How to read employment outcomes.

• Measured about 10 months after graduation. Under the ABA's Employment Protocols, schools report each class's employment status as of the Graduate Data Reporting Deadline (March 15 for the prior year's class) — roughly ten months out — and must publish the resulting Employment Summary Report on their websites under Standard 509.
• Standardized categories. Every school breaks graduates into the same job types: Bar Passage Required (attorney jobs), J.D. Advantage (the degree helped but bar passage wasn't required), Other Professional, Other Position — plus those pursuing graduate study, unemployed and seeking, unemployed and not seeking, and status unknown. Because the categories are fixed, you can compare schools apples-to-apples.
• NALP runs a parallel survey. The National Association for Law Placement surveys graduates nationally (nearly 97% of ABA graduates are represented) and publishes richer detail — salaries, firm sizes, demographics. School-level ABA numbers and national NALP numbers tell you different things; use both.

The Class of 2024 (measured ~10 months out, in March 2025) set records: 93.4% employed — the highest rate in nearly four decades of NALP tracking — with 84.3% in bar-passage-required or anticipated jobs, the highest since NALP introduced its current job classifications in 2001. Unemployment (seeking and not seeking combined) hit an all-time low of 5.1%, and 58.9% of employed graduates were in private practice, the highest share since 1992 (National Jurist, on NALP's report).

The Class of 2025 came in just behind: 92.8% employed, but a new record 84.6% in bar-required/anticipated jobs, and 60.9% in private practice — the highest share since 1990 — with firms of more than 500 lawyers now the single largest employer type (National Jurist, Sept 2026).

Take a school's published Employment Summary — for instance, the University of Virginia's Class of 2024 report (UVA Career Services): 295 of 299 graduates employed (98.7%), with 232 in law firms, 49 in judicial clerkships, and 15 in government. When you open any school's version, run through this checklist:

• Bar Passage Required % — the single most important number. What share of the class is actually practicing law? (National benchmark: 84.3–84.6% for the Classes of 2024–25.)
• "Unknown" and "not seeking" % — large numbers here can flatter the employed percentage. Know what's being left out of the denominator story.
• Employer mix — law firms vs. government vs. public interest vs. clerkships. Does it match what you want to do?
• Firm-size breakdown — a school feeding firms of 500+ is a different outcome (and salary) than one feeding firms of 2–10, even at similar overall employment rates.
• School-funded positions — some schools hire their own graduates into short-term fellowships. Check whether those are included, and how they're labeled.
• Three years of data — one good year can be luck. The ABA requires schools to keep multiple years posted; read the trend.

• "What does on-campus interviewing look like for someone with my goals?" OCI is the main pipeline to large firms — but only at schools where those firms recruit. If you want public interest, ask about that pipeline instead.
• "Where do graduates work geographically?" Most schools place regionally. If you want to practice in a different market, ask how many graduates actually land there.
• "What share of the class does judicial clerkships, and do you support alumni clerks?" Clerkships are a distinct, high-value path — and schools vary enormously in how many they place.
• "How do you support students who don't get jobs through OCI?" At most schools, most students don't. The answer tells you how real the career office is.
• "Can I see salary data by sector, not just the overall median?" As the bimodal distribution shows, the overall median can describe almost nobody.