The U.S. economy added 1,400 legal services jobs in September, reversing a two-month downward slide in the industry's employment figures, according to preliminary data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Friday.

The legal industry employed 1,138,100 people in the month of September, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its monthly look at the employment situation in the U.S. The BLS employment data is seasonally adjusted and provisional, meaning it could be revised.

The uptick in legal services employment—a category that includes lawyers, paralegals, legal secretaries and other law-related professions—comes as the U.S. economy, as a whole, added 134,000 non-farm jobs and unemployment dropped to its lowest level in decades at 3.7 percent. September's overall employment report marks eight consecutive years of monthly increases in U.S. jobs figures, although it reportedly fell short of the 168,000 jobs that Wall Street economists expected the country to add during the month.