Law School Rankings

Despite a massive contraction in the number of applicants, law schools are still filling their seats. The schools are just reaching deeper into the pool and matriculating students who wouldn’t have gotten in a decade ago.

But can law schools employ those students? Is it worth it to be the last person admitted to a law school that can’t find jobs for students outside the top 10% of their class? Which schools have the brand to overcome the “brain drain”? And which schools have employers questioning the quality of their recent graduates?

We welcome you to the fourth annual installment of the Above the Law Top 50 Law School Rankings. These are the only rankings to incorporate the latest ABA employment data concerning the class of 2015. The premise underlying our approach to ranking schools remains the same: that given the steep cost of law school and the new normal of the legal job market, potential students should prioritize their future employment prospects over all other factors in deciding whether and where to attend law school. The relative quality of schools is a function of how they deliver on the promise of gainful legal employment. Our list is limited to 50 schools. We want to look at "national" schools, the ones with quality employment prospects both outside of their particular region and/or for graduates who don’t graduate at the top of the class. This year, we’ve added a new wrinkle to our methodology: a “salary-to-debt” ratio, courtesy of our friends at SoFi, who have mined their enormous database of loan refinancing applicants to give us a useful measure of which law schools graduate people “underwater.” SoFi has calculated the ratio between individual graduates’ average salaries versus their loan burden. The average salary-to-debt ratio for all graduates was 0.94 (i.e., the grads’ annual salary is 94% of what they owe). That’s not great. Financial planners advise that educational debt should not exceed annual salary of your first job out of school. But some schools perform well. By a significant margin, BYU is the best rated law school by this metric, with a ratio of 1.71. This new data complements our existing “debt-per-job” stat, which compares how much student debt is piled up by a school’s graduating class relative to every actual legal job obtained by its members. The ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings keep an exclusive focus on the only thing that really matters: outcomes. Enjoy the rankings, but please use them responsibly. If you have any questions, complaints, or other feedback, please reach out to research@abovethelaw.com.

Let's put it simply:









What happened last year?

Class of 2015 Total Law Grads: 39,984 Real Lawyer Jobs* 59% Other 28% Unemployed/Seeking 10% Law School-Funded Positions 3% This means 41% of 2015 graduates did not secure a job in the law!





KAPLAN ASKED: “Should law school be reduced from three years to two?” BEFORE LAW SCHOOL: 34% of pre-law students say that J.D. programs should be condensed to two years.

AFTER: 56% of law school graduates believe that law school should be shortened by a year. Apparently, for those who actually experience law school, less is more. * Based on email surveys of Kaplan LSAT and Kaplan Bar Review students

Methodology

In 2015, we surveyed our audience about the most relevant factors that potential law students should consider in selecting a school. By a large margin, these were the top choices, along with the percentage of respondents classifying them as “highly relevant”: Employment data (85.43%) Large firm placement (54.54%) Federal clerkship placement (46.64%) Tuition/Cost – (40.73%) In other words, you prioritize employment outcomes above all else in comparing law schools. We agree. Therefore, these are the components of our rankings methodology:





The Rankings See the 2015 rankings →