Graduates may have difficult time finding Rhode Island legal jobs

Posted on August 24, 2012

A new study finds that graduates may struggle acquiring Rhode Island legal jobs and other cities across America.

Selected Findings from the Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2011 released today by NALP, the association for legal career professionals, the overall employment rate for new law school graduates is, at 85.6%, the lowest it has been since 1994, when the rate stood at 84.7%.

There are other structural weaknesses in the job market. The employment profile for this class also marks a continued interruption of employment patterns for new law school graduates that had, prior to 2010, been undisturbed for decades.

According to NALP, the NALP Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2011 measures the employment rate of graduates as of February 15, 2012, or nine months after a typical May graduation.

Analyses of these data reveal an employment rate that has fallen more than six percentage points since reaching a 23-year high of 91.9% in 2007 and marks the lowest employment rate since the aftermath of the last significant recession to affect the U.S. legal economy.

The Class of 1994 was the last class with an employment rate lower than that for the Class of 2011, and since 1985 there have only been three classes with an overall employment rate below 85.6%. All of those occurred in the aftermath of the 1990-1991 recession: 83.5% for 1992, 83.4% for 1993, and 84.7% for 1994.

NALP Executive Director James Leipold noted, “For members of the Class of 2011, caught as they were in the worst of the recession, entering law school in the fall of 2008 just as Lehman Brothers collapsed, going through OCI in the fall of 2009, and summering in 2010 if they were lucky enough to secure a summer associate spot, the entry-level job market can only be described as brutal. When this class took their LSATs and applied for law school there were no signs that the legal economic boom was showing any signs of slowing, and yet by the time they graduated they faced what was arguably the worst entry-level legal employment market in more than 30 years.”