Anyone who is applying to law school these days knows how important employment statistics are. The ability to find a job after law school can mean the difference between a comfortable life and a life spent struggling under the crushing weight of student debt. Prospective law students who already submitted their seat deposits did so without complete information, as jobs data from the class of 2016 hadn’t been released yet.
Those who opted to wait were wise, because all of the top law schools posted their employment information within the past week or two, ahead of the American Bar Association announcing how the entire class of 2016 fared in the job market. While we still don’t know how the class of 2016 did nationally, we do know how things worked out at individual law schools. Today, we’ll share that data with our readers.
Below, you can find a ranking of the top 21 law schools, as ranked by U.S. News, listed in order of their employment statistics for the class of 2016. All percentages listed are for those who were employed 10 months after graduation in full-time, long-term jobs where bar passage was required. This ranking does not take class size into account, and school-funded employment is not included in these percentages. Take a look:
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| Law School | Class of 2016 Employment Outcomes | U.S. News Rank (2018) | ATL Rank (2016) |
| Chicago | 93.49 percent | 4 | 3 |
| Duke | 92.41 percent | 10 | 7 |
| Columbia | 91.52 percent | 5 | 11 |
| Michigan | 91.13 percent | 8 | 13 |
| Pennsylvania | 90.70 percent | 7 | 4 |
| Cornell | 90.22 percent | 13 | 9 |
| Stanford | 89.62 percent | 2 | 2 |
| UVA | 88.79 percent | 8 | 6 |
| NYU | 88.66 percent | 6 | 15 |
| Harvard | 87.96 percent | 3 | 5 |
| Vanderbilt | 86.26 percent | 17 | 14 |
| UC Berkeley | 84.24 percent | 12 | 10 |
| Northwestern | 81.53 percent | 10 | 8 |
| WUSTL | 80.09 percent | 18 | 22 |
| UT Austin | 79.83 percent | 14 | 12 |
| Yale | 78.33 percent | 1 | 1 |
| Notre Dame | 76.16 percent | 20 | 20 |
| UCLA | 75.63 percent | 15 | 19 |
| Georgetown | 74.39 percent | 15 | 21 |
| Iowa | 71.00 percent | 20 | 18 |
| USC | 70.00 percent | 19 | N/A |
How did things turn out for the class of 2016 at your law school? You can find this information listed on your law school’s website. We imagine the ABA will soon release national statistics, and when they’re available, we’ll provide coverage of those numbers in full. Stay tuned for the 2017 edition of the Above the Law Top 50 Law School Rankings, which weigh employment data and quality jobs quite heavily.
Earlier: The 2016 ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings
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Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.