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

Let's put it simply:

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.)

Debt-per-job ratio (10%)

This is a comparison between the indebtedness of a school’s graduates to the number of actual legal jobs they obtain.

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 2013) 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.