The National Association for Law Placement, Inc. (NALP) today released its Employment for the Class of 2022 — Selected Findings, a summary of key findings from the upcoming annual Jobs & JDs: Employment and Salaries of New Law School Graduates. The release of the full Jobs & JDs report is anticipated in October 2023. This year’s Selected Findings … show that the Class of 2022 entered an even more robust employment market for new law graduates as compared to the Class of 2021, shattering many of the highs notched by the previous class.
Employment for the Class of 2022 — Selected Findings:
One year ago, the Class of 2021 achieved some of the strongest employment outcomes that NALP has ever recorded; however, the Class of 2022 entered an even more robust employment market for new law graduates, shattering many of the highs notched by the previous class. Among other benchmarks, the Class of 2022 attained the best employment rate in 35 years, a record share of graduates working in bar passage required jobs, and new highs in average and median salaries.
After a 3.5 percentage point increase for the Class of 2021, the employment rate improved by an additional 0.2 percentage point for the Class of 2022, to 92.1% of graduates for whom employment status was known. This is the best employment rate recorded since the Class of 1987, when the rate was just slightly higher, at 92.2%1, and marks an increase of 7.6 percentage points since the post-Great Recession low of 84.5% for the Class of 2013. …
Beyond the improvement in the overall employment rate, another historic high obtained by the Class of 2022 was the percentage of graduates taking jobs for which bar passage is required or anticipated. … [T]he percentage employed full-time in jobs requiring bar passage and lasting at least one year was 78.9%, up 2.2 percentage points compared to 2021. This percentage has grown by 22 points since the Class of 2011. …
The national median salary for the Class of 2022 based on these reported salaries grew to an all-time high of $85,000, up 6.3% compared to the median of $80,000 for the Class of 2021.
Download NALP National Summary Report:
Distribution of Reported Full-time Salaries – Class of 2022:
