The Vanderbilt Law Career Services Brochure provides information about:
The information below covers:
Source for national data: Jobs and JD's, Class of 2010, c 2011, National Association for Legal Career Professionals (NALP) NALP website.
Today, prospective students are understandably concerned about the impact of the economic downturn on employment for new law graduates. The job market for new graduates of all American law schools has changed considerably since 2008. According to the National Association for Legal Career Professionals (NALP), new law graduates in 2010 faced the worst job market since the mid-1990's.
In the private sector, large law firms have reduced their summer associate programs and have hired fewer new law graduates. The national percentage of 2010 graduates who accepted jobs for which bar passage is required was the lowest percentage NALP has ever recorded � 68.4% compared to 74.7% for 2008 graduates. The 2010 percentage of those employed who obtained jobs in private practice (50.9%) was five percentage points lower than 2009.
Although salaries are generally much lower than in the private sector, many law graduates seek public service positions for their intangible rewards. Public service employment - including government, military, judicial clerkships, and public interest jobs - has become very competitive in the downturn, not only because contraction in the private sector means more new law graduates seeking public service employment, but also because government and public interest employers have reduced hiring due to budget cuts.
As one of the nation's top law schools, Vanderbilt entered the downturn in a strong position in the legal marketplace. Many different employers and a global network of devoted alumni seek to hire Vanderbilt graduates.We have taken several steps in response to the uncertain employment environment by stepping up our outreach to legal employers and alumni nationwide and expanding our Career Services staff and the resources available to help students secure employment. In addition, we have expanded the array of summer and semester opportunities for students to gain practical legal experience through externships and public interest stipends. A formal workshop series and an alumni mentoring program have also been added.
To provide a sense of how Vanderbilt graduates have fared in this rapidly changing legal job market, the following compares NALP data describing 2010 law graduates nationally to the Vanderbilt Law Class of 2010 as of February, 2011:
| Vanderbilt Law Class of 2010: Nine Months After Graduation | ||||
| National 2010 | Vanderbilt 2010 | |||
| # | % | # | % | |
| Total reported | 42,854 | 202 | ||
| Employment status known | 41,156 | 96.0% | 199 | 98.5% |
| Employed | 36,043 | 87.6% | 185 | 93.0% |
| Employment status | ||||
| Bar passage required | 28,167 | 68.4% | 169 | 84.9% |
| JD preferred | 4,387 | 10.7% | 13 | 6.5% |
| Other professional | 2,299 | 5.6% | 2 | 1.0% |
| Other non-professional | 761 | 2.1% | 1 | 0.5% |
| Continuing studies | 1,214 | 2.9% | 10 | 5.0% |
| Unemployed - seeking | 2,569 | 6.2% | 1 | 0.5% |
| Unemployed - not seeking | 1,330 | 3.2% | 3 | 1.5% |
| Employment type | ||||
| Private practice | 18,329 | 50.9% | 94 | 50.8% |
| Judicial clerk | 3,346 | 9.3% | 34 | 18.4% |
| Government / military | 4,601 | 12.8% | 27 | 14.6% |
| Public interest | 2,428 | 6.7% | 15 | 8.1% |
| Business | 5,446 | 15.1% | 13 | 7.0% |
| Academic | 1,351 | 3.7% | 1 | 0.5% |
The Career Services Brochure provides a complete list of Class of 2010 employers and locations, pages 16 - 18.
New law graduates' employment locations reflect a school's geographic “footprint.” Schools with many graduates taking employment in-state tend to have smaller footprints as measured by the total number of states where graduating students take employment, and schools with relatively few graduates staying in-state have larger footprints reflecting wider dispersion. The following graph illustrates that the percentage of new graduates remaining in-state is generally lower for schools from which new graduates disperse widely across many states.
Calculations based on ABA-LSAC Official Guide data, 2008 through 2012 editions
These data describe classes graduating 2006 through 2010
On close inspection, the graph also suggests that the schools with high percentages of new graduates remaining in-state are located in large legal employment markets. Among these eighteen selected schools, the seven schools with the highest percentages of new graduates employed in-state (59.0% or greater) are Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Texas, UCLA, and USC. These schools are located in New York, California, and Texas, the states ranked 1, 2, and 4 respectively by the number of jobs taken by new graduates in 2010 per NALP. These seven schools' average number of states where new graduates took employment ranged from 13 to 27 with a median of 23.
In contrast, the seven schools with the lowest percentages of graduates employed in-state (20.8% or less) are located in states with smaller employment markets for new graduates. Those seven schools are Duke (North Carolina), Harvard (Massachusetts), Michigan (Michigan), Penn (Pennsylvania), Vanderbilt (Tennessee), UVA (Virginia), and Yale (Connecticut). The average number of states where new graduates of these schools took employment ranged from 22 to 38 with a median of 30. Despite this greater geographic dispersion, all seven schools in this group identified New York as the state bar examination taken by the largest number of their 2010 graduates (ABA -LSAC Official Guide, 2012 Edition).
Vanderbilt is a small school with an expansive reach; our graduates traditionally have chosen employment in a wide variety of locations, and legal employers across the nation are familiar with the qualities of Vanderbilt graduates. Rather than being heavily dependent on one or two employment markets, Vanderbilt graduates most often disperse widely across nine major cities � Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. � and to many other locations across the nation and around the world.
| Location of First Employment | ||||||
| Vanderbilt Law Classes of 2006 to 2010 | ||||||
| 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | Total | |
| Tennessee | 42 | 27 | 38 | 36 | 34 | 177 |
| New York | 22 | 18 | 20 | 22 | 22 | 104 |
| Washington, DC | 12 | 16 | 15 | 20 | 22 | 85 |
| Georgia | 14 | 18 | 19 | 16 | 8 | 75 |
| Illinois | 10 | 16 | 7 | 13 | 10 | 56 |
| Texas | 11 | 12 | 16 | 11 | 6 | 56 |
| California | 10 | 10 | 12 | 10 | 12 | 54 |
| Florida | 8 | 10 | 6 | 3 | 9 | 36 |
| North Carolina | 9 | 11 | 7 | 8 | 1 | 36 |
| Alabama | 6 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 31 |
| Ohio | 1 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 23 |
| Missouri | 4 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 16 |
| Pennsylvania | 2 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 16 |
| Virginia | 3 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 16 |
| Indiana | 2 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 11 |
| Arizona | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 10 |
| Delaware | 1 | 4 | 1 | -- | 4 | 10 |
| Kentucky | 2 | 4 | 2 | -- | 2 | 10 |
| Louisiana | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 10 |
| Massachusetts | 1 | 2 | 4 | -- | 2 | 9 |
| New Jersey | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 9 |
| Connecticut | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 7 |
| Maryland | -- | -- | 3 | -- | 4 | 7 |
| Colorado | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 6 |
| Washington | 3 | 1 | -- | 2 | 6 | |
| Michigan | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Mississippi | 1 | 1 | -- | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Arkansas | -- | -- | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Minnesota | 1 | -- | 1 | -- | 2 | 4 |
| New Mexico | 1 | 2 | -- | -- | 1 | 4 |
| South Carolina | -- | -- | 3 | -- | 1 | 4 |
| Idaho | 1 | 1 | 1 | -- | 3 | |
| Nevada | -- | 1 | 1 | -- | 1 | 3 |
| Oklahoma | 2 | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 3 |
| West Virginia | 1 | -- | -- | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Iowa | -- | 1 | -- | -- | 1 | 2 |
| Maine | -- | -- | -- | 2 | -- | 2 |
| Utah | -- | 1 | -- | -- | 1 | 2 |
| Kansas | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | 1 |
| Oregon | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 1 |
| Rhode Island | -- | -- | -- | 1 | -- | 1 |
| Wisconsin | 1 | -- | -- | -- | -- | 1 |
| Advanced degree | 8 | 3 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 33 |
| International | 5 | 9 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 31 |
| International | |
| 2006 | The Hague, Japan, US Marines JAG (2) |
| 2007 | Ethiopia, Germany, Hong Kong, Korea, Netherlands, Nigeria, U.K., US Army JAG, US Virgin Islands |
| 2008 | Ethiopia, Japan, Korea, Somalia, UAE, UK, US Army JAG (3) |
| 2009 | China, UAE, US Air Force JAG, US Army JAG |
| 2010 | Chile, US Army JAG, US Navy JAG (2) |
New law graduates' salaries vary by location. According to NALP, reported salaries for full-time jobs taken by 2010 new law graduates were generally higher and more varied in regions supplying more jobs, as illustrated below.
The chart below also includes salary distributions by region for 2010 national graduates and 2010 Vanderbilt graduates. The NALP data indicate that median salaries across regions varied from $54,000 in the West North Central region to $100,000 in the Mid-Atlantic region. Reported median salaries for the Vanderbilt Class of 2010 ranged from $81,300 in the East South Central region to $160,000 in the Mid-Atlantic and West South Central regions. Vanderbilt 2010 salary distributions are not reported in regions where fewer than five Vanderbilt 2010 salaries were reported (New England, West North Central, and Mountain).
The chart below also includes “% of reported” for comparison of the geographic dispersion of 2010 new law graduates nationally to Vanderbilt 2010 graduates. For example, 5.2% of national 2010 law graduates took jobs in New England compared to 1.6% of Vanderbilt 2010 graduates. The far right columns show the number and percentage of Vanderbilt Classes of 2006 through 2010 taking jobs in the region (19 and 2.1% for New England).
| Vanderbilt Law Class of 2010: Reported Salaries by US Census Regions | |||||||||
| Full-time salaries for jobs reported across all sectors | |||||||||
| # jobs | % of | # | PERCENTILE | 06 - '10 | |||||
| rptd. | rptd. | with sal. | 25 | Median | 75 | VLS grads | % | ||
| New England | |||||||||
| CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT | 19 | 2.1% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 3 | 1.6% | lt 5 | -- | -- | -- | |||
| NALP 2010 | 1,795 | 5.2% | 856 | $47,750 | $62,000 | $141,000 | |||
| Mid-Atlantic | |||||||||
| NJ, NY, PA | 129 | 14.0% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 22 | 12.1% | 17 | $125,000 | $160,000 | $160,000 | |||
| NALP 2010 | 6,957 | 20.2% | 4149 | $52,125 | $100,000 | $160,000 | |||
| E. North Central | |||||||||
| IL, IN, MI, OH, WI | 96 | 10.4% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 15 | 8.2% | 10 | $62,401 | $140,000 | $160,000 | |||
| NALP 2010 | 4,448 | 12.9% | 2037 | $47,500 | $60,000 | $100,000 | |||
| West North Central | |||||||||
| IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, ND, SD | 23 | 2.5% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 7 | 3.8% | lt 5 | -- | -- | -- | |||
| NALP 2010 | 1,770 | 5.1% | 888 | $44,018 | $54,000 | $70,000 | |||
| South Atlantic | |||||||||
| DE, DC, FL, GA, MD, NC, SC, VA, WV | 272 | 29.4% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 53 | 29.1% | 28 | $55,000 | $85,000 | $137,500 | |||
| NALP 2010 | 8,000 | 23.2% | 4400 | $46,000 | $60,000 | $90,000 | |||
| East South Central | |||||||||
| AL, KY, MS, TN | 223 | 24.1% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 45 | 24.7% | 30 | $54,000 | $81,300 | $110,000 | |||
| NALP 2010 | 1,218 | 3.5% | 603 | $40,000 | $55,000 | $70,801 | |||
| West South Central | |||||||||
| AR, LA, OK, TX | 73 | 7.9% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 12 | 6.6% | 7 | $60,000 | $160,000 | $160,000 | |||
| NALP 2010 | 3,288 | 9.6% | 1787 | $50,000 | $60,000 | $95,000 | |||
| Mountain | |||||||||
| AZ, CO, ID, MT, NV NM, UT, WY | 28 | 3.0% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 6 | 3.3% | lt 5 | . | . | . | |||
| NALP 2010 | 1,817 | 5.3% | 924 | $49,000 | $57,408 | $75,000 | |||
| Pacific | |||||||||
| AK, CA, HI, OR, WA | 61 | 6.6% | |||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 16 | 8.8% | 10 | $140,000 | $148,500 | $160,000 | |||
| NALP 2010 | 5,136 | 14.9% | 2393 | $56,000 | $77,000 | $160,000 | |||
| Total: | 924 | 100.0% | |||||||
As illustrated by the NALP salary information below, salaries vary by type of employment. Public interest positions, most in legal services organizations or public defenders, are typically low, while private practice salaries are typically high. Since 2008, new law graduates have experienced the greatest changes in hiring among large firms.
Judicial clerkship salaries are set according to government salary scales. Although salaries are comparatively low, clerkships are extremely competitive because they provide credentials and experience that can greatly enhance long term employment options, and many Vanderbilt graduates enter judicial clerkships with post-clerkship employment offers already in-hand.
| Vanderbilt Law Class of 2010: Reported salaries by employment categories | ||||||||
| Employment categories | % of | # with | PERCENTILE | |||||
| # rptd | rptd | salary | 25th | Median | 75th | |||
| Academic | ||||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 1 | 0.5% | -- | -- | -- | -- | ||
| NALP 2010 | 1351 | 3.7% | 259 | $37,500 | $47,000 | $60,000 | ||
| Business | ||||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 13 | 7.0% | -- | -- | -- | -- | ||
| NALP 2010 | 5446 | 15.1% | 1639 | $50,000 | $65,000 | $85,000 | ||
| Judicial Clerkships | ||||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 34 | 18.4% | 18 | $52,000 | $55,000 | $60,000 | ||
| NALP 2010 | 3346 | 9.3% | 2713 | $43,437 | $51,900 | $60,000 | ||
| Government | ||||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 27 | 14.6% | 11 | $50,000 | $62,000 | $70,000 | ||
| NALP 2010 | 4601 | 12.8% | 2515 | $44,000 | $52,000 | $62,400 | ||
| Private Practice | ||||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 94 | 50.8% | 74 | $108,000 | $137,500 | $160,000 | ||
| NALP 2010 | 18329 | 50.9% | 10262 | -- | $104,000 | -- | ||
| Public Interest | ||||||||
| Vanderbilt 2010 | 15 | 8.1% | -- | -- | -- | -- | ||
| NALP 2010 | 2428 | 6.7% | 958 | $40,000 | $42,900 | $50,000 | ||
| Vanderbilt Law Clss of 2010: Private practice salaries by firm size | ||||||||
| with | PERCENTILE | NALP | # salaries | |||||
| Size of firm | # rptd. | % of rptd. | salary | 25 | Median | 75 | median | rptd. |
| 2 to 10 | 10 | 10.6 | -- | -- | -- | -- | $50,000 | 2646 |
| 11 to 25 | 10 | 10.6 | 5 | $75,000 | $100,000 | $110,000 | $64,000 | 940 |
| 26 to 50 | 6 | 6.4 | -- | -- | -- | -- | $75,000 | 657 |
| 51 to 100 | 8 | 8.5 | 6 | $100,000 | $125,000 | $145,000 | $85,500 | 572 |
| 101 to 250 | 16 | 17 | 14 | $105,000 | $110,000 | $115,000 | $110,000 | 862 |
| 251 to 500 | 14 | 14.9 | 14 | $108,000 | $137,500 | $152,000 | $145,000 | 991 |
| more than 500 | 30 | 31.9 | 28 | $160,000 | $160,000 | $160,000 | $160,000 | 3481 |
| unknown size | 0 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
To assist new graduates during the downturn, VLS launched the Public Service Initiative (PSI) in 2009, providing stipends to new graduates who secure legal internships in public service or with non-profit advocacy organizations. For the VLS Class of 2010, 42 graduates took legal internships at graduation with the program's support. Nine months later, about half had secured full-time legal employment in their desired location:
Vanderbilt Law Class of 2010: Public Service Initiative Stipends |
|||||||
|
At graduation 2010 |
Nine months after graduation |
||||||
|
43 new graduates received PSI stipends for internships |
21 of the 43 reported obtaining permanent employment |
||||||
|
Public interest |
32 |
Private firm |
8 |
||||
|
Government |
9 |
Government |
5 |
||||
|
Academic |
2 |
Public interest |
4 |
||||
|
Business / industry |
3 |
||||||
|
Advanced degree |
1 |
||||||
New law graduates' salaries vary by location, as does the cost-of-living, but the two do not always go hand-in-hand. Suppose two new graduates take jobs in large firms that pay $160,000, one in Washington, DC, the other in New York. Although these might appear to be equal outcomes, a $160,000 salary in Washington, DC, offers about 54.7 % more buying power than the identical salary in New York due to the relative cost-of-living:
NALP Buying Power Index Class of 2010: How much buying power did salaries offer? for each of 70 American cities.
Sometimes less is more. A new graduate taking employment with an Atlanta firm paying $135,000 might appear to have done less well than the two graduates above, but it turns out that $135,000 in Atlanta offers about 36% more buying power than $160,000 in Washington, D.C., and 91% more buying power than $160,000 in New York. The NALP median salary in Nashville of $90,000 offers about 37% more buying power than $160,000 in New York.
A 2011 National Jurist study shows that “where you work and what debt payment option you choose could significantly impact how much disposable income you will have as a recent graduate.” To determine standard of living, the study used median private practice starting salaries, average debt payments, estimated federal and state taxes, and cost of living adjustments. The study then ranked American law schools by the resulting cost of living adjusted incomes of their graduates. Vanderbilt ranked third in the nation and was the highest-ranked private law school.
National Jurist Best Law Schools for Standard of Living
