The Current Anxiety About JD Advantage Jobs: An Analysis

Author(s)

Susan D. Carle

Details

Faculty editor: Roy Brooks
Publication: Law Review
Volume: 57
Issue: 3
Start Page: 675
Month: September
Year: 2020
Type: Article
Instititional Repository (IR) location of full article: https://digital.sandiego.edu/sdlr/vol57/iss3/

Abstract

This Article will proceed in three parts. Part II provides background on how major changes in politics, economics, social organization, and conceptions of law produce change in the work lawyers do. Section II.A examines earlier eras and Section II.B situates the current changes taking place in the legal profession in this history of transformation. Section II.C examines current anxiety about JD Advantage jobs and Section II.D locates this anxiety in the forces currently producing change in how law work is organized. Part III then undertakes a detailed empirical assessment of the publicly available data on the growth in JD Advantage employment for new law graduates. This investigation produces surprising results, including the fact, demonstrated in Section III.A, that JD Advantage jobs outpace Bar Passage Required jobs in salaries in all but one employment sector. Section III.B looks at the very incomplete data about job satisfaction in JD Advantage jobs; much more needs to be known to reach reliable conclusions here. Finally, Part IV suggests some of the ways in which legal educators should respond to the growth in JD Advantage jobs for new law graduates, approaching this question as part of the larger issue of how legal education should respond to rapid ongoing transformations in law and legal practice. Part V offers a summary and conclusions.