Rankings season is upon us, and many publications are rolling out their best offerings for readers’ perusal in advance of the release of the 2025 U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings.
For more than a decade, Law.com has published a list of the best law schools to go to if you want to work in Biglaw after graduation. Law.com refers to these institutions of higher education as the “go-to law schools,” and this year, they’re ranked by the percentage of 2023 graduates who took associate positions at the 100 largest law firms based on attorney head count.
Before we get to the list of the go-to law schools, it’s worthwhile to speak about the landscape for entry-level employment in the legal profession. While the ABA has yet to release the data for the class of 2023, it’s likely that this cohort of students was on par with the class of 2022, whose success in the job market was historic.
That said, things are going great for the Top 10 Go-To Law Schools:
- Northwestern: 65.23%
- Columbia: 64.30%
- UVA: 64.08%
- Penn: 62.90
- Cornell: 62.07%
- Duke: 55.88%
- Chicago: 54.46%
- Vanderbilt: 53.97%
- USC: 53.01%
- Georgetown: 50.80%
You can access the full list of the Top 50 Go-To Law Schools by clicking here.
Columbia ruled this ranking for a decade, but now Northwestern is here to ruin the school’s winning streak. There was some flip-flopping in the top five, with Columbia slipping to second place, UVA jumping up to No. 3 (after landing at No. 11 in 2022), and Cornell sliding down to fifth place. There was also a bit of a shakeup further down in the ranking, thanks, in part, to four T14 law schools — Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Michigan Law School — choosing not to participate. We suppose that after quitting the U.S. News rankings, it’s only fair for these elite law schools to quit all rankings.
Perhaps even more notable than these numbers are the tuition figures appended to this year’s rankings. Law school costs versus employment percentages can vary greatly. Unless you’re tied to a specific location, why pay ~$54,000 to go to a school that sends under 40 percent of its graduates to Biglaw when you can spend ~$18,000 less to go to a school that sends about the same percentage of its graduates to Biglaw?
Either way you slice it, this list is incredibly useful. It’s a great way for law students, both current and prospective, to gauge their employment prospects. Use these rankings wisely — or ignore them, at your peril.
The 2024 Top 50 Go-To Law Schools: Big Law [Law.com]
Longtime Go-To Law Schools Leader Dethroned in 2024 Rankings [Law.com]
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.
