NALP Numbers negate negativism?

The National Association for Law Placement has released statistics on the national employment picture for the 2006 class of JDs.  According to the NALP numbers, the overall employment rate for 2006 law graduates topped 90%, the highest rate since 2000.  This is strikingly at odds with one of the most talked about legal industry articles of last year, Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers.

Accoring to NALP, over 55 % of 2006 graduates went into private practice.  (That number has fluctuated only between 55% and 58% since 1993.)  About 10 % of new law grads went on to judicial clerkships, another 10 % opted for [non-clerk] government jobs, and about 5 % entered public interest law.

Roughly 14 % of 2006 JDs took jobs in ‘business.’  These ‘business graduates,’ per NALP’s categorization scheme, include “graduates working for agencies that place individuals in temporary legal, law clerk, or paralegal jobs.”   Does this seem like an odd place to put JD temps?  It would seem to merit its own category.  Then again, NALP reports that JD temps are only 11% of the business-employed graduates, i.e, a mere 570 people in all.   This sounds low, especially since 2007 sometimes felt like the “Year of the JD Temp.”  See here , here and here.  And don’t forget the year that a certain bitter 2L had.

                                                                                     -posted by brian