TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Azya Thornton on Apr 23, 2026

A record percentage of U.S. law school students landed legal jobs soon after graduating in 2025, according to new American Bar Association (ABA) data, despite reduced hiring for government and public interest jobs, Reuters reports. The percentage of 2025 law degree graduates who landed ‌jobs requiring bar admission within 10 months of leaving campus ticked up one percent from 2024, which also was a record year, to 83%. In total, 31,743 of the 2025 graduates from the 195 ABA-approved or provisionally approved law schools were employed in such roles as of March 16 of this year. The data also ranks employment success by law school with Vanderbilt University Law School coming in at third place behind Cornell Law School and Duke University School of Law. ABA officials noted that reporting changes this year include certain law school-funded positions in the totals, affecting year-over-year comparisons.