Biglaw, Law Schools

The Top Law Schools That'll Help You Land Jobs At The Top Law Firms

You won't be shocked by this list... but maybe you will.

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Which law school should you go to? That’s a great question. What are your goals? For those whose law school dreams carry with them the end goal of working for one of the top firms in the country and receiving one of the top-dollar salaries those firms are famous for, then we’ve got some great news for you. A new ranking came out this week, and it may hold the key to aspiring law students’ wishes for their would-be prestigious careers.

GradReports has analyzed the law school choice versus career conundrum to identify the top 10 schools that place the greatest percentage of graduates at the top 10 Biglaw firms (i.e., the highest-grossing law firms on the Am Law 100).

So which law schools will help graduates maximize their investment with top jobs?

Before we get to that, take a look at the interesting methodology GradReports used to come up with this law school ranking:

To determine which schools’ alumni find work at the top law firms, we looked at two key sources of information. The first was LinkedIn alumni data, which we used to find employment outcomes for alumni of 50 prominent law schools in the U.S. We limited our study to graduates from 2015 through 2021. Here is a complete list of the schools we examined.

To find the number of graduates working for the top 10 highest-grossing law firms in the country, we turned to the 2021 Am Law 100 rankings, which evaluates law firms by gross revenue. The top 10 highest-grossing firms are:

  • Kirkland & Ellis ($4.83 billion)
  • Latham & Watkins ($4.33 billion)
  • DLA Piper ($3.13 billion)
  • Baker McKenzie ($2.9 billion)
  • Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom ($2.66 billion)
  • Sidley Austin ($2.46 billion)
  • Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius ($2.45 billion)
  • White & Case ($2.39 billion)
  • Hogan Lovells ($2.31 billion)
  • Jones Day ($2.22 billion)

This LinkedIn factor strikes us as a bit suspect, but let’s see where it takes us. Here are the GradReports top law schools for top law firm jobs:

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  1. U. Chicago Law: 10.93% of alumni at top law firms
  2. U. Virginia Law: 10.39% of alumni at top law firms
  3. Northwestern Law: 9.04% of alumni at top law firms
  4. U. Michigan Law: 7.97% of alumni at top law firms
  5. Cornell Law: 7.86% of alumni at top law firms
  6. U. Pennsylvania Law: 7.85% of alumni at top law firms
  7. Columbia Law: 7.48% of alumni at top law firms
  8. U. Texas Law: 6.33% of alumni at top law firms
  9. Notre Dame Law: 6.12% of alumni at top law firms
  10. Duke Law: 6.06% of alumni at top law firms

Gasp! Where are T14 law schools Harvard, Yale, and Stanford? Not to worry, because they’re found a little further down the list.

Don’t get discouraged if your law school didn’t make the cut. After all, these are just the schools that are sending the most alumni (per LinkedIn listings) to the top 10 Am Law firms. These schools — and many more — are placing many hundreds of alumni at plenty of other successful Am Law firms.

If your law school did make the list, then congratulations! Get out there and grab one of these highly desired Biglaw jobs while you can.

Looking to Work at a Top Law Firm? Here Are the Best Schools to Get You There [GradReports]

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Staci ZaretskyStaci 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 or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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