© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(May 5) – Law firms are hiring more Texas law school graduates than they did at the end of the Great Recession five years ago, but new statistics suggest that the legal industry’s economic recovery has gone flat or possibly even slowed during the past two years.
Four law schools – SMU Dedman, University of Texas, University of Houston and South Texas College of Law – faired the best at getting their graduates hired at law firms.
New data released by the American Bar Association shows that 77 percent of the 2,226 2014 graduates from Texas’s nine law schools in 2014 found permanent, full-time jobs as a lawyer or another professional position 10 months after graduation – a decline from 79 percent in 2012.
The Texas legal market began feeling the woes of the Great Recession in 2010 when only 74 percent of the 2,303 Texas law school graduates found jobs as a lawyer or another professional position nine months after graduation.
Statistics for 2014 Texan law grads still trumps the national average of 71 percent finding such jobs, demonstrating the legal market in the Lone Star State is still healthier than the rest of the nation. Nationwide, 67 percent of 2013 graduates found long-term, full-time positions as lawyers or other professional positions nine months after graduation.
The ABA decided to give law schools an extra month to report this year, reflecting the fact that it is taking graduates longer to find a job.
UT’s School of Law had the most 2014 graduates – 87.46 percent – placed in full-time, permanent positions as lawyers or another professional position 10 months after graduation. Twenty-three of its graduates, however, were hired by the law school itself – which accounted for 6.5 percent of all of UT’s graduates and 7.5 of all graduates in those employment categories.
If law school-employed positions are taken out of the equation, SMU’s Dedman School of Law comes in first in the state for job placement at 85.43 percent. SMU Dedman did not employ any of its 2014 graduates.
Five other 2014 graduates from Baylor Law School, Texas A&M University School of Law and the University of Houston Law Center combined were hired by their law schools 10 months after graduation. UT hired only two of its 2012 graduates, but hired 24, or 6 percent, of its 2010 graduates.
Coming in last place was Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Only 50 percent of its 2014 graduates found full-time, long-term positions where bar passage was required or a J.D. was preferred. Two years ago, the law school placed 68 percent of its graduates in these positions.
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