Job market remains slow for 2013 grads

The job picture looks a little brighter for the Class of 2013 than it did for the previous year’s crop of law school graduates, but a large portion of newly minted attorneys still don’t hold positions in their chosen field, the American Bar Association reported today.

Nationwide data released by the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar shows that nine months after graduation, 57 percent of spring 2013 graduates held long-term, full-time positions that required passing the bar.

An additional 10.1 percent held long-term, full-time positions where a law degree was a plus in obtaining or performing the job, the data shows.

Both these figures were slightly higher than the figures for the Class of 2012 — 56.2 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively — nine months after it graduated.

The data also shows that the percentage of graduates who are unemployed — both those who are seeking jobs and those who are not — rose to 11.2 percent nine months after the 2013 class graduated, compared to 10.6 percent nine months after the 2012 class graduated.

John E. Corkery, dean of The John Marshall Law School, said the figures show that the “job market is still very tough.”

“It’s raining out there,” he said. “The weather’s not good, but we work with it.”

Corkery said he expects the outlook to improve in the next few years.

Admissions to law school were at an all-time high in 2010, leading to the largest-ever graduating class in 2013, he said.

The decline in the number of people taking the Law School Admission Test after 2010, he said, will lead to smaller graduating classes and fewer lawyers competing for jobs.

Harold J. Krent, dean of IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, also sees a glimmer of light through the clouds.

“I think we’ve bottomed out last year,” he said. “Things look incrementally improved this year.”

But the climb, he said, “will be pretty slow.”

Daniel B. Rodriguez, dean of the Northwestern University School of Law, is more optimistic.

Looking only at the percentage of graduates who have jobs that required them to pass the bar produces a skewed picture, he said.

The 10.1 percent of graduates who work in jobs where a law degree is helpful but not required did not necessarily set out to practice law, he said.

“Folks come to law school for a variety of reasons,” Rodriguez said. “There are positions that are available that are diverse.”

And those diverse positions, he continued, are not any less important or fulfilling than jobs that require passing the bar.

The data reported by the ABA covers the job status on Feb. 15 of 97.7 percent of the students who graduated from ABA-approved law schools in 2013.

The 46,776 graduates is slightly larger than the 46,364-member Class of 2012.

The raw numbers for graduates of Illinois law schools who are in long-term, full-time positions are:

• University of Chicago Law School: 215 graduates — 199 in positions that require bar passage; eight in positions where a law degree is advantageous; two unemployed.
• DePaul University College of Law: 284 graduates — 132 in positions that require bar passage; 34 in positions where a law degree is advantageous; 56 unemployed.
• IIT Chicago-Kent: 282 graduates — 158 in positions that require bar passage; 32 in positions where a degree is advantageous; 37 unemployed.
• University of Illinois College of Law: 231 graduates — 168 in positions that require bar passage; 14 in positions where a degree is advantageous; 24 unemployed.
• John Marshall: 446 graduates — 231 in positions that require bar passage; 58 in positions where a degree is advantageous; 62 unemployed.
• Loyola University Chicago School of Law: 286 graduates — 144 in positions that require bar passage; 42 in positions where a degree is advantageous; 31 unemployed.
• Northern Illinois University College of Law: 117 graduates — 63 in positions that require bar passage; nine in positions where a degree is advantageous; 22 unemployed.
• Northwestern: 284 graduates, 225 in positions that require bar passage and 33 in positions where a degree is advantageous; 12 are unemployed.
• Southern Illinois University School of Law: 129 graduates — 93 in positions that require bar passage; eight in positions where a degree is advantageous; 10 unemployed.