who obtained such employment, for a 53.6% employment rate. In 2013, there was a 4% increase, with 2679 who obtained such employment for a 54.9% employment rate. (Of course, this does not indicate where such positions existed, in California or elsewhere in the country; it only indicates the rate of placement for the California schools, regardless of where the employment took place.)
Third, law school funding for these types of positions tripled. There were 24 school-funded full-time, long-term bar passage-required or J.D.-advantage positions in 2012; that number jumped to 75 in 2013. Leading the way were UCLA (from 9 to 34), USC (from 0 to 12), and UC-Davis (from 2 to 10), which accounted for virtually all of the increase. The USNWR rankings consider gives these positions full weight in its employment report, but recently NPR (via The Faculty Lounge) has noted this factor.
Below is a chart reflecting the 2012 and 2013 data, with links to the school's underlying data. It includes the 2015 USNWR peer score, the 2013 full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions, along with the year-over-year increase or decline in points from the 2012 rate. It then lists the raw number of students who obtained such positions, along with a parenthetical notation of how many of those positions were school-funded. The same is listed for 2012. (Due to the format of some schools' disclosures, the nature of school-funded positions was not always entirely clear, and I did the best I could to ascertain which funded positions to include in the count.)
| Peer score | School | 2013 | YoY% | raw | 2012 | raw | ||
| 4.7 | STANFORD UNIVERSITY | 92.8% | -3.9 | 180 | (5) | 96.7% | 175 | (4) |
| 4.4 | CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY, UNIVERSITY OF | 90.4% | 2.3 | 272 | (25) | 88.1% | 275 | (0) |
| 3.9 | CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES, UNIVERSITY OF | 82.2% | 5.1 | 273 | (34) | 77.2% | 257 | (9) |
| 3.4 | CALIFORNIA-DAVIS, UNIVERSITY OF | 73.5% | 5.6 | 144 | (10) | 67.8% | 137 | (2) |
| 3.5 | SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, UNIVERSITY OF | 71.0% | -1.4 | 169 | (12) | 72.4% | 160 | (0) |
| nr | CALIFORNIA-IRVINE, UNIVERSITY OF | 66.7% | -19 | 56 | (0) | 85.7% | 48 | (0) |
| 2.6 | PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY | 64.8% | 6.6 | 138 | (0) | 58.2% | 124 | (1) |
| 2.7 | SAN DIEGO, UNIVERSITY OF | 60.1% | 8.4 | 191 | (0) | 51.7% | 169 | (0) |
| 2.6 | LOYOLA MARYMOUNT UNIVERSITY-LOS ANGELES | 59.1% | 10.4 | 230 | (5) | 48.7% | 200 | (5) |
| 2.4 | SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY | 56.2% | -0.2 | 181 | (1) | 56.4% | 168 | (1) |
| 1.9 | SOUTHWESTERN LAW SCHOOL | 52.0% | -4.5 | 156 | (0) | 56.5% | 183 | (1) |
| 2.1 | SAN FRANCISCO, UNIVERSITY OF | 47.5% | 14.9 | 95 | (1) | 32.6% | 72 | (1) |
| 3.1 | CALIFORNIA-HASTINGS, UNIVERSITY OF | 47.2% | -4.5 | 176 | (2) | 51.7% | 229 | (0) |
| 1.9 | MCGEORGE SCHOOL OF LAW | 46.9% | 3.1 | 149 | (3) | 43.8% | 134 | (0) |
| 1.8 | CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY | 45.7% | -2.1 | 85 | (0) | 47.8% | 85 | (0) |
| 1.2 | WESTERN STATE COLLEGE OF LAW | 43.9% | 4.1 | 54 | (0) | 39.8% | 33 | (0) |
| 1.6 | CALIFORNIA WESTERN SCHOOL OF LAW | 41.6% | -7.8 | 117 | (0) | 49.5% | 140 | (0) |
| 1.3 | THOMAS JEFFERSON SCHOOL OF LAW | 41.0% | 4.8 | 120 | (0) | 36.2% | 94 | (0) |
| nr | LA VERNE, UNIVERSITY OF | 40.7% | 4.2 | 35 | (1) | 36.5% | 38 | (0) |
| 1.4 | WHITTIER LAW SCHOOL | 30.5% | -15.4 | 64 | (0) | 45.9% | 78 | (0) |
| 1.6 | GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY | 28.9% | 1.8 | 66 | (1) | 27.1% | 51 | (0) |
UPDATE: I've discovered that some of these 2012 figures do not perfectly align with the actual figures reported on USNWR. For a few schools where the numbers differed, I used the actual ABA data on the linked forms.
UPDATE 2: I have added Berkeley. With their 25 school-funded positions (up from zero last year), such positions have now quadrupled among California schools over the last year. Graduates increased from 5114 to 5185, a 1.4% increase. The employment rate increased from 55.7% to 56.9%.