Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

July blogging hiatus

I'm taking a break from the blog in July in order to make progress on a book and deal with some other matters.  If there's something absolutely time-sensitive, I may put it up, but otherwise please don't send news items until very late July.  Thanks, as always, for reading.

"Capitalism, Social Democracy and Socialism: Which is Right for America?"

In what is probably my last trip for a good while (having so far cancelled events in Canada, England, and Ireland,with no doubt more to come), I'll be driving up to Madison today for a debate/discussion with the economist Bryan Caplan (George Mason).  So probably not much new until Friday.   Since "social distancing" is the new norm for America, no handshakes, but I hope to see some readers there!

Blog highlights from 2019, 4th quarter: October, November, December

October

Society for Empirical Legal Studies objects to use of HeinOnLine citation data to measure "scholarly impact"

November

The growing importance of "privacy law"

Another academic administrator (a law professor, no less) who doesn't understand her job

December

Jonathan Turley (George Washington) is not the "second most-cited law professor in the country"

Wealthy Penn Law alumnus protests treatment of Amy Wax

On filling out the USNEWS.com "peer assessment" survey

Prof. Simkovic exposes the "Law School Transparency" scam

Blog highlights from 2019, 2nd quarter: April, May, June

April

A case of bad editorial practice at a journal

"Please reject me!  An Open Letter to the Harvard Law Review" (from Mark Lemley)

May

ABA's legal education council adopts stricter bar passage standards for law schools

Top Ten Corporate & Securities Articles for 2018

June

2019 Entry-Level Hiring Report, the results

Daughter of Yale law prof Amy Chua, staunch defender of (now) Justice Kavanaugh will now clerk for him

 

Blog highlights from 2019, first quarter: January, February, March

January

SEALS decides to screw over academic job seekers (the good news is the effort was dead on arrival)

Links to all the "Most Cited" faculty lists for 2013-2017

February

U.S. News to start "scholarly impact" rankings

How to compare the GRE and the LSAT

March

Attention Bob Morse:  this is quite important in using Hein for a citation study

The USNews.com roller coaster

My personal homepage has been updated...

...for anyone who cares.  It includes information on this year's schedule of talks (mostly philosophy this year), as well as the four quotes that explain all my work (from Nietzsche, Quine, Marx, and H.L.A. Hart), plus other stuff.  Hope to see some readers at some of my talks this year.  (A couple more talks will be added for the late Spring/early Summer.)

NALP data: When there are fewer law school graduates, there are fewer law school graduates with jobs (Michael Simkovic)

NALP entry level starting salaries and employment don't predict much of anything about what will happen three to four years from now when those currently contemplating going to law school will, if they choose to attend, graduate into a quite possibly very different economy.  Nor is NALP data directionally very different from overall economic data like the employment population ratio  which is released sooner.¹    And while those graduating into a stronger economy do earn more (at least for the first few years), these cohort effects fade over time, those who graduate in a recession still benefit from their educations, and attempting to time law school is a money-losing proposition because of the opportunity costs of delay.

Nevertheless, every year NALP data on last year's graduating class is released with great fanfare, including a press release.  In news that will surprise no one who has tracked the rise in the overall employment population ratio, it turns out that the class of 2017 had better employment outcomes than other classes since the recession. Or as NALP sexes it up for journalists, "Class of 2017 Notched Best Employment Outcomes Since Recession." (88.6% employed 9 months after graduation for the class for 2017, compared with 87.5% for the Class of 2016).

But, NALP unhelpfully informs us, there's a catch--the total number of law jobs for law graduates was lower even though the employment rate was higher.

This should not surprise anyone who is aware that the number of law school matriculants last peaked in 2010, and graduating class sizes have therefore been falling since 2013.  From 1994 through 2015, the correlation between annual % change in graduating class size and annual % change in number of law graduates with jobs has been 0.78 (i.e., class size explains 61 percent of the variation in number of law jobs for recent graduates.  (data here)  The correlation is even higher since 1999 when reporting started covering a higher percent of the class--0.91 correlation, meaning that class size explains 82% of the variation in the number of law graduates with jobs.

 

 

There aren't fewer jobs available for lawyers.  To the contrary, there are more lawyers working now than there were pre-recession according to both Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Data (BLS OES, ACS, and CPS).  There are fewer recent law graduates working as lawyers because there are fewer recent law graduates.

The employment market for educated workers is large and the number of law graduates is small relative to this market.  Law schools are too small to move the market much on the supply side by admitting more or fewer students.  Just as the typical investor could sell all of his or her shares of Apple without moving the market for shares of Apple (much less the S&P 500), the typical law school can admit as many or as few students as it wants without changing the overall percent of law graduates who will find jobs.  (However, there’s some evidence that at the national level, the share of recent law graduates working as lawyers varies inversely with class size).

The usefulness of NALP data is questionable (at least for many of the uses to which it is often put), but NALP could help by limiting its reporting to employment rates and starting salaries.  Discussing changes in the absolute number of law graduates with jobs is simply a confusing ways of telling people that fewer people entered law school 4 years ago than 5 or 6 years ago. 

NALP should also contextualize its employment ratios by comparing them to the overall U.S. employment population ratio during the same time period (i.e, March of 2018), which was 60 percent overall, and and 79 percent for those age 25-54 according to BLS and the OECD, compared to 89 percent for recent law graduates, according to NALP.

¹ (Similarities are greatest when one restricts it to those who are both young and well-educated using CPS data.

 

UPDATE: 8/3/2018  The correlations and r-squared were originally reported based on levels rather than % change from previous year. The numbers have been updated to reflect a model based on differencing (% change from prior year), which brings the explanatory power from 1999 forward down from 96 percent to 82 percent.

 

Not much new until the end of the week

I was in Boulder for a couple of days last week (hence the quiet here), and will be at Columbia tomorrow, so don't expect much new before Thursday.

New personal homepage

I've got a new personal homepage, courtesy of graphic designer Patrick Hennessey.  If you like his work for academic homepages (see also Monique Wonderly's page, which he also designed), consider hiring him:  more information, including contact information here.

I answer "Ten Questions"...

...at Law360.com.