ABA Releases Class Of 2024 Jobs Data: ‘Maximum Credit’ Jobs Rate Rises To 89.7%, Up From 88.0% Last Year

ABA Legal Education Section Releases Employment Data For Graduating Law Class of 2024:

Employment data for the graduating law class of 2024, as reported by American Bar Association-approved law schools accepting new J.D. students to the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar on April 2, 2025, is now publicly available.

An online table provides select national outcomes and side-by-side comparisons for the classes of 2023 and 2024. Further reports on employment outcomes, including links to individual school outcomes and spreadsheets aggregating those reports, are available now on the ABA Required Disclosures page of the Section’s website. Schools can make corrections to their individual school outcomes for the class of 2024 until Friday, June 13, 2025. These corrections will be reflected in the Employment Summary Reports that are required to be posted publicly on their websites, as well as on the ABA Required Disclosures page. …

Managing Director Jenn Rosato Perea responded: “Despite initial concerns that the Class of 2024 employment outcomes might be impacted by an anticipated contraction in the market and increased size of the graduating class, the percentage of recent law school graduates employed in full-time, long-term Bar Admission Required/Anticipated or JD Advantage jobs has reached another record-high – which is good news for the graduates.”

For the class of 2024, the aggregated school data shows that 33,931 or 87.1% of the 2024 graduates of the 194 law schools enrolling students and approved by the ABA to offer the J.D. degree were employed in full-time, long-term Bar Admission Required/Anticipated or J.D. Advantage jobs roughly 10 months after graduation. That compares to 30,160 or 85.6% of the graduates reporting similar full-time, long-term jobs last year. The actual number of full-time, long-term Bar Admission Required/Anticipated or J.D. Advantage jobs increased by 3,771, +12.5% year-over-year. …

The current U.S. News law school rankings methodology defines "maximum credit" jobs as:

Outcomes 10 months after graduation (weighted 33%): This measures the extent to which graduates obtain the most in-demand jobs — namely those that are long term, full time and requiring (or taking advantage of) bar passage. Maximum credit was assigned for graduates with school-funded fellowships — as long as those fellowships were otherwise full-time, long-term jobs in which bar passage was required or the J.D. degree was an advantage. Maximum credit was assigned to law school graduates pursuing additional graduate studies.

89.7% of the Class of 2024 secured maximum credit jobs for U.S. News rankings purposes (up from 88.0% for the Class of 2023). 1.2% of the Class of 2024 secured law school funded full-time, long-term bar passage required/JD advantage jobs (up from 1.1% for the Class of 2023). 1.3% of the Class of 2024 pursued additional graduate studies (the same percentage as the Class of 2023).