Yesterday I posted my new 2019 law school rankings based on employment outcomes. In this post, I explore how the different categories of "Employment Status" (as the ABA calls them) affect the rankings of the schools. Some of the Employment Status categories are unambiguously bad or good: "Unemployed" is bad and "Employed Bar Passage Required Full Time Long Term" is good. The analysis performed in my rankings confirms that these two polar opposite outcomes are on opposite ends of the continuum, as shown in the table below.
But there is substantial debate about some of the intermediate categories, such as "JD Advantage" jobs. Are these employment outcomes closer to unemployment or closer to the standard Bar Passage Required FTLT jobs? The Table below ranks these "status" categories from best to worst, and the results are quite negative (literally) for JD Advantage jobs. In the table, better outcomes are toward the top and worse outcomes toward the bottom. All four JD Advantage categories are toward the bottom of the list. Indeed, they all fall below "Unemployed, Not Seeking," but not as low as "Unemployed, Seeking." These jobs are sandwiched in between the various "Non-Professional Positions" and "Unemployed" categories.
Employment Status |
Score |
Employed_BarPassageRequiredFTLT |
0.40093 |
Employed_LawSchoolFTLT |
0.222524 |
Employed_LawSchoolFTST |
0.090558 |
Employed_LawSchoolPTST |
0.033358 |
Employed_UndeterminableFTST |
0.013562 |
Employed_UndeterminablePTLT |
-0.03466 |
Employed_LawSchoolPTLT |
-0.03594 |
EmployedStartDateDeferredNumber |
-0.06645 |
PursuingGraduateDegreeNumber |
-0.08138 |
Employed_UndeterminablePTST |
-0.09091 |
Employed_UndeterminableFTLT |
-0.11614 |
Employed_NonProfessionPositionPTST |
-0.12063 |
Employed_BarPassageRequiredFTST |
-0.12417 |
Employed_NonProfessionPositionFTST |
-0.14773 |
Employed_ProfessionPositionPTST |
-0.16285 |
Employed_ProfessionPositionFTST |
-0.16724 |
Employed_BarPassageRequiredPTST |
-0.16907 |
Employed_JDAdvantagePTLST |
-0.17167 |
UnEmployedNotSeekingNumber |
-0.1764 |
Employed_JDAdvantageFTLT |
-0.17922 |
Employed_NonProfessionPositionPTLT |
-0.1828 |
Employed_BarPassageRequiredPTLT |
-0.18741 |
Employed_ProfessionPositionPTLT |
-0.2045 |
Employed_NonProfessionPositionFTLT |
-0.21292 |
Employed_JDAdvantagePTLT |
-0.22083 |
Employed_JDAdvantageFTST |
-0.22243 |
EmploymentStatusUnknownNumber |
-0.27875 |
Employed_ProfessionPositionFTLT |
-0.29146 |
UnEmployedSeekingNumber |
-0.3175 |
Note that these numbers are not subjective determinations by me. They are generated based on which job categories tend to go together at which law schools. This means that law schools that tend to have a lot of unemployed graduates also tend to have a lot of "Non-Professional Position" placements and "JD Advantage" placements. Although the data does not directly observe the "quality" of any individual jobs, this should suggest that caution is warranted in interpreting JD Advantage jobs as representing desirable employment outcomes in most cases.
Employment outcomes are an important factor in choosing a law school. Applicants should be wary of schools with large number of JD Advantage jobs, at least outside the T-14. Those who rank law schools based on employment (hi, US News!) should discount JD Advantage jobs heavily, which currently they generally do not.
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