Law Graduate Overproduction by State (aka “The Holy Grail”)

[****THIS IS THE ORIGINAL POST ON LAW GRADUATE OVERPRODUCTION. THE PERMANENT VERSION OF THIS POST CAN BE FOUND ON THIS PAGE. PLEASE LINK TO THAT INSTEAD.****]

Choropleth Map of ABA Graduates per Job Opening by State (Indiana & Iowa are average)

This week’s breakthrough—discovering the national lawyer replacement projection data from 2008 to 2018 (240,400 gross jobs)—led to an even bigger breakthrough: lawyer replacement data by state over the same time period. I never dreamed I’d be able to find this when I started this blog.

Taking 2009 graduate numbers from the LSAC against state lawyer employment projections, we can compare lawyer overproduction state-by-state, telling us where there are too many law students and law schools. There are a few limitations with the data:

(1)  They necessarily exclude non-ABA law schools because no centralized authorities track them. This is unfortunate because non-ABA law schools account for 16.74% of all law schools (I continue to exclude correspondence schools and the JAG school). Mainly this means California’s values are extremely suspect.

(2)  The sum of the state replacement projections does not come close to the federal government’s projection. More below.

(3)  South Dakota does not provide any data, but it can’t have any more than 2,000 employed lawyers in 2008. My guess is its projections should be similar to North Dakota’s and Montana’s.

(4)  Overproduction assumes every graduate works in the state he or she attended law school. This obviously isn’t true. It’s also theoretically possible that some law schools deliberately “underbid” those in other states, i.e. cheaply producing better lawyers and exporting them to undercut local law schools (Widener’s Gambit?). I dismiss this hypothesis as dubious given tuition rates, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. The oversupply problem wouldn’t exist if there were clear attorney shortages to compensate for surplus production in other regions. The following results demonstrate only two states underproducing lawyers: Alaska and Nevada, but those two can’t possibly absorb the tens of thousands of excess law graduates produced per year elsewhere.

On the other hand, there are two pieces of good news:

(a)   the 2008 employment numbers are close enough between the states and the national government that they look like they include self-employed attorneys (solos and partners), and

(b)  The BLS assumes the economy will be at full employment by 2018, so as far as overproduction is concerned, we need not worry about today’s underemployed attorneys whom the BLS predicts will be employed doing something else (though that says nothing about their student debt and whether they’ll be gainfully employed at all).

Here’s a chart of the results, sorted by annual ABA graduate surplus because absolute overproduction more dramatically impacts the legal education system and people’s lives than relative overproduction.

The number in parentheses is the number of ABA-accredited law schools in that state as of 2011. * means the state has one or more non-ABA accredited law schools, and as always D.C. and Puerto Rico are counted as states for the purposes of this analysis.

#	STATE	Average Annual Job Openings	ABA Grads (2009)	Annual Surplus	Grads/ Opening
1	New York (15)	1,700	4,776	3,076	2.81
2	California (20)*	2,360	4,688	2,328	1.99
3	Massachusetts (7)*	430	2,316	1,886	5.39
4	Michigan (5)	470	2,016	1,546	4.29
5	Florida (11)	1,370	2,787	1,417	2.03
6	District of Columbia (6)	970	2,129	1,159	2.19
7	Pennsylvania (8)	640	1,715	1,075	2.68
8	Illinois (9)	1,130	2,166	1,036	1.92
9	Ohio (9)	460	1,495	1,035	3.25
10	Texas (9)	1,500	2,337	837	1.56
11	Virginia (8)	730	1,429	699	1.96
12	Missouri (4)	220	898	678	4.08
13	North Carolina (7)	450	1,055	605	2.34
14	Minnesota (4)	370	962	592	2.60
15	Louisiana (4)	250	811	561	3.24
16	Indiana (4)	340	828	488	2.44
17	Delaware (1)	60	537	477	8.95
18	Puerto Rico (3)	100	554	454	5.54
19	Oregon (3)	160	531	371	3.32
20	Connecticut (3)	190	531	341	2.79
21	Wisconsin (2)	190	487	297	2.56
22	Oklahoma (3)	210	494	284	2.35
23	Maryland (2)	270	548	278	2.03
24	Washington (3)	440	694	254	1.58
25	New Jersey (3)	540	791	251	1.46
26	Tennessee (3)*	210	445	235	2.12
27	South Carolina (2)	190	405	215	2.13
28	Kentucky (3)	180	385	205	2.14
29	Alabama (3)*	200	405	205	2.03
30	Iowa (2)	140	341	201	2.44
31	Mississippi (2)	150	347	197	2.31
32	Colorado (2)	330	518	188	1.57
33	Nebraska (2)	100	280	180	2.80
34	Arkansas (2)	110	249	139	2.26
35	Georgia (5)	760	896	136	1.18
36	Vermont (1)	60	191	131	3.18
37	Kansas (2)	170	297	127	1.75
38	Rhode Island (1)	80	184	104	2.30
39	Arizona (3)	280	378	98	1.35
40	New Hampshire (1)	50	144	94	2.88
41	West Virginia (1)	60	149	89	2.48
42	North Dakota (1)	30	83	53	2.77
43	Maine (1)	50	93	43	1.86
44	New Mexico (1)	70	112	42	1.60
45	Wyoming (1)	30	71	41	2.37
46	Hawaii (1)	60	88	28	1.47
47	Montana (1)	60	77	17	1.28
48	Idaho (1)	90	93	3	1.03
49	Utah (2)	280	281	1	1.00
50	Nevada (1)	150	140	-10	0.93
51	Alaska (0)	30	0	-30	0.00
52	South Dakota (1)	N/A	73	N/A	N/A
	USA (199)	24,040	44,000	19,960	1.83

You’ll note that the USA is supposed to add 24,040 lawyer jobs per year even though adding the individual state entries in the third column equals only 19,470, a deficit of 4,570 lawyer jobs per year that I highly doubt are all in South Dakota. The lower state sum means that the economy will gross only 194,700 lawyer jobs by 2018, and the national graduate to job ratio will be 2.2. The difference between the state sum and the national projection is important because the national number implies a 45.4% reduction in enrollments (~90 law schools) to stabilize the system while the former state number implies a larger 54.5% enrollment reduction equal to about 109 law schools. I don’t know what methodology labor departments use, but kudos go to Frank the Underemployed Professional of Fluster Cucked for subtracting ABA grads from forty years ago and coming up with a surplus similar to the BLS’s projection. For stats wonks, the median state surplus is 235, the mean 485.43, and the standard deviation 630.75.

As for the ratio of graduates to job openings, the median is 2.26, the mean 2.44, and the standard deviation 1.37. Only Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Alaska are below the first standard deviation; Michigan and Missouri are in the second standard deviation above the average; Massachusetts and Puerto Rico are in the third, and Delaware is in the fifth.

To spare you another table, here’s a chart listing the graduate to job ratio:

For giggles, here’s Widener’s (DE) most recent bar passage rates as reported to the ABA and LSAC:

Of the 193 graduates in 2009 who were employed nine months after graduation, less than one quarter (48) were employed in-state. Graduates flocked to twelve (!) other states, and a clear majority took the Pennsylvania bar. Widener didn’t even bother reporting how many people took the Delaware bar. So the 8.95 graduates to annual job openings ratio isn’t implausible at all.

And for an appendix, here’s a table of the states by employed lawyers, growth rates, net jobs between 2008 and 2018, and the average annual job openings.

STATE	Employed Lawyers(2008)	Projected LawyerEmployment(2018)	Growth Rate	Net Jobs(2018)	Average AnnualJobOpenings
Alabama (3)*	7,910	8,420	6.45%	510	200
Alaska (0)	1,330	1,270	-4.51%	-60	30
Arizona (3)	11,880	12,450	4.80%	570	280
Arkansas (2)	3,430	3,840	11.95%	410	110
California (20)*	94,900	100,800	6.22%	5,900	2,360
Colorado (2)	14,090	14,710	4.40%	620	330
Connecticut (3)	9,940	9,930	-0.10%	-10	190
Delaware (1)	2,900	3,000	3.45%	100	60
District of Columbia (6)	42,410	44,180	4.17%	1,770	970
Florida (11)	52,980	56,820	7.25%	3,840	1,370
Georgia (5)	20,900	24,560	17.51%	3,660	760
Hawaii (1)	2,970	2,950	-0.67%	-20	60
Idaho (1)	2,710	3,080	13.65%	370	90
Illinois (9)	38,080	42,290	11.06%	4,210	1,130
Indiana (4)	9,740	11,310	16.12%	1,570	340
Iowa (2)	4,340	4,910	13.13%	570	140
Kansas (2)	5,210	5,940	14.01%	730	170
Kentucky (3)	6,510	7,070	8.60%	560	180
Louisiana (4)	10,770	11,270	4.64%	500	250
Maine (1)	2,800	2,800	0.00%	0	50
Maryland (2)	14,300	13,570	-5.10%	-730	270
Massachusetts (7)*	21,600	21,900	1.39%	300	430
Michigan (5)	19,030	20,210	6.20%	1,180	470
Minnesota (4)	15,290	16,160	5.69%	870	370
Mississippi (2)	5,260	5,740	9.13%	480	150
Missouri (4)	11,520	11,410	-0.95%	-110	220
Montana (1)	1,870	2,070	10.70%	200	60
Nebraska (2)	3,400	3,750	10.29%	350	100
Nevada (1)	4,840	5,690	17.56%	850	150
New Hampshire (1)	2,350	2,400	2.13%	50	50
New Jersey (3)	28,650	28,650	0.00%	0	540
New Mexico (1)	3,550	3,580	0.85%	30	70
New York (15)	86,140	87,080	1.09%	940	1,700
North Carolina (7)	14,310	16,170	13.00%	1,860	450
North Dakota (1)	1,240	1,300	4.84%	60	30
Ohio (9)	19,860	20,750	4.48%	890	460
Oklahoma (3)	8,100	8,680	7.16%	580	210
Oregon (3)	4,980	5,610	12.65%	630	160
Pennsylvania (8)	28,400	29,400	3.52%	1,000	640
Puerto Rico (3)	4,180	4,350	4.07%	170	100
Rhode Island (1)	2,710	2,980	9.96%	270	80
South Carolina (2)	6,640	7,260	9.34%	620	190
South Dakota (1)	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Tennessee (3)*	8,720	9,160	5.05%	440	210
Texas (9)	44,680	51,360	14.95%	6,680	1,500
Utah (2)	7,080	8,580	21.19%	1,500	280
Vermont (1)	2,070	2,270	9.66%	200	60
Virginia (8)	19,780	23,390	18.25%	3,610	730
Washington (3)	14,840	16,320	9.97%	1,480	440
West Virginia (1)	2,940	2,970	1.02%	30	60
Wisconsin (2)	10,390	10,230	-1.54%	-160	190
Wyoming (1)	940	1,040	10.64%	100	30
—–	—–	—–	—–	—–	—–
TOTALS	765,460	815,630	6.55%	50,170	19,470
USA AVERAGE (199)	759,200	857,700	12.97%	98,500	24,040
***Difference***	-6,260	42,070		48,330	4,570

I include the “Difference” at the bottom to alert readers to the fact that while the 2008 employment numbers largely correspond between the states and the BLS (which I suspect excludes Puerto Rico), the 2018 employment projections simply do not line up. The federal government predicts 5.2% more employed attorneys than the states do, as well as a much faster growth rate. I’ll bet there’s a state government or two in there that’s not counting self-employed attorneys. If not, let’s hope the BLS is right and state governments aren’t because that’s 45,700 more graduates who will never see the inside of the legal profession.