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After the JD

Robert Nelson Bryant Garth Ronit Dinovitzer Meghan Dawe Joyce Sterling David B. Wilkins Ethan Michelson

After the JD Career paths Debt Gender Non-legal careers Race

Research Project Ongoing

featured

Run out of the American Bar Foundation (ABF), the After the JD (AJD) project is an empirical study of the career outcomes of a cohort of almost 5,000 new lawyers, offering both a nationally representative picture of lawyer career trajectories and an in-depth portrait of the careers of women and racial and ethnic minority lawyers. The AJD study design is longitudinal, following the careers of new lawyers over the first ten years following law school graduation; the first cohort of lawyers was surveyed in 2002, the second in 2007, and the third in 2010.

More information on the After the JD project is available here.

Book

Book cover for

The Making of Lawyers’ Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession

Robert Nelson Ronit Dinovitzer Bryant Garth David B. Wilkins Joyce S. Sterling Meghan Dawe Ethan Michelson

Book

stylized people of different races and genders

Diversity in Practice: Race, Gender, and Class in Legal and Professional Careers

Spencer Headworth Robert L. Nelson David B. Wilkins Ronit Dinovitzer

Key Researches

Robert Nelson
Bryant Garth
Ronit Dinovitzer
Meghan Dawe
Joyce Sterling
David B. Wilkins
Ethan Michelson

Event

The Profession, the Market, and the State: Reimagining Professional Independence for a VUCA World

Affiliate event

April 29, 2026 — 6:00pm - 7:00pm ET

Zoom

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