The National Association for Law Placement’s (NALP) latest data release confirms that the employment market for 2021 law school graduates was “one of the strongest ever.”
The report’s findings include:
The overall employment rate for the 2021 graduating class, 91.9 percent, increased 3.5 percentage points from 2020, and matched the record employment rate set by 2007 graduates. Conversely, the unemployment rate (measured 10 months post-graduation) fell three percentage points in 2020 to 6.3 percent, and those unemployed and seeking employment fell from 8.1 percent to 5.2 percent.
Full-time, long-term, and bar passage required jobs, the gold standard among law school graduates, increased 4.3 percentage points from the previous year, to 76.7 percent—a record high.
The percentage of those taking private practice jobs came in at its highest level (57 percent) since 2003.
An increasing proportion of graduates also entered into public interest employment. Employment in public interest has gradually increased over the past five years and this year matched the previous year’s record high of 8.7 percent.
Other employment sectors held steady. The number of 2021 graduates taking judicial clerkships came in at 3,402; it has been between 3,100 and 3,500 since 2008. Similarly, 11.1 percent of 2021 graduates chose government employment (non-judicial clerkship), which is on par with the 11 to 13 percent who have entered this sector post-graduation for more than 20 years.
The Class of 2021 graduates also garnered record salaries. The class’s mean salary increased 6.4 percent (from 2020) to $109,469. And the median starting salary increased to $80,000, up $5,000 from the previous year. Law firm hires received a mean salary increase of 6.6 percent to $137,844; the median salary increased from $130,000 to $131,500. Among the largest law firms, starting salaries jumped from $190,000 to $205,000 (and in some cases, $215,000).
James G. Leipold, Executive Director of the NALP, summarized the findings in the report, “This is as strong a set of employment and salary outcomes as I have seen in my more than 18 years here at the NALP. Certainly, they confirm that the slight downturns in many markers measured last year were not the beginning of a larger downturn in the job market but instead were one-time downturns that reflected the market interruptions and many complicating factors brought on by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding those interruptions, the legal employment market for new law school graduates has remained strong, and as we have seen in the past, remarkably resilient despite economic challenges.”