This session will report on the results of the third wave of the After the J.D. longitudinal study. It will assess career progress of the cohort of lawyers who began their careers in 2000. We address questions about how much mobility has occurred; how incomes and practice settings have changed over the 12 years; dimensions of stratification in the legal profession; impacts of race, ethnicity and gender; the management of debt; and career satisfaction as it relates to the other categories.
The relevance of the research has increased over the course of the three waves of the study. In particular, the question of the value of a law degree has become a subject of intense debate in the media and in the legal profession. The AJD Project provides the only longitudinal information on debt, how lawyers have paid down debt, and its impact on their lives. The third wave also provides unique data on the impact of the economic downturn on this cohort of lawyers. This would be the first formal release of the Wave 3 AJD Report, and we think that the topic fits the call for “hot topics”, since it is very relevant to schools rethinking their curriculum and approaches to legal education in the face of the continuing decline of applicants to law schools.