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Which Law School Has The Best Career Prospects? (2015)

Did your law school or alma mater make the cut?

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It’s that time of year again. Disregarding the fact that there are 204 law schools that are currently accredited, either fully or provisionally, by the American Bar Association, the Princeton Review has released its annual law school ranking which covers only the best 169 law schools. Our condolences to the 35 law schools that were left in the dust — per the Princeton Review, you suck.

Once again, we decided to focus on one of the 11 rankings categories that we thought people would be the most interested in: the law schools where graduates have the best career prospects. Before digging in, you should be aware that here, “career prospects” means a law graduate’s ability to get a job — any kind of job — period. Perhaps the Princeton Review ought to consider changing its methodology to include data people actually care about, like whether these law schools are helping their graduates become lawyers.

There was quite a shake-up in the rankings this year. Did your law school make the cut?

Princeton Review’s “Best Career Prospects” results were based on a survey of 19,500 students as well as data reported by law school administrators, including median starting salaries, the percentage of students employed nine months after graduation, and the percentage of students who pass the bar on their first try.

Behold, the top 10 law schools on the Princeton Review’s “Best Career Prospects” list for 2015 (reg. req.):

1. Northwestern University School of Law (ranked #7 last year)

2. UC Berkeley School of Law (ranked #6 last year)

3. University of Chicago Law School (ranked #2 last year)

4. University of Pennsylvania Law School (ranked #3 last year)

5. New York University School of Law (no change)

6. Columbia University School of Law (ranked #1 last year)

7. Harvard University Law School (ranked #4 last year)

8. University of Virginia School of Law (unranked in 2014)

9. University of Michigan Law School (unranked in 2014)

10. University of Southern California Law School (no change)

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You may be asking yourself what the hell happened here. How did Northwestern climb so high while Columbia sank like a stone? Their reported median salaries are roughly the same, and both schools’ bar passage rates are approximately the same, but Columbia reigns supreme when it comes to employment in any regard (97.3 percent versus 94.4 percent), and in employment as lawyers (95 percent versus 79.2 percent). What on earth did students say that could possibly have warranted this drastic change?

“If you do even moderately well in your 1L classes at Northwestern, you’re going to have legal employers knocking down your door.”

“You’d be hard-pressed to find someone coming out of NU to a less-than-excellent job.”

“Most of us start out at big firms. The Chicago firms just love NU students.”

Columbia also had glowing reviews, but was described as a “clique-ish” “corporate lawyer factory.” Aha.

So which law schools were booted from the top 10 list this time around? Those would be Georgetown Law and George Washington Law, only one of which is ranked in the T14 by U.S. News. While both Georgetown and GW see about 93 percent of their graduates employed in any capacity within nine months of graduation, and between 77 and 83 percent of those jobs are as lawyers (full-time and long-term), they still didn’t make the cut. Compare this to top-10-ranked USC Law, where just 82.7 percent of graduates are employed at all nine months after graduation, and even fewer are employed as lawyers — about 65 percent. We wonder how that school made the list while the two D.C.-area law schools did not.

Yet again, we’re left to ponder whether Princeton Review relied too heavily on students’ feedback over actual data. Students were asked how much their schools encouraged practical experience; what opportunities to participate in externships, internships, and clerkships were available; and how prepared they felt to practice law after graduation. As we noted when we wrote about these rankings last year, “it looks like people who felt like they’d be good lawyers after graduation were more important than the people who were actually able to become good lawyers after graduation.”

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We hope the Princeton Review considers this a call to action, rather than continuing to churn out rankings based on data that supplies little information as to the actual state of law school graduates’ hireability. Those considering a legal career rely on these rankings, and in a world where the public is focused on meaningful employment statistics, providing a ranking based on whether a graduate from a particular law school is capable of being employed at all, in any fashion whatsoever, isn’t helpful in the slightest. Almost every other agency and publication that ranks law schools has changed its ways. We question the Princeton Review’s motivations for keeping its rankings in a pre-recession bubble, and wonder exactly how long will it take for the Princeton Review to fall in line and publish rankings that reflect reality.

Did your alma mater make the cut? Given the data discrepancies, does it even matter? Let us know.

Earlier: Which Law School Has The Best Career Prospects?
Princeton Review Ranks The Law Schools With The Best Career Prospects

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