The Red Velvet Lawyer

Here's the headline: Adapting to the Current Realities of the Employment Landscape for Lawyers, Half of Pre-Law Students Say They Plan to Use their Law School Degree in a Non-Traditional Legal Job So started an April 11, 2013 news release published by Kaplan Test Prep.  It goes on to report: The employment stats don’t paint a pretty picture for pre-law students looking ahead, but flexibility about their future career and their passion for it is driving them forward. According to a recent Kaplan Test Prep survey of more than 200 pre-law students, 50% say they plan to use their law degree in a non-traditional legal field. Of that 50%, nearly three out of five (58%) said the current job market for lawyers factored into this decision.   Forty-three (43%) percent of survey respondents overall said they plan to use their law degree to pursue a job in the business world rather than in the legal world—which helps explain why 42% said they’d likely pursue an MBA if they w

Some qualified good news.  Overall employment for 2012 law grads suggests an improving trend. The 2012 grads obtained more jobs than 2011 grads, but the class also had more graduates in it. Accordingly, the percent of employed fell to 84.7% from 85.7% the previous year.  The 2012 grads entered law school in the fall of 2009, and so the larger class size apparently indicates the choice of many college graduates to attend graduate school rather than face a job market deep in recession. The NALP Executive Director, James Leipold, stated: "I continue to believe that the Class of 2011 represented the absolute bottom of the curve on the jobs front . . . ." Many of the stories about job prospects for law school grads compare current employment rates to the pre-recession rate of 2007.  This comparison misrepresents the situation because employment that year represented a 24-year high of 91.9% according to NALP.   I compute the 20-year average (from 1988 to 2007), as 88.7%, wh