Spring Self-Reported Entry Level Hiring Report 2018

Following is a data summary of the Spring Self-Reported Entry Level Hiring Report for 2018. To remain consistent with past years, while the spreadsheet contains all hiring information received, the data analysis includes only tenure-track hires at U.S. law schools. (The data analysis also includes one hire requested not to be included in the spreadsheet at the date of this posting, although the person will eventually be included in the spreadsheet.)

Here is the full spreadsheet:

The data includes 77 tenure-track hires at U.S. law schools, at 57 different law schools.

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions:

Q: How does 77 reported hires compare to past years?

A: This is an improvement from 2017, and with this last year, it begins to look like we hit the “new normal” in 2014 and have seen fluctuations from around that level since then. The average number of hires per year since 2014 is 73. (I omit 2010 in this and all subsequent cross-year comparisons because insufficient data was collected that year.)

The ratio of hires to first-round FAR forms is also up slightly (click chart for bigger version):

Q: You say the hires were at 57 different schools. How does that compare to previous years?

A: Many more schools hired this year than last year. The number of schools hiring was comparable to previous years since 2014.

Hires per school per year may also be of interest:

Q: How many reported hires got their JD from School X?

Yale 18; Columbia 8; NYU 8; Harvard 6; Stanford 4; Vanderbilt 3.

Schools in the “other” category with two JD/LLBs who reported hires: BYU, Chicago, Georgetown.

Schools in the “other” category with one JD/LLB who reported hires: American, Belarusian State U, Berkeley, Boston College, Boston University, Chicago-Kent, Cologne, Duke, Fordham, Georgia, Hebrew University, Kentucky, Lisbon, LSU, Michigan, Northeastern, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Penn, Texas, Queensland, UBC, UCLA, USC.

This information comes with two related caveats.

First, the spreadsheet reports the number of hires who received a JD from a particular school who accepted a tenure-track job, but not the number of JDs on the market who received a tenure-track job offer.

Second, the spreadsheet reports the count of JDs from a particular school, but not the rate at which JDs received (or accepted) offers. A smaller school with a high placement rate thus might not appear on the chart, whereas a larger program with a low placement rate might appear. This caveat means that smaller schools may be undervalued if one relies only on this data, while larger schools might be overvalued. 

Q: How many reported hires had a fellowship, degree, or clerkship?

56 (about 74%) had a fellowship; 42 (about 55%) had a clerkship; 54 (about 70%) had a higher degree. Three reported hires didn’t have either an advanced degree or a fellowship.

Venn diagram:

Q: Not as many fellowships...

A: Yes, the rate of fellowships remains high, though lower than it has been since 2012.

 Q: From what law schools  did people get these fellowships?

I count here any law school at which a person reports having a fellowship. So one person could account for two schools’ being listed here. For example, if a single individual had a fellowship at Columbia followed by a fellowship at NYU, that would be reflected below as +1 to Columbia and +1 to NYU.

Columbia 10; NYU 8; Yale 7; Harvard 6; Chicago 4; Georgetown 4; Other 25.

This information comes with the same two caveats as the JD numbers.

First, the spreadsheet reports the number of hires who received a fellowship from a particular school who accepted a tenure-track job, but not the number of fellows who received a tenure-track job offer. This caveat likely applies to all or nearly all fellowship programs. Presumably, someone choosing between fellowships cares more about how many people received tenure-track job offers than about how many people accepted those offers.

Second, the spreadsheet reports the count of fellows, but not the rate at which fellows received (or accepted) offers. A smaller program with a high placement rate thus might not appear on the chart, whereas a larger program with a low placement rate might appear. This caveat means that smaller programs may be undervalued if one relies only on this data, while larger programs might be overvalued.

Q: Tell me more about these advanced degrees. 

Okay, but first a caveat: Although some 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.)

That said, looking only at what seemed to be the most advanced degree, and including expected degrees, the 52 "highest" advanced degrees broke down like this:

Ph.D., SJD, JSD, D.Phil. 36; Masters 7; LL.M. 9; MBA 1.

Topics ranged all over the map. For the 32 Ph.D.s, 7 had degrees in History or US History; 4 in Philosophy, 3 in Law, 2 in economics, 2 in sociology, and the other Ph.D./D.Phil. topics, each of which had only hire, were Anthropology, Comp Lit, Ethnomusicology, Government, JSP, Law and Economics, Law & Society, Literature, Policy Studies, Political Philosophy, Political Science, Politics, Psychology, and Statistics in Law and Government.

Q: How long ago did these reported hires get their initial law degrees?

Zero to Four Years (Graduated 2014-2018) 24; Five to Nine Years (Graduated 2009-2013) 31; Ten to 19 Years (Graduated 1999-2008) 20; Twenty or More Years (Graduated before 1999) 2.

Q: How do the "time since initial degree" numbers compare to previous years?

A: They are very similar.

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

Men 38 (49%); women 39 (51%). (Let’s say this is right within +/-2 people.)

Based on a quick count of a number of years of spreadsheets that I happen to have, gender hiring over time follows. (I’ve left out the data labels because I am even less sure than usual of the exactness of the numbers, but they’re roughly right as reflections of self-reported hiring each spring—first Solum’s reports, then mine. And as always, 2010 is left out due to missing data for that year.) 

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.

Q: This is all wrong! I know for a fact that more people from School Y were hired!

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. 

If you want to know about real entry level hiring, I commend to you Brian Leiter's report (hiring 1995-2011), the Katz et al. article (all law professors as of 2008), the George and Yoon article (entry level, 2007-2008 hiring year), and the Tsesis Report (entry level, 2012-2013 hiring year). This is just a report about self-reported entry level hires as of the spring before the school year starts. 

Q: Is this available in an easy-to-print format?

A: Why, as it happens, yes!

Originally posted 5/21/2018; revised 5/24/2018 and 5/28/2018 to add one hire each time and fix some errors; revised 7/12/2018 to make the written numbers under the graph for "Year of JD" match the graph (the PDF was already correct); revised 1/2/2019 to correct numbers in the Venn diagram and similarly update the PDF.