2024 US law grads posted record-high employment, survey shows

By Karen Sloan

July 31 (Reuters) - U.S. law students who graduated in 2024 had the highest employment rate ever recorded by the National Association for Law Placement, the job-tracking group said Thursday, defying earlier predictions that the class's larger size would drive down the job rate.

Among 2024 J.D graduates, 93.4% landed jobs within 10 months of graduation—a 0.8 percentage point increase from 2023 and the highest figure since NALP began tracking the statistic in 1974. More than 84% of graduates were employed in jobs that require bar passage, up 2.2 percentage points over the previous year.

The unemployment rate for new grads was 5.1%, which is a new all-time low, according to NALP, which collects employment data from law schools.

Law schools nationwide saw an 11% surge in new students in 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic helped spur more interest in legal education. NALP and others warned that 3,722 more newly minted lawyers competing for jobs might drive down employment rates once they graduated in 2024. That didn’t happen, said NALP Executive Director Nikia Gray in a prepared statement.

"In the end, it turned out to be over 3,700 additional jobs they needed to source compared to the Class of 2023, but the 2024 graduates—and the NALP community—met that challenge,” she said.

NALP counts both law school career services personnel and legal employers among its 3,000 members.

Thursday's job figures align with earlier employment data from the American Bar Association, which also found that the Class of 2024 enjoyed all-time high employment.

New lawyer pay was also up, NALP found. The national median salary for 2024 graduates was $95,000, an increase from $90,000 the previous year.

Read more:

Law grad job rates surged to historic highs in 2024, ABA data shows

Good times won’t last for law grads, warns job tracking group