The twenty-two (or twenty-three) law reviews you should follow on Twitter (2016)

While you could follow a pretty sizeable list of law reviews I've maintained on Twitter, there are a handful of law reviews that rise above the rest.

Last year, I listed the twenty-two law reviews to follow on Twitter. I've modified the criteria slightly and updated it. I've mentioned that I find Twitter one of the best places to stumble upon scholarship and engage in a first layer of discussion about new ideas.

In my view, it continues to surprise me how challenging it is to find recently journal content. Many journals don't maintain a Twitter feed, much less a decent web site--most lack an RSS, are updated infrequently at best, and often include stock art (because, apparently, law reviews are into stock art?). Given scarce resources that law schools have today, one might expect schools to find ways of maximizing the value from their investments in their journals. (More on this soon.)

Alas, I'll settle for the occasional tweet on the subject. I looked at the flagship law reviews at the 106 law schools with a U.S. News & World Report peer score of 2.2 or higher.  If I found their Twitter accounts, I included them. I then examined how many tweets they had, how many followers they had, and when their last tweet (not a retweet) took place. I then created a benchmark, modified slightly from last year: the law reviews "worth following" are those with at least 200 tweets, at least 200 followers, and at least one tweet (not a retweet or direct reply) in the last 45 days (as of July 1, 2016). I thought that would be a pretty minimal standard for level of engagement and recency of engagement. This 200/200/45 standard reduces the list to 23 accounts worth following (UPDATE: the original list was just 22, but I found one more thanks to Elli Olson):

Harvard Law Review

Yale Law Journal

University of Chicago Law Review

NYU Law Review

California Law Review

Penn Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Northwestern University Law Review

Georgetown Law Journal

UCLA Law Review

George Washington Law Review

Ohio State Law Journal

Iowa Law Review

University of Illinois Law Review

Hastings Law Journal

Washington & Lee Law Review

Connecticut Law Review

Case Western Reserve Law Review

Georgia State University Law Review

Nebraska Law Review

St. Louis University Law Journal

Syracuse Law Review

Michigan State Law Review

It's fairly notable, I think, that a majority of the schools on this list have a top-30 peer reputation score. Indeed, follower count is highly correlated with peer score (0.59)! There is also a high degree of continuity between last year's list and this year's list, showing, I think, that continuity matters for many of these journals' social media presence--and, perhaps, that it's harder for many journals to get anything started with a lasting institutional memory.

Below is the complete list of these journals, with 200/200/45 law reviews highlighted. If you see a journal not listed, tweet me about it @derektmuller.

Peer score	Journal	Tweets	Followers	Last tweet (not RT)
4.8	@HarvLRev	850	18900	June 23, 2016
4.8	@YaleLJournal	792	8676	June 23, 2016
4.8	@StanLRev	458	5722	April 29, 2016
4.6	@UChiLRev	349	4666	June 27, 2016
4.6	@ColumLRev	294	3747	October 31, 2015
4.5	@nyulawreview	1415	6390	June 29, 2016
4.5	@CalifLRev	398	2918	May 20, 2016
4.4	@PennLawReview	413	2837	May 21, 2016
4.4	@michlawreview	265	2254	June 21, 2016
4.3	@VirginiaLawRev	42	670	June 1, 2016
4.2	@NULRev	241	1015	June 30, 2016
4.2	@DukeLawJournal	66	1172	June 13, 2016
4.2	@CornellLRev	0	11	n/a
4.1	@GeorgetownLJ	325	1080	June 23, 2016
4.0	@TexasLRev	458	2059	April 28, 2016
3.9	@UCLALawReview	223	2332	June 23, 2016
3.9	Vanderbilt
3.6	@emorylawjournal	85	211	June 28, 2016
3.5	@MinnesotaLawRev	112	625	June 29, 2016
3.5	Washington (St. Louis)
3.4	@BULawReview	530	1232	October 19, 2015
3.4	@nclrev	76	160	March 28, 2016
3.4	@NotreDameLawRev	52	532	April 22, 2016
3.4	@SCalLRev	11	108	May 3, 2016
3.4	Wisconsin
3.3	@GWLawReview	670	710	June 15, 2016
3.3	@OhioStateLJ	627	1486	June 29, 2016
3.3	@IowaLawReview	273	1196	May 16, 2016
3.3	@UCDavisLawRev	166	430	January 29, 2016
3.3	Indiana (Bloomington)
3.2	@BCLawReview	372	1439	April 4, 2016
3.2	@WashLawReview	126	1175	May 21, 2015
3.2	@AlaLawReview	44	633	March 28, 2016
3.2	@GaLRev	32	411	April 4, 2016
3.2	Irvine
3.2	William & Mary
3.1	@fordhamlrev	381	2010	May 2, 2016
3.1	@UIllLRev	259	1202	May 29, 2016
3.1	@HastingsLJ	207	518	June 29, 2016
3.1	@FloridaLawRev	122	306	June 28, 2016
3.1	@arizlrev	32	242	July 1, 2015
3.1	@ArizStLJ	29	10	April 18, 2016
3.1	Colorado
3.0	@WFULawReview	793	694	April 23, 2016
3.0	@WLU_LawReview	279	225	June 28, 2016
3.0	@TulaneLawReview	40	611	March 6, 2015
3.0	Maryland
2.9	Florida State
2.8	@BYULRev	42	103	May 11, 2016
2.8	@UtahLawReview	0	6	n/a
2.7	@ConnLRev	854	1188	May 25, 2016
2.7	@AmULRev	356	935	November 13, 2015
2.7	@geomasonlrev	219	258	February 18, 2016
2.7	@UMLawReview	193	946	June 3, 2016
2.7	@denverlawreview	153	686	April 26, 2016
2.7	@CardozoLRev	118	1079	June 28, 2016
2.7	@ukanlrev	105	528	September 25, 2014
2.7	@OregonLawReview	7	372	April 7, 2015
2.7	Tennessee
2.6	@CaseWResLRev	821	840	June 23, 2016
2.6	@GSULawReview	646	268	June 29, 2016
2.6	@PeppLawReview	604	751	April 1, 2016
2.6	@TempleLawReview	38	67	May 18, 2016
2.6	@KYLawJournal	17	157	March 20, 2012
2.6	@LLSlawreview	11	25	March 23, 2016
2.6	@MoLawRev	11	42	June 7, 2016
2.6	@Houston_L_Rev	5	35	April 28, 2016
2.6	@PittLawReview	0	15	n/a
2.6	San Diego
2.6	SMU
2.5	@NebLRev	253	258	June 23, 2016
2.5	@LUCLawJournal	169	131	May 21, 2014
2.5	Chicago-Kent
2.5	Hawaii
2.4	@SCLawReview	541	892	April 14, 2016
2.4	@NevLawJournal	70	145	May 22, 2016
2.4	@RutgersLRev	63	631	April 3, 2015
2.4	@nuljournal	47	346	June 22, 2016
2.4	@RutgersLJ	12	526	May 2, 2014
2.4	@BrookLRev	0	4	n/a
2.4	Baylor
2.4	Cincinnati
2.4	Indiana (Indianapolis)
2.4	Lewis & Clark
2.4	Oklahoma
2.4	Richmond
2.4	Santa Clara
2.3	@SLULawJournal	639	558	June 7, 2016
2.3	@SyracuseLRev	538	946	June 26, 2016
2.3	@HULawJournal	532	715	November 4, 2015
2.3	@MichStLRev	402	780	June 11, 2016
2.3	@SULawRev	53	91	February 20, 2016
2.3	@VillanovaLawRev	44	150	June 25, 2016
2.3	@SHULawReview	22	203	January 28, 2014
2.3	Marquette
2.3	New Mexico
2.2	@arklawrev	165	1839	February 15, 2016
2.2	@MaineLawReview	103	650	December 3, 2015
2.2	@lalawreview	95	910	March 24, 2016
2.2	@MSLawJournal	70	223	April 13, 2016
2.2	@UofL_Law_Review	16	46	March 31, 2016
2.2	@UMKCLawReview	5	91	April 22, 2016
2.2	@WVU_Law_Rev	4	26	Jule 28, 2013
2.2	DePaul
2.2	Hofstra
2.2	SUNY (Buffalo)

Some evidence that big firm law jobs have not "dried up" for top law school graduates

Today's New York Times includes a story about challenges confronting legal education with a specific emphasis on the situation at Valparaiso. There are many points raised throughout the article, including various problems facing schools and their graduates. I do not want to spend much time (yet!) on most of the details--undoubtedly, schools and graduates continue to face mounting challenges have not received sufficient remedies. But one purported cause of the current crisis struck me as rather curious:

A decade ago, a large majority of graduates from the top 10 to 15 law schools who wanted full-time work at a big law firm could get it, said Paul F. Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who has written extensively [Ed.: link to a story from 2011 omitted] about the economic prospects of recent law school graduates.

With big-firm jobs drying up, however, many of these graduates began competing for lower-paying spots at midsize firms, which also downsized, and certain government jobs they wouldn’t have sought in an earlier era.

“That takes those jobs off the table,” Mr. Campos said. “It has ripple effects all the way throughout the profession, so that a small law firm in northwest Indiana can say to recent grads: ‘We want you to work for free. We won’t pay you.’”

Law schools, for their part, seem strangely oblivious to all this.

This didn't strike me as accurately describing the situation confronting law schools in the year 2016. So I did a little digging into the ABA's Employment Statistics database.

As background, there is no question that the economic recession dramatically impacted the legal profession as a whole. Early 2009 was particularly brutal--from a "black Thursday" in February to massive layoffs at some of the largest firms in the country. This undoubtedly had trickle-down effects to summer associate and entry-level hiring for the classes graduating at and shortly after this time. But did such a bleak picture permanently alter elite hiring from elite schools?

I drew from the ABA data about the Classes of 2011 through 2015. (The Class of 2010 data is not reported in a similar format, and the Class of 2016 data will not be released until next spring.) I looked at the outcomes of thirteen "elite" schools over that time--Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Northwestern, Penn, Stanford, Virginia, and Yale. (One can quibble about whether the list should be more or less inclusive, of course, but I thought this would fit in the range of the "top 10 to 15.")

I used four categories of jobs: full-time, long-term positions at firms with 101 to 250 attorneys, 251 to 500 attorneys, and 501 or more attorneys, as well as full-time, long-term (which includes one-year terms) federal judicial clerkships, a rough category of "elite" placement. There are, of course, caveats to all these categories. "Full-time, long-term" positions at firms may include project or staff attorneys rather than associate-level positions--which may mask some numbers if such positions have disproportionately increased in recent years. Federal judicial clerkships may not include equally "elite" value in the perception of graduates and employers. They are, admittedly, rough categories.

	101-250	251-500	501+	Clerkships	Elite jobs	Total Grads	Percentage
Class of 2011	157	270	1473	512	2412	4140	58.3%
Class of 2012	159	312	1769	515	2755	4203	65.5%
Class of 2013	146	261	1902	506	2815	4205	66.9%
Class of 2014	150	279	1939	522	2890	4161	69.5%
Class of 2015	130	332	1866	511	2839	4015	70.7%

We can see that the total numbers of graduates have been fairly stable, but are at a lower ebb at the moment. Job placement as a percentage of the graduating class, however, continues in what I might call the "large majority" of graduates, most recently over 70%. Things have improved since the Class of 2011 (which was engaged in on-campus interviewing in the Fall of 2009, shortly after the brunt of layoffs hit law firms). These figures aren't masked by federal judicial clerkship placement, either, which has held remarkably steads at slightly over 500 clerks per graduating class. (And this category excludes "J.D. advantage" positions, which might be of dubious value, but perhaps have more value at these elite schools--consider the volume of placement of Harvard graduates into coveted positions at places like McKinsey and Bain.)

To show the relative improvement in both raw positions and in percentage placement, consider the charts visualizing those figures below. (Please note that they are non-zero y-axes to illustrate relative change rather than absolute performance.)

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It might be that law schools are "strangely oblivious" to this trend because the trend, in ll likelihood, doesn't exist. There are undoubtedly many challenges facing "non-elite" law schools (and even "elite" law schools), ranging from indebtedness of graduates, to bar passage rates of those with declining predictors, to securing meaningful employment for graduates. But the notion that a principal cause of the crisis facing schools like Valparaiso and others is a result of a loss of placement of elite law school graduates into elite big law firm positions resulting in increased competition at "lower-paying spots at midsize firms . . . and certain government jobs they wouldn't have sought in an earlier era" is, I think, from my examination of the evidence, not accurate.

What we can expect about legal education and the Class of 2019

Much has been written about the "bottoming out" of the law school applicant pool, as schools have experienced a small uptick in applicants over last year. It's true. But I'll offer a few visualizations of where things stand this year for the incoming Class of 2019 and where it stands in relation to recent history.

Jerry Organ over at the Legal Whiteboard recently offered some helpful thoughts about what we might expect. For one, the quality of this year's applicant pool is up somewhat. The visualization below shows the year-over-year change in applicants in each LSAT band, with the raw total of applicants beside each figure. (This is probably slightly more than 90% of the applicants for this cycle.)

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Good news right? Applicant quality is up. But as I noted earlier this year, a problem is that the nationwide applicant quality for the Class of 2018 was down. Here's what that data, year-over-year, looks like.

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This year's gains in the quality of the applicant pool, then, roughly offset the declines in the quality of the applicant pool last year. So the Class of 2019 will look more like the Class of 2017.

But it's also worth noting that despite a small projected uptick in applicants, the total incoming class will also look like the Class of 2017--and be demonstrably smaller than recent classes before that. Here's the high-level overview (sorry for the non-zero Y-axis, but it demonstrates the relative change in various groups).

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Good news for law schools? LSAT test-takers are up in quantity and quality, as are applicants (and probably matriculants). The bad news? It's not nearly what it was several years ago. The projected JD matriculant Class of 2019 shows this, too.

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Law schools can breathe easy, in that applicants and matriculants will have been relatively steady for a few years now. But absent a projected surge in applicants--and not by a couple of percentage points, but by something like 20-30%--this is the new normal for law schools (although, I feel as though the word "new normal" has been tossed about for quite some time). While it may be a fool's errand to project or guarantee too much, law schools may hope for a total matriculant pool of something around 40,000 or so--but it will be far from not only the recent peak, but also the previous historical average of around 49,000. For the fourth straight year, the incoming class size will be smaller than 40,000.

Visualizing law school federal judicial clerkship placement, 2013-2015

The release of the latest ABA employment data offers an opportunity to update the three-year federal judicial clerkship placement rates. Here is the clerkship placement rate for the Classes of 2013, 2014, and 2015. Methodology and observations below the interactive visualization. The "placement" is the three-year total placement; the "percentage" is the three-year placement divided by the three-year graduating class total.

The placement is based on graduates reported as having a full-time, long-term federal clerkship. (A one-year term clerkship counts for this category.) I thought a three-year average for clerkships (over 3500 clerks from the graduating classes of 2013, 2014, and 2015) would be a useful metric to smooth out any one-year outliers. It does not include clerkships obtained by students after graduation; it only includes clerkships obtained by each year's graduating class.

I had to add a couple of new-reporting law schools (Belmont & Lincoln) that only report one year's data. Additionally, I merged the entries for Rutgers-Camden and Rutgers-Newark. The three schools in Puerto Rico are excluded.

A raw chart is below.

st	School	Pct	Total Clerks
CT	Yale University	31.3%	202
CA	Stanford University	28.6%	165
MA	Harvard University	16.8%	295
VA	University of Virginia	14.6%	158
CA	University of California-Irvine	13.6%	39
IL	University of Chicago	13.5%	84
CA	University of California-Berkeley	11.0%	95
NC	Duke University	10.2%	68
TN	Vanderbilt University	10.1%	59
MI	University of Michigan	9.4%	108
TX	University of Texas at Austin	9.3%	101
PA	University of Pennsylvania	9.2%	72
NY	Cornell University	8.3%	47
IL	Northwestern University	8.1%	70
AL	University of Alabama	7.7%	37
NY	New York University	7.3%	109
IN	University of Notre Dame	7.0%	38
KY	University of Kentucky	7.0%	27
MT	University of Montana	7.0%	17
GA	University of Georgia	6.8%	45
IA	University of Iowa	5.9%	30
CA	University of California-Los Angeles	5.4%	54
VA	William and Mary Law School	5.1%	31
NY	Columbia University	5.0%	66
NC	University of North Carolina	5.0%	36
PA	Temple University	4.5%	36
VA	Washington and Lee University	4.5%	20
MN	University of Minnesota	4.4%	34
LA	Tulane University	4.4%	32
MA	Boston College	4.3%	33
MO	Washington University	4.2%	33
VA	University of Richmond	4.2%	19
DC	Georgetown University	4.1%	79
DC	George Wasihngton University	4.1%	67
GA	Emory University	4.1%	36
MS	University of Mississippi	4.1%	21
AR	University of Arkansas, Fayetteville	3.8%	15
IL	University of Illinois	3.7%	22
DC	American University	3.6%	51
CA	Pepperdine University	3.6%	22
UT	Brigham Young University	3.6%	15
WY	University of Wyoming	3.6%	8
GA	Georgia State University	3.5%	21
WA	University of Washington	3.5%	20
CA	University of Southern California	3.4%	23
GA	Mercer University	3.4%	14
TN	University of Memphis	3.3%	12
VA	Regent University	3.2%	12
LA	Loyola University-New Orleans	3.1%	21
TX	Baylor University	3.1%	13
WV	West Virginia University	3.1%	12
TX	Texas Tech University	3.0%	20
LA	Louisiana State University	3.0%	19
MO	University of Missouri	3.0%	12
OH	Ohio State University	2.9%	18
IN	Indiana University - Bloomington	2.8%	18
AZ	University of Arizona	2.8%	12
UT	University of Utah	2.8%	11
NY	Brooklyn Law School	2.6%	31
MD	University of Maryland	2.6%	22
NE	Creighton University	2.6%	10
ME	University of Maine	2.6%	7
NC	Wake Forest University	2.5%	12
TN	University of Tennessee	2.5%	11
DC	Howard University	2.5%	9
CA	Loyola Law School-Los Angeles	2.4%	28
FL	University of Florida	2.4%	23
FL	Florida State University	2.4%	18
VA	George Mason University	2.4%	14
MS	Mississippi College	2.4%	12
PA	Pennsylvania State University	2.4%	9
TX	Southern Methodist University	2.3%	17
SC	University of South Carolina	2.3%	14
OH	University of Toledo	2.3%	8
KY	University of Louisville	2.2%	8
NE	University of Nebraska	2.2%	8
ND	University of North Dakota	2.2%	5
CT	University of Connecticut	2.1%	11
KS	University of Kansas	2.1%	9
NY	Fordham University	2.0%	27
PA	University of Pittsburgh	2.0%	13
PA	Drexel University	2.0%	8
SD	University of South Dakota	1.9%	4
MA	Boston University	1.8%	13
CA	University of California-Davis	1.8%	10
CO	University of Colorado	1.8%	9
NV	University of Nevada - Las Vegas	1.7%	7
NJ	Rutgers Law School	1.6%	24
PA	Villanova University	1.6%	11
AZ	Arizona State University	1.6%	10
NC	Campbell University	1.6%	7
OH	University of Cincinnati	1.6%	6
CA	University of California-Hastings	1.5%	16
OR	Lewis and Clark College	1.5%	10
NY	Syracuse University	1.5%	9
OR	University of Oregon	1.5%	7
ID	University of Idaho	1.5%	5
CA	University of San Diego	1.4%	12
NJ	Seton Hall University	1.3%	10
WI	Marquette University	1.3%	9
OH	Case Western Reserve University	1.3%	7
KY	Northern Kentucky University	1.3%	6
IA	Drake University	1.3%	5
PA	Widener-Commonwealth	1.3%	4
NC	Elon University	1.3%	4
VA	Liberty University	1.3%	3
NY	Cardozo School of Law	1.2%	14
NM	University of New Mexico	1.2%	4
NY	St. John's University	1.1%	9
TX	University of Houston	1.1%	8
NY	University of Buffalo-SUNY	1.1%	7
SC	Charleston School of Law	1.1%	6
FL	Ave Maria School of Law	1.1%	4
NY	New York Law School	1.0%	13
IL	Loyola University-Chicago	1.0%	8
WI	University of Wisconsin	1.0%	7
MA	Northeastern University	1.0%	6
NY	Albany Law School	1.0%	6
OK	University of Oklahoma	1.0%	5
AL	Samford University	1.0%	4
AR	University of Arkansas, Little Rock	1.0%	4
NY	City University of New York	1.0%	4
OK	University of Tulsa	1.0%	3
FL	University of Miami	0.9%	11
WA	Seattle University	0.9%	8
MN	University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)	0.9%	4
MI	Michigan State University	0.8%	7
CO	University of Denver	0.8%	7
FL	Stetson University	0.8%	7
MI	Wayne State University	0.8%	4
VT	Vermont Law School	0.8%	4
PA	Duquesne University	0.8%	4
OH	Ohio Northern University	0.8%	2
MA	Suffolk University	0.7%	10
IL	John Marshall Law School	0.7%	9
CA	California Western School of Law	0.7%	5
DE	Widener University-Delaware	0.7%	5
CA	McGeorge School of Law	0.7%	5
DC	Catholic University of America	0.7%	4
OH	Cleveland State University	0.7%	3
MO	University of Missouri-Kansas City	0.7%	3
NH	University of New Hampshire	0.7%	2
NY	Hofstra University	0.6%	6
CA	Thomas Jefferson School of Law	0.6%	5
NY	Pace University	0.6%	4
IN	Valparaiso University	0.6%	3
RI	Roger Williams University	0.6%	3
IL	Southern Illinois University-Carbondale	0.6%	2
IL	Depaul University	0.5%	4
MO	Saint Louis University	0.5%	4
FL	St. Thomas University (Florida)	0.5%	3
LA	Southern University	0.5%	3
OH	University of Dayton	0.5%	2
AZ	Arizona Summit Law School	0.4%	4
IN	Indiana University - Indianapolis	0.4%	3
TX	St. Mary's University	0.4%	3
TX	Texas Southern University	0.4%	2
CA	Chapman University	0.4%	2
VA	Appalachian School of Law	0.4%	1
AL	Faulkner University	0.4%	1
CA	Southwestern Law School	0.3%	3
IL	Northern Illinois University	0.3%	1
MA	Western New England University	0.3%	1
CA	Western State College of Law	0.3%	1
TX	South Texas College of Law	0.2%	2
MN	William Mitchell College of Law	0.2%	2
MD	University of Baltimore	0.2%	2
NC	Charlotte School of Law	0.2%	2
OH	University of Akron	0.2%	1
FL	Florida A&M University	0.2%	1
TX	Texas A&M University	0.2%	1
MI	University of Detroit Mercy	0.2%	1
FL	Florida International University	0.2%	1
WA	Gonzaga University	0.2%	1
MN	Hamline University	0.2%	1
NC	North Carolina Central University	0.2%	1
CA	Whittier Law School	0.2%	1
MI	Thomas M. Colley Law School	0.1%	2
MA	New England Law | Boston	0.1%	1
IL	Chicago-Kent College of Law-IIT	0.1%	1
FL	Florida Coastal School of Law	0.1%	1
FL	Nova Southeastern University	0.1%	1
GA	Atlanta's John Marshall Law School	0.0%	0
FL	Barry University	0.0%	0
TN	Belmont University	0.0%	0
OH	Capital University	0.0%	0
DC	District of Columbia	0.0%	0
CA	Golden Gate University	0.0%	0
HI	University of Hawaii	0.0%	0
TN	Lincoln Memorial	0.0%	0
OK	Oklahoma City University	0.0%	0
CT	Quinnipiac University	0.0%	0
CA	University of San Francisco	0.0%	0
CA	Santa Clara University	0.0%	0
NY	Touro College	0.0%	0
CA	University of La Verne	0.0%	0
MA	University of Massachusetts Dartmouth	0.0%	0
KS	Washburn University	0.0%	0
OR	Willamette University	0.0%	0

Law school-funded positions dry up with U.S. News methodology change

Correlation doesn't equal causation, but I'll float the correlation out there for consideration.

The ABA has recently released the employment data for the Class of 2015. One item I've noticed anecdotally as I've pulled a few states' data has been the decline in law school-funded positions. And we can now confirm a significant decline in such positions.

Several years ago, U.S. News & World Report developed a more nuanced approach to weighing employment outcomes at law schools. They created a black box formula giving different categories of employment different weight. "Full weight" would be given to graduated in full-time, long-term positions that required bar passage or in which a J.D. was an advantage. It made no distinction between positions funded by law schools and those that weren't.

Last year, for the first time, U.S. News & World Report announced a change to the methodology. The rankings now "discounted the value of these types of jobs."

This year, the first full year of reporting after the change went into effect, law schools dramatically cut back on such positions. There were 520 law school-funded bar passage-required positions for the Class of 2012, up to 777 for the Class of 2013 and 833 for the Class of 2014. This year, however, the number plunged to 397. (For comparison, the number of law school-funded J.D.-advantage positions has been slowly declining.)

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There are, of course, non-USNWR reasons to see such a decline. Perhaps the employment market is naturally picking up for the best schools, which were the ones that were primarily responsible for such positions; perhaps the declining graduating classes have finally meant a disproportional reduction in such programs; perhaps schools are simply reevaluating the benefit of those programs independent of USNWR.

Nonetheless, the trend was sufficiently pronounced to display above and suggest a factor that contributed to the decline in such positions.

 UPDATE: Jerry Organ has more thoughts here. He attributes some of the decline to changes in reporting requirements and definitions from the ABA.

Legal employment outcomes in Florida in 2015

This is the sixth in the series of visualizations of legal employment outcomes in 2015. The previous visualizations were for Texas, Ohio, California, New York, and DC-Maryland-Virginia.

As with some other jurisdictions, Texas employment outcomes worsened somewhat. There were 1383 full-time, long-term, bar passage-required jobs (excluded law school-funded positions) for the Class of 2015, down from 1419 for the Class of 2014. (As a separate note, Western Michigan University-Cooley separately reported its Tampa campus outcomes for the Class of 2015, and those totals are included for that class but not the Class of 2014.) There was a significant decline in graduates, from 2445 for the Class of 2014 to just 1973 graduates for the Class of 2015 (2079 if you include Cooley-Tampa's 2015 totals). That was the source of improvement in outcomes for most schools--the overall employment rate stood at 70.9%, up a couple of points from last year.

As usual, the chart is sorted by the "full-weight" positions, designating both full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions. There are additional designations for school-funded positions in these areas, and for all other outcomes. The table below the chart is sorted by the combined bar passage-required, J.D.-advantage, and law school-funded positions (as printed in U.S. News & World Reports), with raw figures and a year-over-year comparison beside. (As an additional note, these are the ABA-reported figures; subsequent amended figures from schools are not included. One school whose website self-reported it was not required to disclose its figures was excluded.)

As usual, please notify me of any errors.

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Peer Score	School	2015	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2014	BPR	JDA	LSF
2.9	Florida State University	81.7%	4.5	183	23	0	77.2%	180	27	0
3.1	University of Florida	81.5%	5.4	232	15	0	76.1%	214	21	0
1.6	Florida International University	81.0%	2.4	97	22	0	78.6%	101	20	0
2.1	Stetson University	79.7%	4.8	171	49	0	74.9%	175	55	0
2.7	University of Miami	71.2%	-8.2	257	40	0	79.4%	285	44	3
1.6	Nova Southeastern University	64.0%	-3.1	173	10	0	67.1%	174	14	0
1.3	St. Thomas University	50.9%	0.0	71	13	0	50.9%	102	8	0
1.4	Florida A&M University	50.3%	7.2	56	18	0	43.1%	59	16	0
1.1	Ave Maria School of Law	50.0%	4.5	31	11	1	45.5%	40	9	1
1.1	Barry University	48.7%	-8.2	80	33	0	56.9%	89	30	0
1.1	Western Michigan University-Cooley (Tampa)	45.3%	n/a	32	16	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Texas in 2015

This is the fifth in the series of visualizations of legal employment outcomes in 2015. The previous visualizations were for Ohio, California, New York, and DC-Maryland-Virginia.

As with some other jurisdictions, Texas employment outcomes worsened somewhat. There were 1272 full-time, long-term, bar passage-required jobs (excluded law school-funded positions) for the Class of 2015, down from 1378 for the Class of 2014. J.D.-advantage positions declined from 236 to 173. Despite a decline of about 150 graduates, to 2072 graduates, among the nine Texas schools, the overall employment rate stood at 69.7% (excluding school-funded positions), down a couple of points from last year.

As usual, the chart is sorted by the "full-weight" positions, designating both full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions. There are additional designations for school-funded positions in these areas, and for all other outcomes. The table below the chart is sorted by the combined bar passage-required, J.D.-advantage, and law school-funded positions (as printed in U.S. News & World Reports), with raw figures and a year-over-year comparison beside. (As an additional note, these are the ABA-reported figures; subsequent amended figures from schools are not included.)

As usual, please notify me of any errors.

View fullsize

Peer Score	School	2015	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2014	BPR	JDA	LSF
2.4	Baylor University	88.0%	15.2	88	5	2	72.8%	92	6	1
4.0	University of Texas-Austin	84.5%	-2.1	268	20	11	86.6%	251	30	23
2.6	Southern Methodist University	83.7%	1.0	183	17	0	82.7%	177	33	0
2.6	University of Houston	78.2%	-5.4	129	42	1	83.6%	167	43	4
1.9	Texas Tech University	73.5%	1.6	138	17	0	71.8%	129	24	0
2.1	Texas A&M University	67.8%	4.0	137	17	0	63.8%	121	26	1
1.6	St. Mary's University	61.6%	-7.2	113	19	1	68.8%	129	21	0
1.6	South Texas College of Law	54.2%	-18.6	164	25	1	72.8%	241	43	0
1.4	Texas Southern University	42.9%	-3.1	52	11	0	46.0%	71	10	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Ohio in 2015

This is the fourth in the series of visualizations of legal employment outcomes in 2015. The previous visualizations were for California, New York, and DC-Maryland-Virginia.

Ohio is notable for having nine ABA-accredited law schools. Class of 2015 graduates declined significantly, from 1297 for the Class of 2014 to 1089 last year. But job outcomes actually worsened significantly--there were just 594 bar passage-required jobs among these graduates, down from 699 the previous year. The percentage of graduates employed in bar passage-required and J.D-advantage job was 68.2% among these schools, worse than last year's 69.2% rate. (Law school-funded positions add a marginal number of positions.)

As usual, the chart is sorted by the "full-weight" positions, designating both full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions. There are additional designations for school-funded positions in these areas, and for all other outcomes. The table below the chart is sorted by the combined bar passage-required, J.D.-advantage, and law school-funded positions (as printed in U.S. News & World Reports), with raw figures and a year-over-year comparison beside.

As usual, please notify me of any errors.

View fullsize

Peer Score	School	2015	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2014	BPR	JDA	LSF
3.3	Ohio State University	86.9%	-4.5	132	19	2	91.4%	155	32	5
2.4	University of Cincinnati	80.7%	-1.7	67	21	0	82.4%	79	24	0
2.6	Case Western Reserve University	70.8%	4.8	86	16	0	66.1%	91	19	1
1.8	University of Toledo	66.7%	7.3	48	21	1	59.3%	54	18	1
1.8	Cleveland State University	66.1%	-2.2	57	15	0	68.2%	74	29	0
1.7	University of Dayton	63.4%	-9.4	48	11	0	72.9%	74	28	0
1.8	University of Akron	63.4%	-8.8	73	17	0	72.2%	66	25	0
1.5	Capital University	54.1%	7.8	57	23	0	46.3%	62	12	0
1.5	Ohio Northern University	50.8%	-7.7	26	6	0	58.5%	44	11	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in California in 2015

Following up on my posts about employment outcomes in New York and in DC-Maryland-Virginia, and as I did last year with California, here are the legal employment outcomes in California for the Class of 2015.

Graduating classes continue to shrink, from 5185 in the Class of 2013, to 4731 in the Class of 2014, to 4403 in the Class of 2015.

But total job placement remains flat. There were 2807 unfunded, "full-weight" positions (full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage) for the Class of 2015, essentially unchanged from the 2849 from last year. We've seen a few years in a row where total positions among California law schools hover between 2800 and 2900. The shrinking graduating class, however, helped to improve outcomes yet again--the placement rate in these full-weight rose from 60.2% to 63.8%.

There was a significant drop-off in school funded positions, from 145 to 107. The University of Southern California dropped from 33 to 7 such positions; UC-Davis from 19 to 9; and Loyola-Los Angeles from 10 to 3. Bucking the trend, UC-Irvine increased from 13 to 20 such positions, and Whittier from 0 to 9.

As usual, the chart is sorted by the "full-weight" positions, designating both full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions. There are additional designations for school-funded positions in these areas, and other outcomes. The table below is sorted by the combined bar passage-required, J.D.-advantage, and law school-funded positions (as printed in U.S. News & World Reports), with raw figures and a year-over-year comparison beside.

As usual, please notify me of any errors.

View fullsize

Peer Score	School	2015	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2014	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.8	Stanford University	92.3%	-1.3	166	8	6	93.6%	159	5	10
3.9	University of California-Los Angeles	91.3%	3.8	247	25	34	87.5%	240	22	32
4.5	University of California-Berkeley	91.0%	-4.5	237	5	11	95.5%	245	9	20
3.2	University of California-Irvine	84.5%	-0.4	71	2	20	84.9%	59	10	13
3.4	University of Southern California	80.3%	-5.4	155	9	7	85.7%	141	12	33
3.3	University of California-Davis	77.3%	-4.4	125	9	9	81.7%	113	7	19
2.6	Loyola Law School-Los Angeles	74.3%	3.3	227	42	3	71.0%	231	41	10
3.1	University of California-Hastings	66.9%	9.2	174	28	4	57.7%	205	26	2
1.8	Chapman University	64.4%	9.3	62	23	0	55.1%	66	10	0
2.6	Pepperdine University	64.0%	4.4	104	21	1	59.6%	97	20	1
2.6	University of San Diego	62.3%	4.2	138	16	0	58.1%	128	27	1
1.8	McGeorge School of Law	59.6%	0.2	105	31	0	59.4%	84	26	1
1.5	California Western School of Law	58.5%	1.4	90	41	0	57.1%	106	18	0
2.4	Santa Clara University	53.9%	6.0	86	32	0	47.9%	93	32	0
nr	University of La Verne	51.3%	1.3	16	4	0	50.0%	20	2	0
2.0	University of San Francisco	51.2%	4.5	60	22	3	46.7%	65	27	0
1.1	Western State College of Law	50.9%	5.6	46	10	0	45.3%	49	18	0
1.3	Whittier Law School	48.9%	5.1	30	30	9	43.8%	53	32	0
1.8	Southwestern Law School	48.2%	-7.7	115	35	0	55.9%	121	53	1
1.6	Golden Gate University	41.1%	9.4	58	7	0	31.7%	45	11	2
1.2	Thomas Jefferson School of Law	39.4%	-1.6	59	36	0	41.0%	87	33	0