Over the past several weeks and months, the unemployment rate of law school graduates has been carefully examined. Bloomberg Business Week took another perspective on employment statistics of students graduating from law school: they looked at 20 of the most expensive law schools and 20 of the cheapest law schools, and contrasted the underemployment rate of students graduating from those schools. Bloomberg Business Week defined underemployment as part-time or underutilized workers.
At the top of the chart, titled “Even an Expensive Law Degree is No Guarantee of Full-time work as an Attorney,” is Columbia University, with the highest law school tuition projected to be $300,000 for a student graduating in 2016; at the same time Columbia University has the lowest underemployment rate at just about 0%. Rankings of other expensive schools were not so good. Fordham Law School, projected to cost about $270,000 had an underemployment rate of almost 30%. Chapman Law School in California has an anticipated 3 year cost of about $260,000 and an underemployment rate of approximately 45%.
Less expensive schools do not necessarily have better underemployment rates. While Louisiana State University will probably cost a law student about $100,000 over 3 years, it does have the lowest underemployment rate of cheap law schools. However, schools such as Southern Illinois, CUNY (New York City) and the University of Idaho are expected to cost about $100,000 each, their underemployment rates are approximately 30% or higher. The University of Puerto Rico, coming in under $100,000 for three years of legal education has an underemployment rate of almost 40%.
There is of course, no information on correlation of LSAT scores and law schools to underemployment and whether or not these positions were chosen voluntarily or otherwise. To see the graph and an accompanying article on the bankruptcy of a leading litigation practice, read the entire article.
