Visualizing legal employment outcomes in California in 2016

This is the fourth in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas, New York, and Illinois, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of California law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Outcomes generally improved with some important caveats. Total graduates declined nearly 10% year over year, from 4403 in the Class of 2015 to 4081 in the Class of 2016. That resulted in marginal improvements in employment outcomes: 64.3% in unfunded full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions, up from 63.8%. But total jobs in these positions declined, from 2807 to 2624, likely attributable in part to challenging bar passage rates (and perhaps because of conditions relating to California's job market).

Law school-funded positions experienced a small resurgence, from 107 positions last year (2.4% of graduates) to 118 positions (2.9% of graduates). (Please recall from the methodology that the bar chart is sorted by full-weight positions, which excludes school-funded positions, while the table below that is sorted by total employment as USNWR prints, which includes school-funded positions.)

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.4	University of California-Berkeley	94.5%	3.5	278	11	23	91.0%	237	5	11
4.8	Stanford University	94.0%	1.7	164	4	4	92.3%	166	8	6
3.9	University of California-Los Angeles	90.8%	-0.5	239	18	30	91.3%	247	25	34
3.3	University of California-Irvine	85.6%	1.0	84	3	14	84.5%	71	2	20
3.5	University of Southern California	85.5%	5.2	140	9	22	80.3%	155	9	7
3.4	University of California-Davis	81.2%	3.9	87	11	14	77.3%	125	9	9
2.6	Loyola Law School-Los Angeles	73.6%	-0.7	221	36	5	74.3%	227	42	3
3.1	University of California-Hastings	67.0%	0.1	154	46	1	66.9%	174	28	4
2.6	Pepperdine University	65.7%	1.8	98	19	2	64.0%	104	21	1
1.6	California Western School of Law	63.1%	4.6	82	29	0	58.5%	90	41	0
2.4	Santa Clara University	61.4%	7.5	102	30	0	53.9%	86	32	0
1.9	Chapman University	60.8%	-3.6	78	18	0	64.4%	62	23	0
2.7	University of San Diego	57.8%	-4.6	102	24	0	62.3%	138	16	0
1.9	McGeorge School of Law	56.8%	-2.8	56	23	0	59.6%	105	31	0
1.9	Southwestern Law School	54.5%	6.3	125	48	2	48.2%	115	35	0
2.0	University of San Francisco	47.1%	-4.1	46	20	0	51.2%	60	22	3
1.1	Western State College of Law	45.1%	-5.9	29	12	0	50.9%	46	10	0
1.6	Golden Gate University	41.1%	-0.1	30	15	1	41.1%	58	7	0
1.4	Whittier Law School	39.1%	-9.9	38	12	0	48.9%	30	30	9
1.3	Thomas Jefferson School of Law	31.9%	-7.5	46	21	0	39.4%	59	36	0
1.2	University of La Verne	31.4%	-19.9	7	9	0	51.3%	16	4	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Illinois in 2016

This is the third in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following posts on outcomes in Texas and New York, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Illinois law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Outcomes improved everywhere, highlighted by Chicago's 100% placement rate, and Illinois's nearly double-digit rise accompanied by its drop in law school-funded jobs. Total graduates declined from 2041 in 2015 to 1816 in 2016. That accompanied a rise in placement, from 73.8% to 78.1%, even as total jobs fell slightly.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.6	University of Chicago	100.0%	6.1	201	4	10	93.9%	178	0	6
4.2	Northwestern University (Pritzker)	92.4%	1.1	203	19	8	91.3%	234	21	8
3.3	University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign	87.3%	8.9	131	13	1	78.5%	118	14	10
1.7	Northern Illinois University	76.1%	0.9	52	14	1	75.2%	60	15	1
2.5	Loyola University Chicago	72.7%	7.6	119	32	1	65.1%	133	36	1
2.4	Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago-Kent)	70.7%	4.2	136	35	0	66.4%	144	40	0
2.3	DePaul University	70.1%	1.2	126	38	0	68.9%	142	35	0
1.7	Southern Illinois University-Carbondale	69.2%	4.6	67	14	0	64.6%	56	8	0
1.7	The John Marshall Law School	65.5%	1.0	153	41	0	64.6%	194	52	0

UPDATE: This post erroneously included data from Atlanta's John Marshall. It has been corrected.

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in New York in 2016

This is the second in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2016. Following up on a post on outcomes in Texas, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of New York law schools for the Class of 2016. (More about the methodology is available at the Texas post.)

Total graduates among the New York law schools dropped from 4083 to 3811. (There were about 4500 in the Class of 2014.) That helped overall placement rise from 79.3% to 83.4% in full-time, long-term, bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage jobs. That's even despite the fact that Columbia cut its law school funded placements in such positions from 28 down to 12. Overall jobs declined slightly.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.5	New York University	97.9%	1.2	430	15	30	96.7%	424	14	31
4.6	Columbia University	96.7%	-2.1	356	8	12	98.8%	360	10	28
4.2	Cornell University	92.4%	-3.1	166	2	2	95.5%	164	3	3
2.2	St. John's University	84.0%	2.2	176	29	0	81.9%	173	29	1
1.9	Pace University	82.5%	6.9	123	18	0	75.5%	93	17	1
3.3	Fordham University	82.3%	6.2	286	29	1	76.1%	274	37	1
2.7	Cardozo School of Law	82.2%	5.5	251	26	1	76.8%	246	32	0
2.0	Albany Law School	82.1%	1.8	106	17	1	80.3%	119	25	3
2.3	Hofstra University	80.3%	6.5	145	13	1	73.8%	201	17	4
2.5	Brooklyn Law School	77.0%	3.8	244	40	0	73.2%	215	31	0
1.9	New York Law School	76.3%	8.7	162	69	1	67.6%	171	66	1
2.3	Syracuse University	74.1%	8.5	100	23	0	65.6%	104	20	0
1.5	Touro College	69.8%	9.4	87	10	0	60.4%	105	8	0
2.2	City University of New York	69.2%	5.3	69	3	0	64.0%	66	5	0
2.2	University of Buffalo-SUNY	67.6%	-3.1	117	8	0	70.7%	115	20	0

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Texas in 2016

Following up on a series of posts last year, this is the first in a series visualizing employment outcomes of law school graduates from the Class of 2016. The U.S. News & World Report ("USNWR") rankings recently released, which include data for the Class of 2015, are already obsolete. The ABA will release the information soon, but individualized employment reports are available on schools' websites.

The USNWR prints the "employed" rate as "the percentage of all graduates who had a full-time job lasting at least a year for which bar passage was required or a J.D. degree was an advantage." But it does not give "full weight" in its internal ranking metric to jobs that were funded by the law school. USNWR gives other positions lower weight, but these positions are not included in the ranking tables. And while it includes J.D. advantage positions, there remain disputes about whether those positions are actually as valuable. (Some have further critiqued solo practitioners being included in the bar passage required statistics.)

The top chart is sorted by non-school-funded jobs (or "full weight" positions). The visualization breaks out full-time, long-term, bar passage required positions (not funded by the school); full-time, long term, J.D.-advantage positions (not funded by the school); school funded positions (full-time, long-term, bar passage required or J.D.-advantage positions); and all other outcomes. I included a breakdown in the visualization slightly distinguishing bar passage required positions from J.D.-advantage positions, even though both are included in "full weight" for USNWR purposes (and I still sort the chart by "full weight" positions).

The table below the chart breaks down the raw data values for the Classes of 2015 and 2016, with relative overall changes year-over-year, and is sorted by total placement (as USNWR prints). The columns beside each year break out the three categories in the total placement: FTLT unfunded bar passage required ("BPR"), FTLT unfunded J.D. advantage ("JDA"), and FTLT law school funded BPR & JDA positions ("LSF").

The first state is Texas (last year's visualization here). Total jobs in these unfunded bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions improved, from 1445 in 2015 to 1551 in 2016, even as the total graduates actually increased slightly in the state. The overall employment rate was 74.1% (including a few funded positions), up from 70.5% last year. (More granular data is available at each school's website.) Some of the improvement may be attributable to improved bar passage rates last July.

As always, if I made a mistake, please feel free to email me or comment; I confess there are always risks in data translation, and I am happy to make corrections.

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Peer Score	School	2016	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	2015	BPR	JDA	LSF
4.1	University of Texas-Austin	85.6%	1.2	289	18	3	84.5%	268	20	11
2.6	Southern Methodist University	81.6%	-2.1	176	15	0	83.7%	183	17	0
2.4	Baylor University	80.4%	-7.6	122	4	1	88.0%	88	5	2
2.7	University of Houston	79.6%	1.4	162	29	0	78.2%	129	42	1
1.9	Texas Tech University	76.4%	2.9	125	14	0	73.5%	138	17	0
1.6	St. Mary's University	68.9%	7.3	144	18	2	61.6%	113	19	1
2.2	Texas A&M University	68.3%	0.5	121	19	0	67.8%	137	17	0
1.6	South Texas College of Law Houston	62.2%	8.0	175	31	0	54.2%	164	25	1
1.5	Texas Southern University	58.9%	16.0	79	10	0	42.9%	52	11	0

Slopegraph of electoral votes and popular votes for presidential candidates

After my perspective on electoral vote and popular vote margins--in which I argued that the popular vote is meaningless--I thought about how Electoral College and popular vote margins related to one another. I took a stab at a visualization by creating a slopegraph.

This was much more challenging than I thought. And perhaps it's more deceptive than informative. But why not give it a shot and let the critiques come....

I wanted to show the relationship between electoral votes and popular votes. I started by taking the raw popular vote totals of each candidate--this could have been as a percentage of electoral vote, but 1968 really screwed things up and messed with the visualization if I were using the raw electoral vote totals as the left data point, so I took the slightly less perfect version of the raw vote totals. I started from 1944, which had just 531 electoral votes, in comparison to today's 538, and some other deviations along the way.

Then I opted for the percentage of the two-party popular vote margin, which was also imperfect as a kind of comparison--it might lead to significant fluctuations if there is a particularly significant third-party candidate who draws votes disproportionately from one candidate.

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In order to do the slopegraph on two different Y axes, I opted to calculate Z-scores for each side. That offered the relative performance between electoral votes and between popular votes, and it offered some comparable scale between the two from 1944 to 2016.

You can see a couple of significant differences between the electoral vote "landslides" of 1972 (Nixon winning 520 electoral votes, dark green) and 1980 (Reagan winning 489 electoral votes, light green). In '72, Nixon snagged a whopping 61.8% of the two-party popular vote. But in '80, Reagan secured just 55.3% of the two-party popular vote.

There's not much of a rhyme or reason between the performance in the Electoral College and the popular vote--except that we might notice particularly low-performing popular vote winners: Bush in 2000 (271 electoral votes, blue) had the razor-thin electoral advantage; somewhat healthier were Trump in 2016 (306 electoral votes, pending December 19, red) and Kennedy in 1960 (303 electoral votes, orange).

In any case, perhaps after all the flaws I've identified and the meaningless of the popular vote, anyway, such a slopegraph is of less than even marginal value. But here it is, if you find it of interest.

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.

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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