13 Jun Law Jobs Still Not Plentiful

The ABA Journal reports that the law school graduating class of 2012 had it pretty much as bad as the 2011 folks when it comes to finding work. Fully nine months after graduation only a little more than half of the new grads had a job that required a law degree. Another 12% were in jobs where a law degree was preferred but not necessary. And a full 10% of the grads were still looking for work 9 months after graduating. The rest were either working part time or in jobs where a law degree was not relevant.

And while the 2012 class was the biggest ever, those were folks that entered law school in 2009 after applying in 2008 when things still seemed pretty darn rosy. There has since been a more than 30% drop in law school applications, as we have reported. The head of a group seeking reform of law schools was quoted urging students to consider waiting to go to law school if they plan to finance the education with debt, given the challenging job prospects.

There are various ways to fix the law school tuition issue. The easiest would be to allow a student to sit for the bar exam after two years of school, as New York State is currently considering. Of course replacing the third year of school with a 2-year apprenticeship could also help. Otherwise we may just need to adjust the sizes of our law schools and professorships to adjust to the new smaller normal.