APPENDIX C: EVALUATING EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS

Like with the 509 disclosures for enrollment and scholarships, law schools are required to release data on the employment outcomes of their graduates. Let’s take a look at the 2014-2015 employment data for two law schools located in the same city. We’ll call them Law School A and Law School B.

LAW SCHOOL A:

From a graduating class of 415, 267 Law School A graduates found full-time long-term employment either requiring bar passage or for which holding a JD is considered an advantage (just over 63%), while 55 were classified as unemployed (13.2%). Of the 138 graduates who found employment at law firms, most were employed by small law firms of 10 lawyers or fewer, which typically pay less than the largest law firms.

LAW SCHOOL B:

At Law School B, 463 of its 479 graduates found full-time long-term employment either requiring bar passage or for which holding a JD is considered an advantage (96.6%), while 6 were classified as unemployed (1.2%). Of the 323 graduates who found employment at law firms, 261 of them (80.8%) were employed by firms of 501 lawyers or more.

It’s not very hard to see that Law School B’s graduates fare much better in finding employment out of law school than the graduates of Law School A. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that choosing to attend Law School A is an objectively bad choice or that attending Law School B is an objectively good one. Is someone who graduates from Law School B with $350,000 of debt better off than a graduate of Law School A who emerges debt-free? There’s no definitive answer– only by projecting employment outcomes and forecasting debt can you answer for yourself whether or not law school is a good investment.