Overall legal employment for the Class of 2022 improves slightly, with large law firm and public interest placement growing
The aftermath of a pandemic, bar exam challenges, or a softening economy didn’t dampen the employment outcomes for law school graduates in 2022. Outcomes improved a touch. Below are figures for the ABA-disclosed data (excluding Puerto Rico’s three law schools). These are ten-month figures from March 15, 2023 for the Class of 2022.
| 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 |
| Class of 2020 | 33,926 | 24,006 | 70.8% | 2,514 |
| Class of 2021 | 35,310 | 26,423 | 74.8% | 3,056 |
| Class of 2022 | 35,638 | 27,607 | 77.5% | 2,734 |
Placement is very good. There was an increase of over 1000 full-time, long-term bar passage-required jobs year-over-year, and the graduating class size was the largest since 2016. It yielded a placement of 77.5%. J.D. advantage jobs decreased somewhat, perhaps consistent with a hot law firm market last year.
It’s remarkable to compare the placement rates from the Class of 2012 to the present, from 56% to 78%. And it’s largely attributable to the decline in class size.
Here’s some comparison of the year-over-year categories.
| FTLT | Class of 2021 | Class of 2022 | Net | Delta |
| Solo | 234 | 160 | -74 | -31.6% |
| 2-10 | 5,205 | 5,070 | -135 | -2.6% |
| 11-25 | 2,004 | 2,115 | 111 | 5.5% |
| 26-50 | 1,218 | 1,360 | 142 | 11.7% |
| 51-100 | 1,003 | 1,175 | 172 | 17.1% |
| 101-205 | 1,143 | 1,246 | 103 | 9.0% |
| 251-500 | 1,108 | 1,145 | 37 | 3.3% |
| 501+ | 5,740 | 6,137 | 397 | 6.9% |
| Business/Industry | 3,070 | 2,797 | -273 | -8.9% |
| Government | 3,492 | 3,591 | 99 | 2.8% |
| Public Interest | 2,573 | 2,875 | 302 | 11.7% |
| Federal Clerk | 1,189 | 1,130 | -59 | -5.0% |
| State Clerk | 2,094 | 2,053 | -41 | -2.0% |
| Academia/Education | 328 | 375 | 47 | 14.3% |
The trend continues last years uptick in public interest placement, which is not an outlier. Public interest job placement is up over 100% since the Class of 2017. These eye-popping number continue to rise. It is likely not an understatement to say that law students are increasingly oriented toward public interest, and that there are ample funding opportunities in public interest work to sustain these graduates. (I include a visualization of the trend of raw placement into these jobs here.)
Sole practitioners continue to slide significantly (they were in the low 300s not long ago in raw placement).
Additionally, extremely large law firm placement continues to boom. Placement is up more than thousands graduates in the last several years. Placement in firms with at least 101 attorneys is around 8500. Nearly 25% of all law school graduates landed in a “Big Law” firm, and more than 30% of those who were employed in a full-time, long-term, bar passage-required job landed in a “Big Law” firm.
Federal clerkship placement has dropped a bit, perhaps because more judges are hiring those with work experience rather than recent graduates, or perhaps because the pool of potential candidates is shrinking as more judges hire students for multiple clerkships.