How the Class of 2009 is faring

Caryn Tamber//May 31, 2010//

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Law schools provide comprehensive data on employment for their graduates nine months after graduation to NALP, formerly the National Association for Law Placement. Those numbers are made public in July.

The numbers show overall percentage of students employed nine months out, but they also detail how many students are working full- versus part time, and in legal versus non-legal jobs.

The University of Baltimore School of Law chose to share most of its numbers in advance with The Daily Record, and Astrid Schmidt, director of law career development, spoke about them.

The University of Maryland School of Law was less transparent. It disclosed its overall employment percentage (94 percent of graduates were employed as of February) but declined to say if the figures reflected full-time employment in jobs requiring a legal degree. However, Dana Morris, assistant dean for career development at the school, sat for an extended interview about the general employment picture for the class of 2009.

For UB Law, overall employment was 93.4 percent for the class of 2009, compared with 95.1 percent for the class of 2008. Schmidt said it’s a positive sign that overall employment numbers did not decrease much from the class of 2008 to the class of 2009 despite the dismal legal job market. Still, many students who are employed are not exactly satisfied with their jobs.

“That’s not saying they’re happily employed or doing anything they want to do,” Schmidt said.

Indeed, partial employment statistics released by NALP last month show that 22 percent of employed 2009 graduates nationally are still looking for work. Nine months after the class of 2008 graduated, only 16 percent of them were looking.

The number of University of Baltimore JD’s employed full-time nine months after graduation dropped 10 points, to 73.4 percent, from the class of 2008 to the class of 2009. Accordingly, the percentage of those employed only part-time rose about 7 points, to 17 percent.

The percentage of Baltimore graduates employed in jobs where bar admission is required also fell, from 75.8 percent for 2008 to 65.6 percent for 2009. There was a corresponding rise in graduates employed at places where a law degree is preferred but not required; that number was up 9 points to 25.8 percent.

“Folks can’t offer entry-level JD positions,” Schmidt said. They are “just looking for clerks.”

UB Law also saw a decrease in the percentage of students working in public-interest law, which Schmidt said makes sense, since nonprofits lack funding to hire new people.

She estimates that the University of Baltimore may have been less hard-hit than other schools by the down market because the school has never sent a large proportion of its students to work at big firms. When the big firms stopped or slowed their hiring, it didn’t affect the University of Baltimore much, Schmidt said.

“We’ve always had to hustle, so we’ve never gotten anything handed to us for our students,” Schmidt said.

Morris said the University of Maryland sends a smaller percentage of graduates to large firms than nearby schools such as Georgetown University Law Center and George Washington University Law School do. Still, 2009 graduates were affected by the slowdown in big-firm recruiting.

“I’d say for the recruitment season that affected these 2009 grads, that was probably the most tumultuous because it was just totally uncertain,” Morris said. “That was when the layoffs were beginning to happen, and happen rapidly.”

Almost every large law firm that comes to the University of Maryland for on-campus interviews in the fall cut back, either not sending any recruiters at all or choosing to hire fewer people, Morris said.

Though Morris would not disclose the percentage of graduates working temporary or part-time jobs, she said a large number are working in short-term legal staffing. Though they are rarely happy about this type of employment, it is at least a law job, she said.

“That’s going to give them [more of] a leg up than, say, waitressing or doing something that’s totally different and then trying to get those jobs, so they’re not happy about it, we’re not happy about it, but we are happy that we’re able to get them a bridge into more of the jobs that they’re looking for on a permanent basis,” she said.

‘We’ve always had to hustle, so we’ve never gotten anything handed to us for our students,’ said Astrid Schmidt, of the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Dana Morris would not disclose the percentage of University of Maryland School of Law graduates working temporary or part-time jobs, but said a large number are working in short-term legal staffing.