The good news for the J.D. class of 2019 is that nearly 81% of them had found full-time jobs that either require bar passage or for which a J.D. offers an advantage within 10 months of leaving campus—up close to 3 percentage points from the previous graduating class.

The bad news is that they were mere months into their legal careers when COVID-19 upended the economy and the legal industry, and it's unclear how the pandemic has impacted their employment prospects over the past two months. Some large firms have announced furloughs and layoffs, while court closures have disrupted business for solo practitioners and firms of all sizes.

The American Bar Association this week released its annual graduate employment report, which details overall employment rates and the types of jobs recent graduates have secured. The report largely offers a positive picture of new lawyer employment. In addition to an uptick in the percentage of grads in full-time legal or J.D. advantage jobs—which has increased each of the past six years—the percentage of 2019 graduates who were unemployed and seeking fell to 6.4%, from 7.3% the previous year. The percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage, which are widely considered the gold standard for J.D. employment, increased nearly 5 percentage points to 72%.

The improved overall employment rate is the result of two factors: the actual number of full-time bar passage required or J.D. advantage jobs increased by 720 over the previous year. At the same time, the total number of J.D.s graduating in 2019 decreased by more than 300. Together, they pushed the employment rate to its recent high.

Yet, the ABA warned that this data "may not reflect current law graduate outcomes in today's changed economic environment." The data is collected 10 months after graduation—this year the deadline for law schools to submit jobs numbers was March 15. The first U.S. shelter-in-place order came down in California's Bay Area just two days later. Since then, many areas of the legal industry have struggled to maintain their flow of business and revenue.

"These data do not capture any of the widespread economic disruption associated with the response to COVID-19, which has resulted in belt-tightening, salary reductions and layoffs at law firms around the country," wrote University of St. Thomas School of Law professor Jerry Organ in a post on TaxProf Blog. "Indeed, some of the graduates of the class of 2019 who were reported as employed on March 15, 2020, may already have lost their jobs."

Hence, the class of 2019 may well represent a high-water mark for employment over the next several years, Organ noted. Indeed, the graduating class of 2020 is already facing economic headwinds. Some incoming associates at law firms have seen their start dates deferred until early 2021, and many new graduates who have jobs lined up aren't certain if and when they will be able to take the bar exam. About a third of jurisdictions have rescheduled the July bar exam for September, though fears remain that subsequent waves of COVID-19 could force the cancellation of those postponed exams. (The National Conference of Bar Examiners this week unveiled plans for a pared-down, remote exam that jurisdictions could deploy in October as a backup if in-person tests are canceled.)