Welcome To The ATL Law School DIY
ATL’s ranking of the Top 50 Law Schools reflects our belief that the tremendous investment of time and money into a legal education means that the greatest consideration be given to future employment prospects. However, we recognize that the motives that send people to law school and their views on what makes schools appealing are wide-ranging.
We are therefore pleased to introduce the ATL Law School DIY.
With this dynamic tool, you can now design your own rankings to match your personal needs and goals. We have included 12 different criteria whose weight you can adjust as you see fit, including elements such as law school acceptance rate and median LSAT score that are not components of our Top 50 Rankings. If Biglaw job placement doesn’t matter as much to you as having a diverse student population, adjust the weights accordingly. If your dream is to work in the nonprofit world, perhaps you want to focus on schools that combine high placement in public interest roles with relatively low cost. Choose your own formula and generate your own rankings. It’s up to you.
How to use this tool: Weighting for any category can be adjusted by +/-50% or 100%. Increasing a category by 100% doubles the weight given to that category; decreasing by 100% takes that category out of the scoring equation. Click directly on the range for a category to increase or decrease its weight. Give the rankings a few seconds to recalibrate after making changes.
| School | Median LSAT | Acceptance Rate | Projected Cost | Average Debt | BIPOC Representation | First-time Bar Passage Rate | Full-time Legal Employment | Large Law Firm Jobs | Public Interest Jobs | Federal Clerkships | Federal Judges | SCOTUS Clerkships | Overall Score |
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Methodology / Definitions
Overall Score: The Overall Score for each school is based on a combination of all weighted scores. The maximum score available is 100. (While more is better for most criteria, schools are rewarded for having lower cost, debt, and admission rates.)
Median LSAT: Median (50th percentile) LSAT score for the 2023 entering class.
Acceptance Rate: Acceptance rate (ratio of offers to applications) for the 2023 entering class.
Projected Cost: Projected cost for attending three years of law school, based on the full debt-financed cost for the 2023 entering class. Scores are adjusted for regional cost of living.
Average Debt: Three-year average (2020-2022) of the average amount borrowed per graduate.
BIPOC Representation: Percentage of school’s enrollment in 2023-24 identifying as a person of color.
First-time Bar Passage Rate: Percentage of first-time takers of the bar exam in 2023 who passed.
Full-time Legal Employment: Percentage of 2023 graduates employed in full-time, long-term positions that require bar passage.
Large Law Firm Jobs: Percentage of employed 2023 graduates with full-time, long-term positions in law firms with more than 100 attorneys.
Public Interest Jobs: Percentage of employed 2023 graduates with full-time, long-term public interest positions.
Federal Clerkships: Percentage of employed 2023 graduates embarking on full-time federal judicial clerkships. (Values are displayed in quintiles; the lowest values fall in the first quintile, the highest in the fifth quintile.)
Sitting Federal Judges: Percentage of currently sitting Article III judges who are graduates, as adjusted for enrollment size. (Values are displayed in quintiles; the lowest values fall in the first quintile, the highest in the fifth quintile.)
SCOTUS Clerks: Percentage of U.S. Supreme Court clerks since 2019 who are graduates, as adjusted for enrollment size. (Values are displayed in quintiles; the lowest values fall in the first quintile, the highest in the fifth quintile.)
Data regarding median LSAT score, acceptance rate, enrollment and race/ethnicity, bar passage, and employment from the American Bar Association. Data on education cost and loan disbursement courtesy of Law School Transparency. Data on federal judges and SCOTUS clerks from ATL Research.
This year's law school rankings are sponsored by Themis Bar Review, which offers a comprehensive suite of legal education products and resources for students and law schools. Themis is committed to students' success in law school, the bar exam, and beyond. Thousands of students have trusted Themis for its proven methodology and its first-in-class Bar Review course that consistently delivers high pass rates.