What Matters in the ABA Employment Data?
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The new ABA employment summary report for the class of 2013 appeared recently, and the data prompted a flurry of analysis on blogs and elsewhere (see collected analysis here.)
A great deal of the analysis deals with sorting out which of the reported categories are important (and indeed, which of them are even “good” and “bad”). The report includes approximately 150 categories of employment and unemployment, many overlapping with one another. So what really counts in the ABA employment data? We know that full-time long-term jobs in bar passage required positions are good. But we don’t know, for example, whether a higher number in the “JD Advantage” category is a good thing or a bad thing (for the pros and cons of JD advantage jobs, see Derek Muller’s analysis).
Instead of droning on with my own take on the various categories, I thought I’d take a quantitative look at the data. One can probably assume that outcomes that are found most often in the T-14 are better outcomes, and those found in lower-ranked schools are worse outcomes. So which categories of employment and unemployment are found at schools with better employment outcomes versus schools with worse employment outcomes? To answer this question, I performed a principal components analysis on the employment data categories (minus the columns that are totals of other columns). This reduces 111 pieces of employment data down to a single dimension.
Some tables summarizing the data are below. If numbers scare you, here are the highlights:
- Schools with better employment outcomes tend to have more:
- Employment in full-time long-term in bar passage required jobs
- Employment full-time long-term in large law firm positions
- Employment in a different state from the school’s home state
- Employment in the federal government or public interest
- Schools with worse employment outcomes tend to have more:
- Unemployment (obviously)
- Employment in the same state as the school’s home state
- Employment in small firms or solo practice
- Employment in “JD advantage” or “professional positions
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