NALP Takes a Hard Look at Its Class of 2009 Employment Data: Nearly 25% Employed in Temporary Positions, 10% are Part-Timers and Almost 30% are Employed in Positions That Don't Require a JD

At first glance the NALP Employment Report and Salary Survey for the Class of 2009 looks surprising good: 88.3% of Class of 2009 grads for whom employment status was known are employed. That is the second consecutive year the employment rate has declined and the lowest rate since the mid-1990s but on its face the survey findings are surprising. However, NALP Executive Director James Leipold explains that there are "dozens of reasons why the data that has been gathered will require special explanation and analysis to make sense of it" and his examination of the stats, to NALP's credit, paints a less than rosy picture.

Temp Jobs for Class of 2009. Nearly 25% of all jobs were reported as temporary. That figure includes clerkships and other temporary positions including:

• 41% of all public interest jobs
• 30% of all business jobs
• 8% of the private practice jobs
• 69% of the academic jobs

NALP also reports that 42% of reporting law schools provided on-campus post-graduate jobs for their students. No word on how many of these appointments were made to game US News employment data for teasing a better ranking.

Job Market Weakness. Some other markers of weakness in the job market for 2009 law school grads reported by NALP include:

• 10 percent of all reported jobs are part-time, up from 6 percent for the class of 2008
• 70.8% grads reporting that they held a job for which a JD was required, down from 74.7% of the Class of 2008
• 5% of the law firm job reported are working as solo practitioners, up from 3.3% for the Class of 2008
• 22% of the Class of 2009 who are employed are actively looking for work, compared to 16% of the previous class.

For details, see the NALP report.[JH]