http://jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=89221
Still Too Many Grads: On April 30, 2015 at 9:57 am, JDU accountholder “ichininosan” posted an original thread entitled “Class of 2014 Jobs Data.” Here is the information, which he derived from the ABA Section of Legal “Education” – Employment Summary Report:
“ABA has published it -- class of 2014, ten months out:
Grads: 43,633
Full time bar-required jobs: 24,481*
Not Full time bar-req jobs: 19,152*
Firms (1-10 lawyers): 7,472
Firms (11-100 lawyers): 3,556
Firms (101+ lawyers): 6,061
Fed clerks: 1,246
* funded positions and putative solos not treated as full time employed” [Emphasis mine]
Yes, there are still too damn many graduates for the available number of attorney positions each year. What a wondrous “profession,” huh?!?! Notice the relatively miniscule number of article III clerkships, Lemming? How many of those posts – which typically lead to Biglaw or careers in legal academia – will be filled by TTT grads?!
http://jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=89221#post1219394
At 10:43 am on the same day, the author then followed up with this insight:
“My take on the numbers -- very little has changed in the demand for lawyers. It's flat. There is a market for less than 25,000 new lawyers each year and law schools will continue to produce far more graduates -- at great cost to the students and taxpayer for as long as society permits, even if that means taking in sub-145 LSAT applicants who have little hope of passing a bar exam, and much less of finding employment that justifies the cost of attendance.
Note the categories that are truly flat -- law firms with 11 or more lawyers and federal clerks. These are the categories that best reflect demand for lawyers. I've long suspected that the 1-10 lawyers category serves as a mixture of legitimate lawyer jobs and de facto quasi-unemployment recent graduates going solo or banding together to try to make it. And so, there were 3,141 fewer grads in 2014 and 467 fewer graduates entering the latter category. As class sizes decrease in the future, I expect there will be fewer graduates classified in the 1-10 law firm grouping.
The one bit of good news -- class sizes are shrinking! 2013 was the largest class ever.
The bad news -- given the cost, the number of grads for whom law school is a good economic proposition continues to be about 7,300 (about 17% of grads)[.]” [Emphasis mine]
Ichininosan nailed it perfectly, with that gem. Hell, in fact MANY recent Biglaw associates either burn out – or are dumped on their ass within 3-5 years. So unless they are able to pay off their student loans quickly, it might not be a wise investment for even members of this group.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/track_job_outcomes_9_or_10_months_after_graduation_ABA_section_of_legal_ed/
Remember When the Metric Was Nine Months Upon Graduation?: Back on June 9, 2013, the ABA Journal published a Mark Hansen article entitled “Track job outcomes 9 or 10 months after graduation? ABA legal ed council to take it up in August.” From the opening:
“The governing council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has voted to defer action until August on a proposal to push back by a month the date on which law schools measure graduate employment outcomes…
The proposal, put forth by the council’s data policy and collection committee, was to move back by a month the date that schools measure employment outcomes from Feb. 15, or nine months after graduation, until March 15.
The committee based its [recommendaTTTion] on the fact that some states, like California and New York, are slow to report bar exam results, which it said works a particular hardship on schools located in those states and on schools whose graduates seek employment in substantial numbers in those states.
Moving the employment status determination date from Feb. 15 to March 15 would help level the playing field between schools located in states that release bar exam results relatively quickly and schools located in states that take much longer, it said.” [Emphasis mine]
If you believe that the rodents extended the timeline, in order to benefit students or law grads, then you are in dire need of a brain stent. If a subsequent improvement in employment rate occurs, it looks better for the diploma mills – especially when they are seeking asses in seats.
Conclusion: In the final analysis, the American Bar Association cockraches moved the timeline back an additional month, in order to artificially improve the commodes’ employment “placement” rate. For $ome rea$on, the bastards didn’t give the law schools a 10 month window until now – even though the reasons stated above have existed for a long time. Then again, maybe it is just one hell of a “coincidence” that this proposal happened just as the published overall JD employment rate had been garbage for several consecutive years. However, the pigs cannot create full-time attorney positions out of thin air.