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UPCOMING EVENTS

Greetings,

Today we share news about the Class of 2020, which outpaced national metrics and broke college records for employment in a challenging and highly unusual job market.

Also featured is the Mundheim Speaker Series, offering you the chance to learn from national leaders in corporate governance and business law.

And we hope you'll join us in proudly celebrating the University of Arizona on February 14. You can read about UA Giving Day below

Until the footnotes,

Marc

Class of 2020 Sets Record-Breaking Employment Rates

Amid unfamiliar online learning environments and rescheduled bar exams, graduates from University of Arizona Law Class of 2020 exceeded expectations with record-breaking employment rates.

At graduation in May 2020, 61.7% of the class had full-time, long-term jobs that required bar passage or for which their JD was an advantage – an all-time high – and 87.2 % were employed in high-quality legal jobs 10 months after graduation, the highest such employment rate in college history by more than 5% and nearly 10 percentage points higher than the national average for the Class of 2020.

Tellingly, the rate of graduates who were unemployed and seeking work was 4.2% (representing only four graduates) significantly below the national rate of 8.4%.

Historically, a plurality of graduates enter private practice, a trend that was unchanged for the Class of 2020. Private practice opportunities cover a wide spectrum of global, national, regional and local firms of various sizes. The percentage of students who entered judicial clerkships has also consistently remained high, with 23.4% of the graduating class obtaining such positions, compared to just 9.5% nationally.

The University of Arizona Law Career Development Office also noted an increase in graduates pursuing public interest positions this year compared to years past. “A lot of it has to do with how much the College, and Dean Miller in particular, has prioritized affordable education for our students,” explained Shannon Trebbe, Assistant Dean of Career Development and Professor of Practice. “Graduating with little or no student debt really frees up our graduates to take jobs that are meaningful to them.”

The series is free and open to the public, but registration is required whether you plan to attend virtually or in person. Please contact Nancy Stanley to register.

A full schedule of speakers can be found here.

Great students come to our JD program to be trained in the law – with legal reasoning, legal writing, doctrinal knowledge, and a set of skills that serve as the foundation for rewarding careers. Most (not all) come intending to practice law. It is enormously rewarding for us, as teachers and mentors, to see such strong performance in a shifting job market. That reflects many things, but is a credit first to the seriousness and hard work of our students, and second to sustained efforts by faculty and staff to train, mentor, and champion our students.

As always, the life of the College continues – and the “Conversations with Bob Mundheim” speaker series is deservedly one of the highlights of our community each year. This series, and the associated course, demonstrates year after year that law students can live and learn in Tucson (today – light clouds, with high temperature: 67F/19C) – and still have a great teacher and national leader like Bob Mundheim as a teacher, and the amazing speakers he welcomes each year to gain deep insights in corporate law and governance. 

Warmly,