Overall legal employment for the Class of 2019 strongest in years, with public interest showing spike in placement

Despite some relatively low bar passage rates in many jurisdictions over the last several years, and ahead of a (brief?) economic downturn, we’ve seen steady overall improvement in the market for law school graduates each year for several years now, and the Class of 2019 is the best yet. All trends are fairly positive, even if small, and even if some of those are driven by shrinking class sizes. Below are figures for the ABA-disclosed data (excluding Puerto Rico’s three law schools). These are ten-month figures from March 15, 2020 for the Class of 2019.

	Graduates	FTLT BPR	Placement	FTLT JDA
Class of 2012	45,751	25,503	55.7%	4,218
Class of 2013	46,112	25,787	55.9%	4,550
Class of 2014	43,195	25,348	58.7%	4,774
Class of 2015	40,205	23,895	59.4%	4,416
Class of 2016	36,654	22,874	62.4%	3,948
Class of 2017	34,428	23,078	67.0%	3,121
Class of 2018	33,633	23,314	69.3%	3,123
Class of 2019	33,462	24,409	72.9%	2,799

Placement in bar passage-required jobs continued to improve, and graduates shrank only slightly. That put placement in full-time, long-term, bar passage-required jobs up to 72.9% (excluding school-funded positions). Raw placement rose to 24,409, the highest since the Class of 2014—and that class had nearly 10,000 more graduates. We also saw a continued overall trend of declining placement in J.D.-advantage positions, consistent with the idea that these often may not be ideal outcomes for graduates. Indeed, total J.D.-advantage job placement has been cut nearly in half since the Class of 2014.

We can also compare the Class of 2019 to the Class of 2013—a recent high-water mark in total graduates and bar passage-required jobs (even if the percentage placed in those jobs was relatively low). We can look at placement by firm size, and by industry (among long-term, full-time placement).

FTLT	Class of 2013	Class of 2019	Net	Delta
Solo	926	236	-690	-74.5%
2-10	6,947	4,761	-2186	-31.5%
11-25	1,842	1,769	-73	-4.0%
26-50	1,045	1,075	30	2.9%
51-100	846	864	18	2.1%
101-205	1,027	1,059	32	3.1%
251-500	1,041	1,044	3	0.3%
501+	3,978	4,976	998	25.1%
Business/Industry	5,494	2,801	-2693	-49.0%
Government	4,360	3,656	-704	-16.1%
Public Interest	1,665	2,146	481	28.9%
Federal Clerk	1,259	1,197	-62	-4.9%
State Clerk	2,043	2,135	92	4.5%
Academia/Education	490	296	-194	-39.6%

The sharp demise of sole practitioners and small law firm placement is significant. Two years ago, I noted that placement in these positions might be the most at-risk when bar passage rates decline. Also of note is the decline in “business” jobs, which were typically J.D.-advantage positions and less desirable for graduates. Note, too, the continued rise of big law jobs—up over 1000 placements since the Class of 2013. There had been some speculation during the recession that those jobs might be disappearing and that alternative positions would be needed for future classes, but this seems to be the healthiest market to date. Law firm mergers and accelerating growth at large law firms seem to defy some previous expectations that this market would be in decline.

There are also some interesting year-over-year trends:

FTLT	Class of 2018	Class of 2019	Net	Delta
Solo	313	236	-77	-24.6%
2-10	4,999	4,761	-238	-4.8%
11-25	1,689	1,769	80	4.7%
26-50	1,020	1,075	55	5.4%
51-100	821	864	43	5.2%
101-205	1,002	1,059	57	5.7%
251-500	949	1,044	95	10.0%
501+	4,749	4,976	227	4.8%
Business/Industry	3,085	2,801	-284	-9.2%
Government	3,860	3,656	-204	-5.3%
Public Interest	1,504	2,146	642	42.7%
Federal Clerk	1,174	1,197	23	2.0%
State Clerk	2,075	2,135	60	2.9%
Academia/Education	302	296	-6	-2.0%

Year-over-year growth shows healthy and consistent growth across most law firm categories, except for a continued steep decline in sole practitioners and some decline in the smallest firms.

But check out public interest placement, up over 40% year-over-year. This is a cohort of students who matriculated in the Fall of 2016, but it’s clear that there’s both an uptick in interest and an uptick in available funds for placement as of this spring.