Entry Level Hiring: Final Summary

Update, 5/20/2011: The charts and summaries below are accurate as of 5/20/2011. I will continue to add to the spreadsheet, but I will not update the charts or summaries. To be added to the spreadsheet, please email me, slawsky *at* law *dot* uci *dot* edu. Also, a few entries say "Firstname Lastname," rather than the person's actual name, either by request or because the person currently has another job and I don't know whether he has notified that job of his new position. 

We have reports of 155 people being hired, at 99 different law schools. 

Nine schools have been reported as doing no entry level hiring this year.

Here is the full spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet has lots of different worksheets, with lots of information--download it and see!

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions:

Q: How many people who got their JD from School X were hired on this year’s entry-level market?

Harvard 20; Yale 19; NYU 10; Michigan 10; Columbia 9; Stanford 9; Berkeley 6; Chicago 6; Duke 5; Cornell 4; Notre Dame 3; Penn 3; Boston College 3; Texas 3; Georgetown 3; Hastings 3; Other 39.

Schools in the "other" category with two JDs who were hired: Arkansas; British Columbia; Howard; USC; Virginia.

Schools in the "other" category with one JD who was hired: Barry; Cardozo; Connecticut; Florida; George Washington; Georgia State; Hebrew U; Lewis & Clark; LSU; Maine; Melbourne; None [no initial law degree]; Northwestern; Oregon; San Diego; Sao Paolo; Sorbonne; Suffolk; Sydney; Tel Aviv; Temple; Tennessee; Toronto; UCLA; University of Ljubljana; Vienna; Washington & Lee; Washington University; Wisconsin.

Q: How many people who got an entry level hiring job had a fellowship, degree, or clerkship?

107 (69%) had a fellowship; 77 (about 50%) had an advanced degree; 89 (about 57%) had a clerkship.

Nonproportional Venn diagram:

Q: Tell me more about these advanced degrees. 

Okay, but first a caveat: Although 18 people had more than one advanced degree, the following looks only at what seemed to me to be the "highest" degree someone earned. For example, someone with a Ph.D. and an LL.M. would be counted only as a Ph.D. for purposes of this question. (This tracks the "Other Degree (1)" column, for the two people out there who are actually following along on the spreadsheet.)

That said, looking only at what seemed to be the most advanced degree (apologizing in advance for mischaracterizing the relative advancement of anyone's multiple degrees), and including "expected" degrees, the 77 "highest" advanced degrees broke down like this:

D. Jur., SJD, or JSD (or SJD or JSD expected) 4; LL.M. (or LL.M. expected) 15; Ph.D. (or Ph.D. expected) 37; Masters (or Masters expected) 20; MD 1.

Topics ranged all over the map. For the 37 Ph.D.s, for example:

For Ph.D.s: Economics or finance 7; history (including legal history) 6; political science (including political science and public policy) 5; law or law-related field (law, comparative law, JSP) 5.

"Other" fields (one each) include Cellular & Molecular Bio; Chemical Engineering; Clinical Psychology; Comparative Literature; Education; Educational Administration; English; Government; Philosophy; Pharmacology & Cell Biology; Public Policy & Sociology; Science & Tech Studies; and Sociology.

Masters degrees were similarly all over the place. Here (pop-up window) is a chart that breaks all this information down. (The same pivot chart is included in the spreadsheet if you want to mess around with it.)

Q: How long ago did these entry-level hires get their initial law degrees?

No Initial Law Degree 1; Zero to Four (Graduated 2007-2011) 25; Five to Nine (Graduated 2002-2006) 76;  Ten to 19 (Graduated 1992-2001) 46; Twenty or More (Graduated before 1992) 7.

Q: Could you break the hires out by men/women?

Men 96 (about 62%); women 59 (about 38%). (Let's say this is right within +/-2 people.)

Q: Did we learn anything interesting about subject areas?

We definitely learned that the entry level hires this year had incredibly diverse specialities, from Criminal Law to Space Law to Tax to Law of the Sea to Law and Sexuality to Cross-Border Insolvency, and on and on--in fact, the hires named 108 different fields of specialty! (I did this differently from the "what kind of degrees" question--here, if someone listed three fields of speciality, I included all three.) You can see the full alphabetical list of specialties here (pop-up window)--it's pretty amazing. (We did not get information about the specialties of 17 people who were hired.)

As for which fields were most popular--15 people listed Civ Pro as an area of interest, 13 people listed Con Law, 11 people listed crim, and 10 people listed each of Legal History, Tax, and Contracts. In the single digits, Environmental had 9; International Law and Crim Pro, 8 each; IP and Corporations, 7 each; and so on down the line. You can see the full list organized by number of people who stated an interest here (pop-up window).

Q: This is all wrong! I know for a fact that more people from School Y were hired! Plus, you account for only 108 different law schools, and there are 200!

Yes, this spreadsheet is certainly missing some information. Repeat: this spreadsheet is incomplete. It represents only those entry-level hires that were reported to me, either through the comments on this blog or via email. It is without question incomplete. (It is, however, in the ballpark of Larry Solum's reports--he generally seemed to get reports of around 150 or 160 entry-level hires--151 in 2009, for example.)

Q: More slicing! More dicing! Different slicing! Different dicing! 

Sure--you can do it yourself, or ask questions in the comments and I'll see what I can do, or we'll work it out as a group. (For example, last time MB asked for a proportional Venn diagram, and one of the commenters knew of a site that generated them, so I ran one and posted it.)

Q: What does it all mean?

 I have no idea. But it's been fun!