The ATL 2019 Top Law School Rankings

We welcome you to the seventh annual installment of the Above the Law Top 50 Law School Rankings. These are the only rankings to incorporate the latest ABA employment data concerning the class of 2018. The premise underlying our approach to ranking the top law schools in America remains the same: Given the steep cost of law school and the harsh realities of the legal job market, potential students should prioritize their future employment prospects over all other factors in deciding whether and where to attend law school. The relative quality of schools is a function of how they deliver on the promise of gainful legal employment.

Our list is limited to 50 schools. We want to look at "national" schools, the ones with quality employment prospects both outside of their particular region and/or for graduates who don’t graduate at the top of the class.

The ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings keep an exclusive focus on the only thing that really matters: outcomes.

Enjoy the rankings, but please use them responsibly.


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The Rankings See the 2018 rankings →

How do law schools fare when assessed using this outcomes-based methodology?

2019 Rank School 2018 Rank Change Score
1 University of Virginia 2 1 75.97
2 Duke University 3 1 73.61
3 University of Chicago 1 -2 71.58
4 Northwestern University 10 6 71.2
5 Cornell University 9 4 69.64
6 Stanford University 5 -1 69.45
7 University of Pennsylvania 6 -1 69.3
8 University of Michigan - Ann Arbor 8 0 68.49
9 Harvard University 4 -5 67.19
10 Yale University 7 -3 66.4
11 Columbia University 13 2 66.17
12 University of Texas at Austin 15 3 66.04
13 Vanderbilt University 12 -1 63.51
14 UC Berkeley 11 -3 63.03
15 Washington University in St. Louis 17 2 62.82
16 NYU 14 -2 60.16
17 University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 31 14 55.85
18 Georgetown University 16 -2 55.73
19 University of Georgia 21 2 55.21
20 University of Notre Dame 18 -2 55.07
21 University of Iowa 26 5 54.42
22 Washington and Lee University 30 8 53.87
23 University of Kentucky NR   53.07
24 William and Mary Law School 27 3 51.75
25 University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 25 0 51.58
26 Ohio State University 29 3 51.16
27 Boston University 24 -3 50.76
28 UCLA 23 -5 49.66
29 University of Minnesota 32 3 48.61
30 University of Florida 36 6 48.56
31 Boston College 20 -11 48.12
32 Fordham University 68 36 48
33 Brigham Young University NR NR 47.01
34 Emory University 41 7 46.62
35 Seton Hall University 35 NR 46.05
36 University of Nebraska Lincoln NR NR 45.67
37 University of Wisconsin Madison 42 5 45.45
38 Penn State Carlisle 75 37 45.44
39 University of Houston 52 13 44.97
40 Indiana University Bloomington 62 22 44.96
41 Rutgers 92 51 44.82
42 Georgia State University 46 4 44.8
43 Temple University 28 -15 44.68
44 University of Oklahoma NR NR 44.24
45 Villanova University 39 -6 44.18
46 University of Alabama 22 -24 44.01
47 Florida State University 51 4 42.89
48 USC (Gould) 19 -29 42.88
49 Southern Methodist University 34 -15 42.86
50 University of Colorado Boulder NR NR 42.81




Let's put it simply:



Scales tipped toward OUTPUT

What happened last year?

Class of 2018 placement graph


Methodology

We prioritize employment outcomes above all else in comparing law schools. Therefore, these are the components of our rankings methodology:

Some further notes on methodology


Quality jobs score (35%)

This measures the schools’ success at placing students on career paths that best enable them to pay off their student debts. We’ve combined placement with the country’s largest and best-paying law firms and the percentage of graduates embarking on federal judicial clerkships. These clerkships typically lead to a broader and enhanced range of employment opportunities.

Employment score (30%)

We only counted full-time, long-term jobs requiring bar passage (excluding solos and school-funded positions). Look, we know that there are some great non-lawyer jobs out there for which a J.D. is an “advantage.” It's not as if these jobs don't count, it's that they can't be compared in a meaningful way. The definition of "J.D. Advantage" changes from year to year and is based on a self-reported metric that defies independent third-party verification. One school's apples are another school's oranges, but we're not going to count lemons. (Early access to data courtesy of Law School Transparency.)

Education cost (15%)

Solid data on individual law student educational debt is hard to come by. Published averages exist, but the crucial number,the amount of non-dischargeable, government-funded or guaranteed educational loan debt, is not available. So as a proxy for indebtedness, we’ve scored schools based on total cost. (Data courtesy of Law School Transparency.)

SCOTUS clerk & Federal judgeship scores (5% each)

Though obviously applicable to very different stages of legal careers, these two categories represent the pinnacles of the profession. For the purposes of these rankings, we simply looked at a school's graduates as a percentage of (1) all U.S. Supreme Court clerks (since 2012) and (2) currently sitting Article III judges. Both scores are adjusted for the size of the school. Obviously, we are aware that for the vast majority of students, Supreme Court clerkships or the federal bench are simply not prospects. But for the students who do want to be judges and academics, this outcome represents a useful separating factor for the most elite schools. Some schools put you in robes, others can't.

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