USNWR Employment: Yale .5 academia, 25.4 PI? Forum

[mcweanis]

Hey guys - I'm looking over the employment stats; are they complete BS? I was looking to see which schools have the best PI turnout, and ran in to some weird stuff. I only put the schools I'm interested in, sorry!

Graduates Employed in Public Interest (including gov)
CLS: 5.5
Penn: 6
NYU: 14
HLS: 8.1
YLS: 25.4
Chi: 6
SLS: 7

The NYU isn't unexpected, but Yale being so high and CLS having the lowest percentage of all is (especially since I want to go there for PI!) I thought Chicago would be the lowest because of the crappy LRAP.

Academia
CLS: .5
Penn: 1
NYU: 1
HLS: .5
YLS: .5
Chi: 1.5
SLS: 2

I thought Yale was famous for academia, but .5 doesn't seem to be a lot, especially from such a small class... by this logic Harvard must be sending out tonssss more academics.

Clerkships
CLS: 8
Penn: 15
NYU: 11
HLS: 20.6
YLS: 30.6
Chi: 9
SLS: 26

All the leftovers are firms or business, meaning Yale has by far the least grads in law firms - around 40 percent - and Stanford and Yale the next lowest in the 60s. Chicago and Columbia are the highest, in the 80s.

What do you make of this??

[mcweanis]

also:

Professional other (jobs that require professional skills or training but for which a J.D. is neither preferred nor particularly applicable; e.g., accountant, teacher, business manager, nurse) 0.0%

the highest listing for any of these schools is 2% - really? only 2% of these law grads aren't practicing any more?

[Lawlcat]

Without more, it's hard to judge the reliability of these numbers. In general, I don't trust USNWR. Their clerkship data is supposed to be (?) pretty accurate. The biggest thing is to ask what they're doing with "unknowns".

They're not unbelievable, though. A lot of people who go into academia, PI, and government start out somewhere else. At-graduation rates might be quite misleading.

Honestly, when it comes to academia, I'd rather look at specific professors at specific schools than some percentage. Accordingly, though: academia is hard to break into even at the best schools. It's sort of like judging a school by its Supreme Court clerkship numbers: outside of Yale, you probably shouldn't be choosing your school based on odds of becoming one of the Elect, because you're probably talking about a 1% chance versus a 5% chance.

[Aeroplane]

For entry-level academia candidate bio's see Solum's Entry Level Hiring report below. It's not a complete tally of tenure-track entry level hires each year, but I believe it's a vast majority (IIRC over 70% in past years, not sure about 2010). Notice:
1) almost none of these hires received their JD's less than 2 years before the hire year, and most graduated a lot longer ago.
2) many have clerkships, even though clerks are probably vastly understated in the hiring report because the info isn't always available.
3) Many have fellowships, VAPs (visiting professorships).

April 2010: http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2 ... -2010.html
April 2009: --LinkRemoved--
June 2008: http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2 ... rsion.html

The people who do fellowships & VAPs, as well as anyone taking an adjunct or legal writing instructor position, immediately post-graduation are probably the .5-1% you see going into "academia" at graduation. My understanding is that it's almost unheard of for fresh law school grads at ANY school, including Yale, to receive tenure-track offers prior to graduation. I've heard vaguely that exceptions are occasionally made for people with PhD's, but I don't know any specific bio's to point to on that account.

Edit to add: I see a few hires fresh from SJD's and LLM's in the 2008 report (degree year 2007), but very few. And one fresh JD, but he had a DPhil.

[mcweanis]

OH - i didn't see the heading 'class breakdown at graduation.' so it might not make sense to look at academia, but the PI numbers are still pretty surprising. its funny that yale has the program where you don't even have to practice law or PI to get your LRAP, but by far the highest percentage are in PI of the other schools.

[2011Law]

I always thought PI meant personal injury. A few things just started making sense.

[re-applicant]

Is this the cross-section of a single year? If so, to echo GTL, it might be a mistake to read too much into it.

[dorriedoodle]

Hey guys - I'm looking over the employment stats; are they complete BS? I was looking to see which schools have the best PI turnout, and ran in to some weird stuff. I only put the schools I'm interested in, sorry!

Graduates Employed in Public Interest (including gov)
CLS: 5.5
Penn: 6
NYU: 14
HLS: 8.1
YLS: 25.4
Chi: 6
SLS: 7

The NYU isn't unexpected, but Yale being so high and CLS having the lowest percentage of all is (especially since I want to go there for PI!) I thought Chicago would be the lowest because of the crappy LRAP.

Academia
CLS: .5
Penn: 1
NYU: 1
HLS: .5
YLS: .5
Chi: 1.5
SLS: 2

I thought Yale was famous for academia, but .5 doesn't seem to be a lot, especially from such a small class... by this logic Harvard must be sending out tonssss more academics.

Clerkships
CLS: 8
Penn: 15
NYU: 11
HLS: 20.6
YLS: 30.6
Chi: 9
SLS: 26

All the leftovers are firms or business, meaning Yale has by far the least grads in law firms - around 40 percent - and Stanford and Yale the next lowest in the 60s. Chicago and Columbia are the highest, in the 80s.

What do you make of this??

Have you read about Chicago's new LRAP? It sounds amazing. Jealous.

[Lem37]

Without more, it's hard to judge the reliability of these numbers. In general, I don't trust USNWR. Their clerkship data is supposed to be (?) pretty accurate. The biggest thing is to ask what they're doing with "unknowns".

They're not unbelievable, though. A lot of people who go into academia, PI, and government start out somewhere else. At-graduation rates might be quite misleading.

Honestly, when it comes to academia, I'd rather look at specific professors at specific schools than some percentage. Accordingly, though: academia is hard to break into even at the best schools. It's sort of like judging a school by its Supreme Court clerkship numbers: outside of Yale, you probably shouldn't be choosing your school based on odds of becoming one of the Elect, because you're probably talking about a 1% chance versus a 5% chance.

TITCR. But you also have to remember that many of these percentages are self-select - as in, us students often choose what sector to practice in. Just because a large percentage of last year's CLS class appears to have chosen private sector over PI doesn't mean a PI career isn't viable at CLS, which is one of the top law schools in the country. To suggest that a PI career there is "not viable" is ridiculous.