My prior two installments in this series predicted that in 2015, many deans and law professors would declare the crisis in legal education over. In particular, two changes that have nothing to do with the actual demand for lawyers—one from the ABA and one from the Bureau of Labor Statistics—could fuel false optimism about the job environment for new law graduates.

Realistic projections about the future should start with a clear-eyed vision of the present. To assist in that endeavor, the Georgetown Law Center for the Study of the Legal Profession and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor recently released their always useful annual “Report on the State of the Legal Market.”

The report does not reach every segment of the profession. For example, government lawyers, legal aid societies, in-house legal staffs and solo practitioners are among several groups that the Georgetown/Peer Monitor survey does not include. But it samples a sufficiently broad range of firms to capture important overall trends. In particular, it compiles results from 149 law firms, including 51 from The Am Law 100, 46 from The Am Law 200, and 52 others. It includes Big Law, but it also includes a slice of not-so-big law.