Leaving the Law: Occupational and Career Mobility of Law School Graduates

Journal of Legal Education

Volumn 50, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 16-31

  Baker, Joe G ^a   Jorgensen, Brian K ^a  

^a SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0034391076     PISSN: 00222208     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. See Barbara A. Curran & Clara N. Carson, The Lawyer Statistical Report, The U.S. Legal Profession in the 1990s 3-6 (Chicago, 1994). In 1991 the median age for female lawyers was 36, while the median age for male lawyers was 43. At that time, two-thirds of all female lawyers were under the age of 40 and only 7 percent were over 50. In contrast, 38 percent of men were under 40 and 30 percent were over 50. Because of increases in the ranks of lawyers, the median age for all lawyers has declined in recent years.
2. See Robert L. Nelson, The Futures of American Lawyers: A Demographic Profile of a Changing Profession in a Changing Society, 44 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 345, 378 (1994).
3. See Sherwin Rosen, The Market for Lawyers, 35 J.L. & Econ. 215, 222 (1992).
4. See Nelson, supra note 2, at 376-80.
5. See Curran & Carson, supra note 1, at 9-13.
6. Lewis A. Kornhauser & Richard L. Revesz, Legal Education and Entry into the Legal Profession: The Role of Race, Gender, and Educational Debt, 70 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 829, 957 (1995).
7. John Hagan & Fiona Kay, Gender in Practice: A Study of Lawyers' Lives 112-17 (New York, 1995). The study was limited to lawyers in the first 15 years of their careers. By the fourth position held, 22 percent of the women were not practicing versus 12 percent of men. By the fifth position, the percentages were 27 and 20 respectively.
8. Paul W. Mattessich & Cheryl W. Heilman, The Career Paths of Minnesota Law School Graduates: Does Gender Make a Difference? 9 Law & Ineq. J. 59 (1990).
9. See, e.g., Boyan Jovanovic, Job Matching and the Theory of Turnover, 87 J. Pol. Econ. 972 (1979); Robert A. Miller, Job Matching and Occupational Choice, 92 J. Pol. Econ. 1086 (1984).
10. A Theory of the Allocation of Time, 75 Econ. J. 493 (1965).
11. See, e.g., Nachum Sicherman & Oded Galor, A Theory of Career Mobility, 98 J. Pol. Econ. 169 (1990); Robert H. Topel & Michael P. Ward, Job Mobility and the Careers of Young Men, 107 Q. J. Econ. 439, 439 (1992).
12. The survey question was phrased: "[Do] you have children living with you as part of their family?" A further clarification said: "Only count children who live with you at least 50 percent of the time."
13. Employment is out of field if the respondent perceives her job to be unrelated to her degree, regardless of occupation. Only about 19 percent of law graduates who are in top management perceive their degree to be unrelated to their job.
14. This is not an unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is the percentage of the labor force unemployed. In 1993, the unemployment rate for law school graduates was 2.2 percent, which compared quite favorably to the 1993 national unemployment rate of 7.1 percent.
15. Curran & Carson, supra note 1, at 7, estimate 1991 total lawyer employment as 768,901. George T. Silvestri estimates 1994 total lawyer employment at 735,000 and predicts that the number will be 918,000 in 2005. Occupational Employment to 2005, 118 Monthly Lab. Rev., 60, 65 (1995).
16. National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators 1998, Table 3-4 (Washington, 1998).
17. Mattessich & Heilman, supra note 8, at 92.
18. Hagan & Kay, supra note 7, at 115.
19. In 1993 there were approximately 1,100 law school graduates who also had medical degrees; that partially explains the high earnings of this group. See Joe G. Baker, Employment Patterns of Law School Graduates (Law School Admissions Council Research Report) (Newtown, 1999).
20. This earnings difference is at least partially reduced by experience. The average experience of those working in management and academic law is higher than those working as lawyers and judges. It is also interesting to note that new graduates have higher median earnings in management and administration than in law.
21. See Donald O. Parsons, Models of Labor Market Turnover: A Theoretical and Empirical Survey, in 1 Research in Labor Economics, ed. Ronald Ehrenberg, 185, 210 (Greenwich, Conn., 1977).
22. Lawyers' movement into management is small compared to that of scientists and engineers, for whom the percentage moving into management increases from about 5 percent at career age 1 to about half at career age 35. See Jeff Biddle & Karen Roberts, Private Sector Scientists and Engineers and the Transition to Management, 29 J. Hum. Resources 82, 90-91 (1994).