NALP Predicts Weak Jobs Market for Law Grads

While the nation slowly emerges from the Great Recession, the legal jobs market for law school grads is expected to show little sign of improving in the next two years, according to a report from the National Association for Law Placement.

Jim Leipold, executive director of the NALP, told the U.S. News & World Report that raw employment numbers for the class of 2010 are expected to be even lower than last year’s class and the job prospects for the class of 2011 are also likely to be “very compromised.”

“The Class of 2012 will be the first class for which we might see some kind of uptick in employment,” Leipold said. “I’m not making a prediction that it will recover in 2012; I’m saying it probably won’t recover much before then.”

Leipold noted that students from the classes of 2010 and 2011 had fewer summer opportunities to latch on with law firms because many firms reduced their summer programs or discontinued them altogether. According to Leipold, about 25 percent of firms have cancelled their summer programs.