A law professor who used a bar directory and online resources to track down more than 1,100 lawyers who passed Ohio’s bar exam in 2010 feels “great sadness” for her study subjects.
Ohio State University law professor Deborah Jones Merritt found that at least a quarter of the 2010 bar admittees weren’t using their law licenses four years later, a finding she attributes to structural changes in the market for legal labor. Merritt summarizes her findings at the Law School Café.
Merritt searched for the jobs held by the 1,214 lawyers who passed the Ohio bar in February and July 2010, and found jobs for 1,137 of them as of December 2014.
Only three-quarters of the licensed Ohio lawyers held jobs requiring a law license four years later, only 40 percent worked in law firms and nearly 10 percent billed themselves as solo practitioners. Among the solos, Merritt found no evidence of an active practice, such as a website, for half of them. Merritt couldn’t find employment for 6.3 percent of the lawyers, and Merritt suspects they are unemployed.
