Law school 1L JD enrollment holds steady for 7th straight year as non-JD enrollment climbs to all-time highs

The 2020 law school enrollment figures have been released. They show a slightly worse first-year JD enrollment and continued growth in non-JD enrollment. Almost 16% of law school enrollees, nearly 1 in 6, are not enrolled in a JD program.

While this is the second straight year of a slight decline in 1L enrollment, it remains mostly flat. (The 2010 peak was 52,488 1Ls.) In 2018, 1L enrollment was 38,283; it fell to 38,202 this year. It’s the seventh straight year of enrollment between 37,000 and 38,500, remarkable consistency.

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Total JD enrollment also increased slightly to 114,520, the highest figure since 119,775 in 2014-2015 (but still well off the peak of 2010-2011 with 147,525).

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Non-JD enrollment continues to climb. I’m mildly surprised, as I thought pandemic-related travel restrictions coupled with some Department of Education regulations might have dampened the market for at least some foreign-educated non-JD enrollment, but apparently the non-JD market remains strong.

The ABA changed its definitions a few years ago, which resulted in a spike in reported non-JD enrollment, but the steady climb continues. (It’s also worth noting that those enrolled in both JD and non-JD programs simultaneously, at least in recent years, are counted in each set, so this slightly overstates, to an unknown degree, non-JD enrollment.)

21,292 were enrolled in non-JD programs, a 1,400-student jump over last year. It’s now about 16% of all law school enrollment.

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The ABA didn’t track non-JD online enrollment separately this year, and understandably so, I suppose, given that most is online. More information about the kinds of degrees and the outcomes of those who secure these degrees would be welcome information, the kind of information that remains unavailable at this time. (I recently looked at debt and earnings of graduates of such programs from data disclosed by the Department of Education.)

Here I also highlight a handful of schools with the highest non-JD enrollment as a percentage of total law school enrollment. There are a few heavy-hitters that are driving a lot of the non-JD enrollment.

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Federal Judicial Clerkship Report of Recent Law School Graduates, 2020 Edition

I’ve updated my Federal judicial Report of Recent Law School Graduates, which is now available via SSRN. It tracks recent federal judicial clerkship hiring tends by school and by region, “elite” legal employment placement rates, and trends within the federal judiciary in hiring recent law school graduates. Most data is a three-year average for the Classes of 2017, 2018, and 2019 to smooth out any one-year outliers. Here’s one chart, judicial clerkship placement rate of recent graduates for these three classes: 31 schools had at least 5% placed into federal judicial clerkships.

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For more charts, figures, and analysis, check out the entire report.

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in California in 2019

This is the eighth and last in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2019. Following posts on outcomes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Florida, DC-Virginia-Maryland, and New York, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of California law schools for the Class of 2019. (More about the methodology is available at the Pennsylvania post.) Last year's California post is here.

Please note, of course, that “J.D.-advantage” jobs may differ significantly from school to school, which may alter how one views the “overall” rate. (USNWR treats them as equivalent, but there are good reasons to think they may not be equivalent; and here, there are significant disparities among some schools and their J.D.-advantage placement.) And recall that I sort the table below to include school-funded positions, while the chart only includes unfunded positions. (It’s a reason I try to display the information in different ways!)

In some ways, California’s gains have come as three law schools have closed or been removed from ABA-accredited status. The removal of two schools from last year alone would have bumped the overall employment rate up in 2018 from 74.9% to 77.3%. But overall, bar passage-required jobs increased by about 100 among California’s 18 law schools reported below. J.D.-advantage jobs increased slightly, unlike most other regions of the country, and law school-funded positions fell overall. Total employment stood at 79.4%, another improvement.

I think this will be my last year doing these visualizations. They are a fair amount of work. And this year in particular there has been essentially no interest in the employment outcomes of these regions. If that’s the case, I’ll move on to other areas for blogging.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2019	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads	2018	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads
4.5	University of California-Berkeley	97.0%	1.2	296	6	16	328	95.8%	276	4	16	309
4.1	University of California-Los Angeles	95.6%	3.1	279	11	13	317	92.5%	257	19	20	320
4.8	Stanford University	95.1%	-1.8	156	9	8	182	96.9%	165	12	10	193
3.6	University of Southern California	90.6%	3.3	191	11	1	224	87.3%	162	11	6	205
3.4	University of California-Davis	88.3%	1.9	121	7	8	154	86.4%	135	8	10	177
3.5	University of California-Irvine	86.5%	-0.3	110	5	7	141	86.8%	85	3	11	114
2.7	Pepperdine University	83.7%	5.1	135	14	0	178	78.6%	114	18	0	168
2.7	Loyola Law School-Los Angeles	81.6%	-4.1	216	41	5	321	85.7%	213	24	3	280
3.1	University of California-Hastings	79.6%	0.9	209	25	12	309	78.7%	178	28	12	277
1.9	McGeorge School of Law	76.5%	12.6	94	23	0	153	63.9%	66	19	0	133
1.9	Chapman University	74.9%	1.0	92	36	0	171	73.9%	75	24	0	134
2.7	University of San Diego	74.3%	2.0	123	13	0	183	72.3%	172	19	0	264
2.5	Santa Clara University	67.8%	-0.9	128	15	0	211	68.7%	127	22	0	217
1.9	Southwestern Law School	64.5%	1.3	92	37	0	200	63.2%	128	39	1	266
1.5	California Western School of Law	61.8%	0.7	95	36	0	212	61.1%	86	32	0	193
1.1	Western State College of Law	57.5%	0.5	41	20	0	106	57.0%	49	8	0	100
1.5	Golden Gate University	50.5%	2.3	37	15	2	107	48.2%	27	11	2	83
1.9	University of San Francisco	49.6%	4.6	47	12	0	119	45.0%	49	26	1	169

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in New York in 2019

This is the seventh in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2019. Following posts on outcomes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and DC-Virginia-Maryland, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of New York law schools for the Class of 2019. (More about the methodology is available at the Pennsylvania post.) Last year's New York post is here.

Please note, of course, that “J.D.-advantage” jobs may differ significantly from school to school, which may alter how one views the “overall” rate. (USNWR treats them as equivalent, but there are good reasons to think they may not be equivalent; and here, there are significant disparities among some schools and their J.D.-advantage lacement.) And recall that I sort the table below to include school-funded positions, while the chart only includes unfunded positions. (It’s a reason I try to display the information in different ways!) The Class of 2019 saw continued upward trends. Bar passage-required jobs rose from 2882 to 3027; J.D.-advantage positions fell and school funded positions held steady. And while total graduates increased slightly to 3730, the improvement in bar passage-required positions helped increase placement from 86.1% to 87.6%.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer score	School	2019	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads	2018	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads
4.7	Columbia University	98.6%	2.2	416	3	6	431	96.4%	420	8	5	449
4.6	New York University	96.1%	-0.7	429	6	30	484	96.7%	411	3	29	458
2.3	St. John's University	91.0%	-0.6	192	10	0	222	91.6%	186	21	0	226
4.2	Cornell University	89.2%	-4.2	170	2	1	194	93.4%	178	4	1	196
3.3	Fordham University	88.0%	-0.5	310	25	1	382	88.4%	302	24	2	371
1.9	New York Law School	87.5%	6.5	200	38	0	272	81.0%	167	52	2	273
2.9	Cardozo School of Law	85.4%	0.5	228	11	1	281	84.9%	207	23	1	272
2	Pace University	85.4%	5.9	147	11	0	185	79.5%	118	14	0	166
2.3	Hofstra University	83.4%	1.0	162	13	1	211	82.4%	186	11	0	239
2.6	Brooklyn Law School	82.9%	2.4	240	31	0	327	80.5%	245	48	0	364
2.0	Albany Law School	82.4%	3.4	99	12	1	136	79.0%	86	8	0	119
2.3	City University of New York	80.4%	6.4	126	9	0	168	74.0%	64	7	0	96
2.3	University of Buffalo-SUNY	80.1%	2.1	96	17	0	141	78.1%	101	13	0	146
1.5	Touro College	77.9%	7.7	85	3	0	113	70.2%	95	4	0	141
2.4	Syracuse University	74.9%	-1.4	127	10	0	183	76.3%	116	16	0	173

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Florida in 2019

This is the fifth in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2019. Following posts on outcomes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, and Illinois, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Illinois law schools for the Class of 2019. (More about the methodology is available at the Pennsylvania post.) Last year's Florida post is here.

Florida’s report was quite strong last year but appears to have taken a step back this year. Total bar passage-require jobs dropped, from 1430 in 2018 to 1375 in 2019. J.D.-advantage jobs dropped, too. But there was also a 6% decline in total graduates (largely attributable to Florida Coastal), so the overall placement rate hovered around 74%.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2019	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads	2018	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads
3.3	University of Florida	91.2%	2.8	282	20	0	331	88.4%	258	24	1	320
2.2	Florida International University	88.8%	5.9	119	8	0	143	82.9%	109	12	0	146
3.1	Florida State University	85.9%	0.1	135	11	0	170	85.8%	150	18	1	197
2.2	Stetson University	79.0%	-4.3	175	24	0	252	83.3%	168	21	0	227
2.8	University of Miami	78.5%	-5.8	225	31	0	326	84.3%	249	36	0	338
1.6	Nova Southeastern University	66.4%	8.8	139	11	0	226	57.5%	109	17	0	219
1.2	Florida Coastal School of Law	65.2%	4.4	37	6	0	66	60.8%	94	19	0	186
1.5	St. Thomas University	63.6%	-0.6	102	10	0	176	64.3%	111	6	0	182
1.6	Florida A&M University	53.5%	3.1	52	17	0	129	50.4%	52	14	0	131
1.2	Barry University	52.2%	-15.7	83	13	0	184	67.9%	91	38	0	190
1.1	Ave Maria School of Law	48.5%	-17.2	26	6	0	66	65.7%	39	7	0	70

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Illinois in 2019

This is the fourth in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2019. Following posts on outcomes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Illinois law schools for the Class of 2019. (More about the methodology is available at the Pennsylvania post.) Last year's Illinois post is here.

The market appears to be flat to slightly declining for Illinois law schools, in contrast to other states so far. Graduates fell from 1696 to 1604, and placement in bar passage-required jobs was essentially unchanged from 1162 positions to 1158. But J.D.-advantage placement and law school-funded jobs dropped off a bit, for a slight overall placement rate improvement from 82% to 84%.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2019	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads	2018	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads
4.6	University of Chicago	97.5%	-0.5	189	2	6	202	98.1%	188	4	10	206
4.2	Northwestern University (Pritzker)	95.8%	-1.1	208	22	0	240	96.9%	205	12	5	229
3.2	University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign	94.3%	2.3	107	8	0	122	91.9%	118	19	0	149
1.7	Northern Illinois University	86.7%	20.5	65	5	2	83	66.2%	43	8	0	77
2.6	Loyola University Chicago	84.3%	-1.2	140	26	0	197	85.5%	119	46	0	193
2.3	DePaul University	79.8%	6.4	120	50	0	213	73.5%	126	40	0	226
2.6	Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago-Kent)	78.9%	-2.2	157	26	0	232	81.0%	149	39	0	232
2.1	UIC - John Marshall	67.1%	-0.4	120	35	0	231	67.5%	151	33	1	274
1.6	Southern Illinois University-Carbondale	66.7%	-0.6	52	4	0	84	67.3%	63	11	0	110

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Texas in 2019

This is the third in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2019. Following posts on outcomes in Pennsylvania and Ohio, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Texas law schools for the Class of 2019. (More about the methodology is available at the Pennsylvania post.) Last year's Texas post is here.

Total jobs, including bar passage-required jobs, improved significantly. Bar passage require jobs rose from 1366 to 1430, while J.D. advantage positions fell slightly. Total graduates also declined slightly. Job placement improved from 76% to 80%, including a few law school-funded jobs.

I typically don’t comment on particular school performances, but I imagine this one may receive some attention. I don’t make any assessment as to the quality of positions. Read the methodology for more—I use the employment placement figures that USNWR adopts, with some different ways of visualizing the data. Texas, for instance, placed 122 graduates into law firms with more than 100 attorneys, and another 34 into federal clerkships. Baylor is less than half the size and placed 16 & 9, respectively. Texas A&M is half the size and placed 10 & 4, respectively. And SMU is slightly smaller but placed 81 & 3, respectively. Again, this is one of many metrics one can use.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2019	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads	2018	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads
2.4	Baylor University	93.7%	4.7	116	2	1	127	89.0%	100	5	0	118
2.4	Texas A&M University	92.3%	10.4	107	13	0	130	81.9%	93	20	0	138
4.1	University of Texas-Austin	89.9%	-2.9	255	6	6	297	92.8%	238	15	6	279
2.7	Southern Methodist University	89.1%	2.0	233	12	0	275	87.1%	192	17	0	240
1.9	Texas Tech University	82.2%	-3.6	103	8	0	135	85.8%	125	8	0	155
2.7	University of Houston	81.0%	-4.4	163	24	0	231	85.4%	171	22	0	226
1.6	South Texas College of Law Houston	72.9%	5.1	173	17	1	262	67.8%	160	24	1	273
1.6	St. Mary's University	72.9%	10.4	131	22	0	210	62.5%	129	11	0	224
nr	University of North Texas Dallas	59.3%	1.4	56	11	0	113	57.9%	76	8	0	145
1.4	Texas Southern University	57.8%	9.2	93	7	0	173	48.6%	82	6	0	181

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Ohio in 2019

This is the second in a series of visualizations on legal employment outcomes for the Class of 2019. Following a post on outcomes in Pennsylvania, here is a visualization for legal employment outcomes of graduates of Ohio law schools for the Class of 2019. (More about the methodology is available at the Pennsylvania post.) Last year's Ohio post is here.

Total jobs, including bar passage-required jobs, improved significantly. Those bar passage-required jobs rose from 571 to 662. Total graduates also rose from 888 to 961. Job placement improved even with total graduates rising, increasing the placement weight in all these areas of employment from 76% to 81%. Four of Ohio’s nine law schools still graduated fewer than 100 students.

As always, please notify me of any corrections or errata.

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Peer Score	School	2019	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads	2018	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads
3.3	Ohio State University	87.5%	-2.4	132	13	2	168	89.9%	134	14	3	168
1.7	University of Dayton	83.3%	7.7	58	12	0	84	75.6%	46	13	0	78
1.5	Ohio Northern University	83.0%	15.2	38	1	0	47	67.8%	34	6	0	59
1.8	University of Akron	82.2%	12.2	82	24	0	129	70.0%	65	19	0	120
2.4	University of Cincinnati	81.0%	1.0	86	12	0	121	80.0%	58	14	0	90
1.8	Cleveland-Marshall College of Law	80.7%	-1.1	55	16	0	88	81.8%	65	7	0	88
1.9	University of Toledo	80.0%	5.9	49	15	0	80	74.1%	31	12	0	58
2.6	Case Western Reserve University	78.3%	5.3	99	12	1	143	73.0%	83	9	0	126
1.4	Capital University	67.3%	5.9	63	5	0	101	61.4%	55	7	0	101

Visualizing legal employment outcomes in Pennsylvania in 2019

Following up on a series of posts last year (and previous years), this is the first in a series visualizing employment outcomes of law school graduates from the Class of 2019. The U.S. News & World Report ("USNWR") rankings recently released include data for the Class of 2018, which are already obsolete. The ABA will release the information soon, but individualized employment reports are available on schools' websites.

The USNWR prints the "employed" rate as "all jobs, excluding positions funded by the law school or university that are full-time and long-term and for which a J.D. and bar passage are necessary or advantageous." It does not give "full weight" in its metrics to jobs that were funded by the law school. USNWR gives other positions lower weight, but these positions are not included in the ranking tables. And while it includes J.D. advantage positions, there remain disputes about whether those positions are actually as valuable as bar passage required jobs. (Some have also critiqued sole practitioners being included in the bar passage required statistics.) Nonetheless, as a top-level category, I looked at these “full weight” positions.

The top chart is sorted by non-school-funded jobs (or "full weight" positions). The visualization breaks out full-time, long-term, bar passage required positions (not funded by the school); full-time, long term, J.D.-advantage positions (not funded by the school); school funded positions (full-time, long-term, bar passage required or J.D.-advantage positions); and all other outcomes. I included a breakdown in the visualization slightly distinguishing bar passage required positions from J.D.-advantage positions, even thoug both are included in "full weight" for USNWR purposes (and I still sort the chart by "full weight" positions).

The table below the chart breaks down the raw data values for the Classes of 2018 and 2019, with relative overall changes year-over-year. Here, I used the employment rate including school-funded positions, which USNWR used to print but no longer does; nevertheless, because there are good-faith disputes, I think, about the value of school-funded positions, I split the difference—I excluded them in the sorting of the bar graphs, and included them comparatively in the tables. The columns beside each year break out the three categories in the total placement: FTLT unfunded bar passage required ("BPR"), FTLT unfunded J.D. advantage ("JDA"), and FTLT law school funded BPR & JDA positions ("LSF"). This year, I also added the total graduates. (My visualization is limited because the bar widths for each school are the same, even though schools vary greatly in size, and that means raw placement might be more impressive considering class size.)

Let me finally add that there are many other, and probably better, ways of looking at this data, including qualitative assessment of the types of jobs in each category. This is only a high-level look at eight select regions and the state of the entry-level legal employment market.

The first state is Pennsylvania (last year's visualization here). There were 1316 statewide graduates, a 6% increase over last year's class. The total placement rate among the graduates was over 90% (including a few school-funded jobs), a big jump over last year’s 82% despite a larger graduating class. Placement in bar passage required jobs jumped from 939 to 1082.

As always, if I made a mistake, please feel free to email me or comment; I confess there are always risks in data translation, and I am happy to make corrections.

UPDATE: Some figures incorrectly included both bar passage-required and J.D.-advantage jobs when they should have been separate categories. Those figures and the table below have been updated.

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Peer Score	School	2019	YoY%	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads	2018	BPR	JDA	LSF	Grads
4.4	University of Pennsylvania	97.6%	-0.3	229	8	7	250	97.9%	216	12	10	243
2.5	Villanova University	93.8%	5.6	181	17	0	211	88.2%	127	15	0	161
2.2	Pennsylvania State - Dickinson Law	91.2%	3.9	45	7	0	57	87.3%	51	4	0	63
2.7	Temple University	90.7%	7.5	174	22	0	216	83.3%	161	13	0	209
2.2	Drexel University	88.8%	5.1	119	11	0	134	83.7%	95	13	0	129
1.8	Duquesne University	86.2%	6.2	78	16	0	109	80.0%	86	13	0	120
2.7	University of Pittsburgh	85.8%	14.0	89	14	0	120	71.9%	85	12	0	135
1.5	Widener Commonwealth	85.5%	23.3	60	5	0	76	62.3%	32	1	0	53
2.4	Penn State Law	80.4%	0.4	107	8	0	143	80.0%	86	13	1	125