Following up on my post from last year, here are the employment outcomes for law schools in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia for the Class of 2015. The U.S. News & World Report rankings recently released, which include data for the Class of 2014, 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 really as valuable. (Some have further critiqued solo practitioners being included in the bar passage required statistics.)

The 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. This year, 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 2014 and 2015, 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"). Total jobs in these bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage positions declined somewhat, from 3119 to 2825. Part of this was undoubtedly fueled by a significant decline in school-funded positions, from 271 to just 90--many schools have rather dramatically slashed such positions. There were about 250 fewer graduates, from 3992 to 3740. Nevertheless, overall prospects for graduates became worse: the overall employment rate was 75.5% (including all funded positions), down from 78.1% last year. More granular data is available at each school's website.

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.