More on Legal Employment and Law School Enrollment

American Lawyer, Legal Sector Shed 1,300 Jobs in March:

After gaining jobs for two straight months, the legal sector lost 1,300 positions in March, according to preliminary data released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Friday's report recorded 1,116,400 legal sector positions last month... [T]he legal industry continues to employ far fewer people than it did prior to the recession, when it was common for the bureau to record 1,180,000 legal employees in a given month. ...

Friday's report is the second dose of bad employment news for the legal sector in recent days. In a March 29 report examining the job outlook for the industry, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that the number of lawyers practicing in the country will grow 10% between 2010 and 2020—from 728,000 to 801,800. At the same time, the report said, "growth in demand for lawyers will be constrained as businesses increasingly use large accounting firms and paralegals to do some of the same tasks that lawyers do." ... The report, which the ABA Journal reported on Thursday, cautions that the number of law school graduates continues to outpace the anticipated growth in jobs. The most recently available data from the American Bar Association pegs the number of law school grads for 2010 at 44,000.

The March 29 report prompted William Henderson, an Indiana University School of Law professor who studies the business of law, to author a blog post containing three suggestions for how to curb the overproduction of lawyers. Henderson's ideas include having the Education Department curtail federal funding for law student loans, reducing prospective students' interest in applying to law school through new regulations requiring law schools to release more reliable postgraduation employment statistics, and improving the versatility of law degrees to make graduates more competitive for jobs outside the industry.

• ABA Journal, Law School Applicants Drop by More Than 15%; Are Tuition Cuts Ahead?
• Above the Law, Could the Decline in Law School Applicants Mean Tuition Cuts Are on the Way?
• Chicago Tribune, Chicago Law: Law Schools Seeing Fewer Applicants
• LSAT Blog, Law School Applicant Numbers/Applications in Steep Decline
• WSJ Law Blog, Number of Law School Applicants Continues to Slide