Law grad job rates surged to historic highs in 2024, ABA data shows
April 23 (Reuters) - The employment rate for law school graduates hit record highs in 2024, according to data, opens new tab released by the American Bar Association on Wednesday, defying predictions that a double-digit enrollment surge would weaken job prospects.
Within 10 months of leaving campus, more than 82% of last year's juris doctor class landed jobs which require bar admission. That percentage, representing the highest rate ever recorded by the ABA for bar admission jobs, was up from 80% in 2023.
For jobs that either require bar admission or for which a J.D. provides an advantage, the employment rate was more than 87% in 2024, an increase from nearly 86% the previous year.
Those strong employment numbers are especially notable because the class of 2024 had nearly 11% more graduates than its predecessor, meaning there were 3,722 more new lawyers competing for jobs. Nationwide, 38,937 students graduated from ABA-accredited law schools in 2024. The 2021 surge in new law students, which came in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, left some legal academics worried that the entry-level job market would not be able to absorb them all when they graduated in 2024.
But the number of 2024 law graduates in jobs which require bar admission increased more than 13%, more than making up for the larger class — a development University of St. Thomas law professor Jerome Organ called 'unbelievably stunning' in a blog post, opens new tab analyzing the latest jobs data.
Organ said a wave of lawyer retirements may be creating more job opportunities for recent law graduates.
'The attorneys that started the significant, sustained growth in the legal profession in the late 1970s and early 1980s are finally starting to retire or die in significant enough numbers to counterbalance new entrants into the legal profession,' he wrote.
Law firms and government were the two areas that saw the biggest entry level job growth in 2024, the ABA data shows. The number of new law graduates in government positions increased 20% between 2023 and 2024. The number of graduates employed at law firms of any size increased 13% year-over-year. Law firms enjoyed strong profits in 2024 amid robust demand across a wide array of practice areas, including litigation, corporate work and bankruptcy.
It's not clear, however, how the class of 2025 will fare in those areas. A freeze in federal government hiring has halted much of law student recruiting, while law firms have pulled back on summer associate recruiting each of the past two years.
The number of 2024 law graduates who were unemployed and looking for work 10 months after leaving campus was up nearly 3%, though the percentage of the class that was unemployed was slightly lower than in 2023, the ABA data shows.
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