About 67% of Loyola New Orleans Law graduates report employment ten months out. Stop, before that number does anything to your decision, ask the only question that matters: 67% of what, doing what? A headline employment rate blends every category of outcome into one figure, and the blend is where schools hide their weaknesses and bury their strengths.
MetricFigureContextEmployment rate (10 months)~67%All categories combinedPrimary placementNew Orleans and LouisianaWhere the pipeline pointsNetwork strengthNew Orleans market, civil law, JesuitStrongest for matching plans
Taken literally: ten months after graduation, 67% of the class had a job, any kind, any duration, any funder. The figure that should drive your decision is narrower: full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required employment as a share of all graduates, because that category and only that category means practicing law. The rest of the blend, part-time, JD-advantage, school-funded, is context worth reading and discounting.
This is not Loyola New Orleans Law being evasive; it is the standard format every school reports in, which is exactly why the ABA requires a disclosure that lets you take the blend apart.
Read the 509 employment summary the way you will someday read a deal disclosure, categories first, headline last. The category that means “lawyer” is full-time, long-term, bar-passage-required, taken as a fraction of all graduates. School-funded roles get separated out (real work, not market demand). JD-advantage gets read with one eyebrow raised. And every figure gets a map: where are these jobs, and is that where your life is going? The blend exists for marketing; the breakdown exists for you.
Withheld Tip: the most honest data source on placement is not a document, it is two or three graduates from the last two classes who targeted your market and practice area. Ten months of someone’s real search outweighs any percentage, and most will tell you the truth if you ask directly.
Employment data only becomes a decision once you add the one variable the school cannot publish: your destination. Placement strength is geographic, here, New Orleans and Louisiana., and a powerful network in the wrong city is a weak network for you. So invert the usual order, choose the market, then choose the school as the best vehicle into it. Never the reverse.
About 67% at the ten-month mark, counting every category together. Treat that as the ceiling of the claim, not the substance of it, the bar-required, full-time share in the 509 is the number that describes working as a lawyer.
Primarily New Orleans and Louisiana, with particular strength in new Orleans market, civil law, Jesuit. Placement power is concentrated, a strength if that geography is your plan, a discount if it isn’t.
Yes, which is precisely why the 509 lists them on their own line. Count them as support, not demand: useful bridges for the graduates in them, and a deduction from the headline for anyone evaluating the school’s market pull.
Employment data is the closest thing this industry has to ground truth, and reading it well is a fifteen-minute skill most applicants never build, they accept the brochure number and spend three years discovering what it blended. You are training to be a lawyer. Start with the document: pull the 509, find the real category, and make the decision on evidence. That habit will outlast the application season.