http://www.nalp.org/2014_selected_pr
Selected Findings: On July 31, 2015, the bitches and hags at NALP issued a press release labeled “Employment Rate for New Law School Graduates Rises by More Than Two Percentage Points - But Overall Number of Jobs Falls as the Size of the Graduating Class Shrinks.” How concise, huh?! Take a look at this opening:
“According to "Selected Findings from the Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2014" released today by NALP, for the first time since 2007 and the onset of the Great Recession, the employment rate for law school graduates has risen, from just 84.5% for the Class of 2013 to 86.7% for the Class of 2014, a jump of 2.2 percentage points.
This good news comes, however, with a few caveats. First, and most importantly, the employment rate measured for the Class of 2014 is not directly comparable with the employment rates for the classes that preceded it because beginning with the Class of 2014, following a similar decision made by the American Bar Association, employment status information was collected as of March 15, approximately ten months after a typical May graduation, rather than February 15, as had been the case since 1996. (Prior to that, employment data had been collected six months after graduation.)
The other important piece of the jobs picture for the Class of 2014 is that the class was substantially smaller than the class that preceded it. (Indeed, according to the ABA it was nearly 3,000 graduates smaller than the Class of 2013, which will likely stand as the largest class to ever pass through the American legal education pipeline, at least for the foreseeable future.) And, importantly, that smaller class found fewer jobs than the class before it. The overall number of jobs secured by law school graduates had grown in each of the three preceding years, with the Class of 2010 holding the low post-recession watermark for the actual number of jobs found. For the Class of 2014, the overall number of jobs secured was three percent fewer than the Class of 2013, but because the size of the graduating class itself was more than six percent smaller than the previous class, the overall employment rate went up.” [Emphasis mine]
For those of you still considering law school, I will point out the following, since you find yourself in the lower end IQ crowd: the employment “placement” went up slightly by 2.2% but the number of jobs landed by 2014 law grads decreased by about 3 percent. Do you still want to take this big-ass gamble?!?! Perhaps, I need to draw you idiots a diagram with Crayola on posterboard.
http://www.nalp.org/uploads/NationalSummaryChart2014Class.pdf
Class of 2014 National Summary Report: If you prefer graphs or visuals, check out NALP’s National Summary Report for the JD Class of 2014. Last year, a total of 42,524 men and women earned their law degree from an ABA-accredited diploma mill. Employment status was known for 42,139 of these grads. They competed for 27,928 jobs where bar passage was required. What type of “profession” allows its member $chool$ to pump out 1.52 graduates for each opening?!?!
Keep in mind that law school pigs count all types of employment – i.e. full-time, part-time, long term, short term, legal, and non-law – when calculating the “placement” rate. With that knowledge, a total of 5,609 JDs fell into the following four categories, after 10 months: pursuing a degree full time; start date deferred past 3/15/2015; not employed and seeking; and unemployed but not looking for work. This brings the employment rate to 86.7 percent, i.e. (42,139-5,609)/42,139. After all, if you are pursuing another academic “credential,” it shows that law school did not pay off for you.
Scroll down to page two of this PDF. Under Size of Firm, you will notice that this group landed 18,587 private firm positions – including law clerk, paralegal and administrator. This figure takes the following into account: 816 desperate-ass solo practitioners, 7,670 grads in offices of 1-10 lawyers, and 1,870 typically making peanuts in firms of 11-25 attorneys. By the way, only 5,043 members of the JD Class of 2014 landed positions in offices with more than 250 lawyers – and this is consistent with recent years.
This represents a paltry 11.9% of all grads from this cohort, i.e. (5,043/42,524)*100. Still like your odds, waterhead?!?! In fact, this is skewed. If you enter law school, you do not have a roughly 1 in 9 chance of landing Biglaw – a job that may justify staggering amounts of NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt and three years of mind-numbing “education.” That is because those offers are largely made to graduates of the top 5-10 law schools.
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/grad-debt-rankings
Average Law Student Indebtedness:US “News” & World Report provides a list of the average amount of student debt incurred by suckers who specifically took out loans to attend an ABA-accredited commode or trash can. These figures pertain to the Class of 2014, i.e. the same group of idiots covered by the NALP pages above. Do you think it would be a good idea to graduate fromTTTThoma$ Jeffer$on Law Sewer, for an additional $172,445?! Perhaps, you believe that you are so amazing that YOU can walk away fromFourth Tier Florida Coastal Sewer of Law– with $162,785 in extra debt – and still emerge a rousing success. Hell, these figures don’t even take undergrad loans, or accruing interest during enrollment, into account.
Conclusion: While several subsequent JD classes will be smaller, and this should improve job prospects slightly for law grads from each cohort, the positions available are certainly not worth incurring an additional $120K-$180K in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt. Also, the term “employment placement” is a joke, as it pertains to law school. As those of us who have been through the experience can attest, “career development” hags DO NOT help find you find jobs.
Typically, these rodents excel in providing you with Power Point presentations and handouts on subjects such as “Sprucing Up Your Resume” and “Letting Your Personality Shine Through on Cover Letters and Writing Samples.” Furthermore, these dolts devote their time to assisting those in the top 10% of the class land decent employment, i.e. these cockroaches help those who need it the least. Yes, that is a great use of resources, right?!?! Don’t be a dumbass and throw your future away, simply because fewer graduates translates into supposed better odds at landing legal work. Again, taking on massive amounts of student loans – for a chance to land a $40K annual toiletlaw job – is not a good investment or life choice.