Law Schools, Students, and "Legal Employment": Supply and Demand

Over at Balkinization Brian Tamanaha (Wash U) posted graphs endeavoring to describe law student enrollment and BLS data on legal employment trends (2001-09). Visually, the two graphs support Brian's assessment: "Law schools thus responded to the worst recession in the legal market in at least two decades by letting in more law students." As Brian Leiter (Chicago) notes, however, "One can't tell, though, from the second chart [and the underlying BLS data] what portion of the downturn in 'legal employment' is a reduction in the employment of attorneys as opposed to other law-related employees."