Employment for graduates of ABA-approved law schools reached a record high, according to data for the graduating law class of 2024 made public by the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
April 29, 2025 Legal Employment
2024 law grads show increase in full-time employment
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, which is 12.5% year over year.
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.
“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 J.D. Advantage jobs has reached another record-high, which is good news for the graduates,” said Jenn Rosato Perea, managing director of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar.
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.
Each year’s employment outcomes measure the post-graduation status of law graduates on March 15 (or the following Monday when March 15 falls on a weekend), approximately 10 months after spring graduation.
Under Interpretation 509-2 of Standard 509, law schools are permitted to publicize additional employment outcome data as long as the information complies with Standard 509(a). Standard 509(a) requires that all information that a law school reports, publicizes or distributes shall be complete, accurate and not misleading to a reasonable law school student or applicant.
The Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, under Standard 509 of the ABA Standards and Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, requires schools to report and publicly disclose varied information for compliance and consumer information purposes, including employment outcomes. Employment and other statistics are posted to the section’s statistics web page.
The council is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as the national accrediting agency for programs leading to the J.D. The section and its governing council operate for accreditation purposes as separate and independent from the general ABA. The section’s 14,000 members strive to improve legal education and lawyer licensing by fostering cooperation among legal educators, practitioners and judges through workshops, conferences and publications.