ABF researchers are planning a new wave of surveys to continue the After the JD project, a long-running inquiry into the forces that have shaped the careers of lawyers over the past twenty years.
After the JD is a landmark longitudinal study of legal careers. It has been a signature research project of the American Bar Foundation since the project’s inception in 2000.
The study tracks the professional lives of more than 5,000 lawyers during the first twenty years of their careers. Data on these lawyers were collected by researchers in three waves of surveys: the first from 2000 to 2003, the second in 2007, and the third from 2012 to 2013. With a response rate of more than 50% in each wave, and many lawyers responding to one or more waves, After the JD provides rich empirical insights into the career trajectories of a generation of lawyers. Interviews with 146 survey participants supplement the quantitative data of the study with important qualitative insights, making it possible for researchers to understand the careers of lawyers as a group and on a personal level.
In 2023, researchers contributing to the project published The Making of Lawyers’ Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession (University of Chicago Press). The book examines the structure of the legal profession and considers the inequalities early career lawyers face across race, gender, and class distinctions. In addition to evaluating social stratifications within the profession, the book also considers how individuals navigate the constraints of the profession and exercise agency over their careers.
This extension of the After the JD Project is to be led by American Bar Foundation MacCrate Research Chair in the Legal Profession and Northwestern University Professor of Sociology and Law Robert L. Nelson, along with four fellow contributors to The Making of Lawyers’ Careers. In a new phase of the project, researchers plan to build on an extensive body of research by once again surveying the bar entering class of 2000, with the aim of understanding how their careers have developed in the twenty-five years since they first began practicing. The addition of this survey will produce an unprecedented comprehensive look at the careers of lawyers over time.
Of particular interest in this wave of the survey will be the development of so-called late bloomers who began their careers at low-ranked law schools or at low-prestige starting positions; taking a long view at the careers of these lawyers will reveal more about how these kinds of early disadvantages impact the lawyers later in their careers than has been understood by the researchers in previous surveys.
Researchers are also interested in observing developments more common for mid- or late-career lawyers, such as early retirements, terminations, and shifts to solo practice, in the bar class of 2000. As with previous surveys, attention is paid both to the factors impacting lawyer careers and to the conscious shifts and decisions surveyed lawyers have made throughout their working years.
For the first time in the history of After the JD, researchers will also survey a new cohort of bar admittees: the bar class of 2024. Surveying a new cohort of law school graduates makes it possible for researchers to compare the start of this new class’s career to that of the original 2000 cohort, building a deeper understanding of changes to the profession and to legal education over the last twenty-five years.
The new cohort survey comes at a time when the legal profession is changing in several important ways. AI, legal outsourcing, and gig work are increasingly becoming a part of the work that law firms do. Hybrid and remote work schedules have shifted the realities of office life and changed the ways lawyers network and collaborate. Shifts in the demographics of entering classes of law students and changes in the ways law schools promote inclusion and equity have also had effects on the legal profession. By surveying two generations of lawyers at once, researchers will gather data that illuminates how these many changes affect mid- and late-career lawyers compared to those lawyers who are just entering the profession.
Work on these two new surveys begins with a planning phase, during which the researchers design surveys and determine how best to contact and engage survey participants to ensure a successful wave of surveys. The research aims to deepen the ability of scholars, legal professionals, and those working in legal education to make sense of the ever-changing landscape of the legal profession.