Projected Lawyer Surpluses Worsen: 3 New Lawyers for Every Law Job in 2022

The American Lawyer:  States' Projected Lawyer Surpluses Deteriorate for 2022, by Matt Leichter:

[G]overnment employment projections can provide more insight into the number of future lawyer positions that will be available for prospective law students. In fact, estimates on lawyer employment in 2022 by state are now available, making it possible to update the calculations for the law graduate and lawyer surpluses.

The “law graduate surplus” measures the ratio of ABA law school graduates in each state in 2013 to the estimated annual lawyer job growth rate for the 2012-22 projection period. The “lawyer surplus” makes the same calculation but subs out law school graduates with the number of bar admits in all states and under all circumstances (including those entering on motion).

The law graduate surplus is useful because it uses a discrete number of individuals, but it includes people who never become lawyers while excluding people who join the bar without going to an ABA law school (for instance, by attending a foreign law school). By contrast, the lawyer surplus directly measures people who obtain a law license, except it duplicates many who seek bar admission in multiple states—a phenomenon that is likely to increase in the future as more jurisdictions adopt the Uniform Bar Exam. However, the lawyer surplus does provide information on the large number of lawyers who motion into the District of Columbia bar without attending a local law school or taking its bar exam.

State governments provide estimates of lawyer employment in 2012 and 2022 along with the projected annual growth rate. The following table breaks them down by state (which includes the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) and region as delineated by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. ...

Here is a table of the law graduate and lawyer surpluses by state and region, ranked ... by the lawyer surplus for 2013 and compared against 2011.

States with the biggest lawyer surplus:

#	STATE/BEA REGION	NO. ABA LAW SCHOOL GRADS		NO. BAR ADMITS		RATIO ABA GRADS TO ANNUAL LAWYER JOBS		RATIO BAR ADMITS TO ANNUAL LAWYER JOBS
		2011	2013	2011	2013	2011	2013	2011	2013
1	North Dakota	81	75	195	267	2.03	1.88	4.88	6.68
2	Alaska	0	0	106	130	0.00	0.00	5.30	6.50
3	New Jersey	783	859	2,844	3,386	1.04	1.41	3.79	5.55
4	Wyoming	73	78	112	157	0.91	2.60	1.40	5.23
5	New York	4,703	5,007	9,855	10,251	2.92	2.55	6.12	5.23
6	New Hampshire	147	107	296	250	2.45	2.14	4.93	5.00
7	District of Columbia	2,116	2,181	3,164	3,120	1.48	3.16	2.21	4.52
8	Maryland	594	600	1,653	1,742	1.49	1.54	4.13	4.47
9	Massachusetts	2,288	2,391	2,416	2,411	3.27	4.27	3.45	4.31
10	Hawaii	101	108	208	206	1.68	2.16	3.47	4.12

States with the lowest lawyer surplus:

40	Texas	2,343	2,323	3,476	3,836	1.44	1.29	2.13	2.13
41	Arizona	490	640	689	906	1.09	1.49	1.53	2.11
42	Colorado	462	437	1,256	1,217	1.36	0.73	3.69	2.03
43	Georgia	896	1,085	1,288	1,377	1.30	1.60	1.87	2.03
44	Washington	657	654	1,148	1,353	1.43	0.98	2.50	2.02
45	Utah	285	292	606	499	1.36	1.17	2.89	2.00
46	Louisiana	797	936	744	533	2.95	3.47	2.76	1.97
47	Oklahoma	462	468	465	463	1.71	1.87	1.72	1.85
48	Delaware	252	279	122	148	4.20	3.49	2.03	1.85
49	Florida	2,998	3,190	3,646	3,476	1.53	1.65	1.86	1.80

Here are the totals for all fifty states:

US (State Data)		43,345	43,591	61,292	63,237	2.04	2.09	2.89	3.03
US (BLS Data)		43,817	46,101	62,113	64,960	2.07	2.35	2.93	3.31

As expected, the lawyer surpluses in each state and region are higher than one, implying that there are no obvious places in which lawyers can expect to find widespread job shortages, particularly Thomas Jefferson Law School's home state of California, whose lawyer surplus is approaching 3-to-1. For law graduates, though, the story is a bit different: Colorado, Nevada, Washington and, of course, Alaska, which has no law schools, had law graduate deficits, although all of these states had at least twice as many newly licensed lawyers as there were job openings. It should be noted again that Puerto Rico has the highest law graduate surplus, but its lawyer surplus is diminished by the commonwealth's relatively lower number of new bar admits, a situation that might be caused by Puerto Rico's low bar passage rate.

With these high surpluses, it would probably take much longer than Thomas Jefferson’s projected date of 2017 for the number of law graduates or newly licensed attorneys to match available job openings. Given that the number of law school applicants for the 2014-15 academic year only fell by about 5,000, to 54,500, and the rate of decline is slowing, it appears unlikely that the equilibrium will occur for a while, if ever. Nevertheless, this 2013 annual lawyer surplus estimate is still likely to be the high tide given the high number of law school graduates last year. Consequently, law schools' expectations to see their graduates enjoy long tenures at the bar are misplaced. Although it's certain that future law graduates' fortunes will improve thanks to declining enrollments, there is still no evidence that there is more demand for their work.