Latest NALP Employment Figures Should Inform Law School Strategy

By James Leipold

Late last month, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) published its most recent annual findings on law school graduate employment, noting record high employment figures in nearly every employment category for the most recent class for which they have complete data.

“The Class of 2023 crushed four of the primary metrics that NALP has been tracking over the past five decades, setting new records for the overall employment rate, employment in bar passage required/anticipated jobs, and median and average salaries. In addition, private practice employment was at the highest level in more than 30 years,” NALP announced in a press release on July 25 .

This is good news for the law school admission community and legal education. Positive news about the law school graduate employment market is almost always good news for law school application volume, generally bolstering the pool of candidates, while negative news about the law school graduate employment market is almost always bad news for law school application volume, depressing law school applications, at least at the margins.

And while this is certainly good news, the NALP report tells a more complicated story than it might seem at first glance. The announcement from NALP about the record-setting jobs numbers from the class of 2023 came with a strong note of caution – the gravy train for law firm jobs, the core of the law school graduate employment market, is about to experience a very measurable slowdown, and at least the next two graduating classes are expected to face a tougher, and maybe even much tougher, job market.

My more than 20 years of studying the job market for U.S. law school graduates has taught me two important things. One is that, like the market for a legal education itself, the job market is cyclical and is best described as a series of peaks and valleys. The second is that the job market for law school graduates is very resilient, and despite periods of boom and bust, most law school graduates secure jobs and careers that are rewarding and fulfilling, even as some grads face a bumpy start right out of law school during those periods of slowdown.

Let’s break down the very positive numbers that NALP has provided :

• The employment rate for the class of 2023 rose to 92.6%, the highest rate ever recorded since NALP began tracking employment rates for graduates in 1982.
• The unemployment rate for the class of 2023 was 5.8%, the lowest unemployment rate since the class of 2007.
• The percentage of graduates obtaining jobs for which bar passage is required reached 82.1%, an all-time high for the period since 2001 when NALP began using the current job classifications.
• A record 58.2% of employed graduates obtained a job in private practice, the highest percentage of graduates working in law firms since the class of 1992 – a span of more than 30 years.
• Graduate salary figures also hit new highs as the national median salary measured at $90,000 and the median law firm salary reaching $165,000.
• Public service jobs, including military and other government jobs, judicial clerkships, and public interest positions, all grew, with public interest employment numbers hitting new all-time highs as the percentage of all jobs in that sector measured at 9.7%.

So, what about the bad news?

“Even with these incredible outcomes there are suggestions in the data that the market is starting to contract and that future classes may not fare as well,” said Nikia Gray, NALP’s executive director , as she noted that members of the class of 2023 were the beneficiaries of the “final tailwinds of the talent wars,” a period of intense law firm hiring that followed the COVID-19 shutdown.

As Karen Sloan writes in analyzing the NALP employment data for Reuters , “Many 2023 law graduates were hired in 2021 and 2022, when busy law firms were competing fiercely for new associates and lateral attorney hires. Starting associate pay climbed from $205,000 to $215,000 at many large firms in 2022, and firms doled out multiple bonuses to entice associates to stay ... But law firm recruiting activity hit an 11-year low this fall as firms made fewer summer associate offers to law students amid lower demand for transactional practices.”

In NALP’s published Jobs & JDs Selected Findings report for the class of 2023 , Gray goes on to write that members of the subsequent classes of 2024 and 2025 have already experienced “one of the most difficult summer associate recruiting cycles since the Great Recession.”

Another complicating factor is that the law school class of 2024 is larger than the immediately preceding classes, meaning that more students are competing for fewer jobs. This underscores again the tight connection between law school enrollment and employment success after graduation, and as supply and demand move in different directions at this moment, we can expect several cycles of more negative news about law school graduates, beginning at about this time next year. 

This inevitable turn in the market should not blunt our celebration of the remarkably robust employment outcomes achieved by the class of 2023, and law schools should capitalize on this good news in their marketing and recruiting efforts for the coming application cycle. And, with time to prepare for the more negative news cycles about law graduate jobs that will almost inevitably follow next year and the year after that, law schools should use this strategic intelligence for careful planning for enrollment and budget.

As I noted at the onset, the job market for law school graduates has been remarkably resilient over the more than 50 years that NALP has been faithfully measuring it, with law school graduates faring far better in the job market than those without law degrees, even in times of recession. Also, important longitudinal research from the NALP Foundation has demonstrated repeatedly that law school graduates report high levels of satisfaction with both their legal education and their legal careers, with little variation between graduates who have graduated during boom times (like the members of the class of 2023) and those who have graduated during periods when the job market has been less robust.

In the pattern of peaks and valleys that describe law graduate employment, this particularly high peak has almost certainly reached its zenith, but there is no cause for doom and gloom as we begin traveling into something of a valley. Law schools should use this market data judiciously, calibrating the expectation setting they do with future graduates against the financial constraints imposed by keeping law schools fiscally afloat. I urge some realistic caution in delivering this current bit of very good news about the job market, and in setting near- and medium-term enrollment goals. Also, this is as good a time as any to be sure that you are a master of your own law school’s employment outcome data so that you can speak honestly and with confidence to your own applicants, and if you have any doubts or uncertainties about what to say about jobs in your recruiting work, pay a visit to your colleagues in your own career services office.

Finally, if you have any questions about the employment market that cannot be answered by team members at your law school, you should not hesitate to reach out to me at LSAC at jleipold@LSAC.org, or to contact the staff at NALP.