The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.

With high costs and still-shaky job prospects, law school remains a risky investment.

Within 10 months of graduation, just 71 percent of the class of 2014 landed long-term, full-time jobs for which bar passage was required or a J.D. was preferred, according to data from the American Bar Association.

Meanwhile, students in the class of 2014 who borrowed to pay for law school took on an average $111,899 in debt, according to data submitted to U.S. News by 182 ranked institutions.

But not every law school will land students with six figures in debt. Borrowers at these 10 law schools tended to have lower student loan balances – taking on an average $62,989 in debt, according to U.S. News data.



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The school with the lowest debt is Utah's Brigham Young University, where borrowers in the class of 2014 graduated with just $54,203 in debt. At BYU, which is led by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tuition and fees ran $11,620 per year for Mormon law students in 2014-2015 and $23,240 for non-Mormons.

The University of Alabama, tied at No. 22 among law schools, is the highest ranked school to make the list. Student loan borrowers in the class of 2014 graduated with $69,440.



Learn how to use rankings and statistics to narrow your law school choices. ]

The following law schools had the least debt for the class of 2014 among graduates who borrowed. Schools designated by U.S. News as Unranked were excluded from this list. U.S. News did not calculate numerical ranks for Unranked programs because they did not meet certain criteria that U.S. News requires.

*RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of all law schools. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Law School Compass to find debt data, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.