Legal Employment Equity Gaps: Hard Work Remains for Law Schools, Employers
Earlier this month, the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) released its annual analysis of U.S. law school employment outcomes which includes a detailed breakdown of employment gaps based on race and ethnicity.
In its finding, NALP noted that law graduates of color had lower overall employment rates compared to white graduates. While this disparity has been true for many years, it is significant to note that gaps for Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander graduates actually worsened this year.
It’s uncomfortable and disquieting to digest this news. American legal education has made significant and deliberate strides in improving diversity, equity, and inclusion on law school campuses. Each of the last three law school entering classes has been the most diverse ever. While we will not know the composition of the entering class of 2024 until mid-December when the ABA releases its Standard 509 matriculant data, we do know that the applicant pool for this fall’s entering class was the most diverse in history.
The new NALP data is an important and sobering reminder that much work needs to be done. This is not new news, and I have written many times on this difficult topic over the last 20 years. But the news is more upsetting this year, in part because some of the gaps have grown rather than gradually getting smaller, and in part because of the backdrop against which this news is delivered.
The past 12 months have been a period of intense focus on the issues of equity and diversity in higher education generally and legal education specifically. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling banning the use of race-based decisions in college admission programs. This month, more than a year after that decision, colleges and universities around the country have begun to release data describing the demographics of their incoming classes. The picture is still unclear, but a number of selective colleges and universities have reported that the proportion of Black students in the incoming class went down. All the reporting on fall enrollment has cautioned that it is too soon, with barely one full admission cycle under our belts since the SCOTUS ruling, to identify patterns or trends in undergraduate demographics. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has removed one very important tool that colleges and universities have historically used to increase diversity and equity as part of their holistic admission considerations. I am deeply concerned that the potential erosion of diversity in the entering classes at colleges and universities may over time lead to less diverse law school graduating classes, which would likely lead to an even less diverse legal profession.
It’s against that backdrop that we view the latest NALP employment data. It is also critical to understand that the disparities reported this year occurred during what was by all accounts a record-breaking job market for the Class of 2023. There was no paucity of jobs. As NALP reported in July :
This year’s graduates set records on all four of the primary metrics NALP tracks. At 92.6%, the Class of 2023 achieved the highest overall employment rate NALP has ever recorded. A record-setting 82.1% of graduates were employed in positions for which bar passage was required, another all-time high. Further, the overall employment rates remained at a record high when adjusted for those working in part-time or short-term positions. The percentage of 2023 graduates employed in full-time, long-term bar passage required/anticipated jobs was 81.1%. Finally, 58.2% of all jobs obtained were in private practice, which is the highest this figure has been in 31 years, driven primarily by growth in large firm employment.
One might expect gaps in outcomes to grow in a tight job market, but it was shocking, to me at least, to see them grow during one of the strongest legal job markets on record.
In addition to overall lower employment rates for graduates of color, NALP documents that disparities were measured in the employment rates in bar admission required/anticipated positions (essentially jobs in which students are working as attorneys), and that the rate of employment of Black and Indigenous graduates in bar admission required/anticipated positions continues to be particularly low. The new report notes that graduates of color also continue to be less likely to secure judicial clerkships compared to white graduates, and employment rates in private practice continue to be lower for Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander grads.
NALP’s Executive Director Nikia Gray has talked about how unsettling this newest employment data is: “It is deeply troubling that we continue to see such large disparities in the rates of employment for Black and Indigenous graduates as attorneys and that the gap in overall employment figures widened for most graduates of color. The progress we have made over the past 50 years to disrupt discrimination in the hiring process is highly fragile and increasingly under attack. This year’s data highlights the need to continue working to dismantle the systemic inequities that prevent graduates of color from achieving equitable employment outcomes.”
“Fragile” is the most important word she uses and should be a wakeup call to all of us. All the progress we have made around diversity, equity, and inclusion in the legal academy and the legal profession is fragile. The Supreme Court has taken away an important tool for building greater equity and inclusion in law schools and the legal profession. We are situated in a historic moment when our nation, our society, and our campuses are divided. Even the significant success we have had in diversifying the entering law school class over the last two decades is at risk of slipping through our fingers.
I can be a catastrophizer for sure — ask my family or anyone who has worked with me in the last 40 years — but that is not what I am trying to do here. My point is simpler. When it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion in legal education and in the legal profession, our work remains. We are nowhere near being able to say our work is done, and the new NALP employment data is a good reminder that our commitment must be for the long haul. We all have a role to play in seeking a more equitable profession.
We all have an obligation to know about and to understand the many ways that law school outcomes play out inequitably across the legal profession. The markers of that inequity include not just jobs and salaries, but also bar passage rates and debt loads. Each law school has an absolute obligation to identify and examine the disparities and inequities in the outcomes of its own particular graduates, to be able to talk to its prospective applicants about those disparities, and to have a plan in place to try to close those gaps and inequities that have been so carefully measured by NALP.
Members of LSAC’s Legal Education Consulting team stand ready to help our member schools with this important work.
James Leipold is a senior advisor with the Law School Admission Council. Prior to joining LSAC, he worked as the executive director of the National Association for Law Placement in Washington, D.C., for more than 18 years.