Welcome to the 11th 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 2022. The premise underlying our approach to ranking schools remains the same: Given the steep cost of law school and the harsh realities of the legal job market—exacerbated by the continuing fallout from the global pandemic—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.

While we analyzed data for 120 schools, our ranking is limited to the top 50. We want to focus on “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 prioritize the only thing that really matters: outcomes.

The Rankings See the 2022 rankings →

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

2023 Rank School 2022 Rank Change Score
1 Duke 1 0 75.29
2 Cornell 3 1 74.87
3 U Virginia 2 -1 74.76
4 U Chicago 4 0 74.31
5 U Michigan - Ann Arbor 7 2 70.61
6 Columbia 8 2 69.62
7 Vanderbilt 5 -2 69.58
8 Northwestern (Pritzker) 9 1 69.09
9 U Penn (Carey) 10 1 68.4
10 U Notre Dame 14 4 67.15
11 Washington U in St. Louis 6 -5 65.5
12 NYU 17 5 64.77
13 U Texas at Austin 11 -2 64.16
14 Harvard 16 2 63.77
15 U Georgia 13 -2 62.11
16 Yale 15 -1 61.45
17 USC 18 1 60.38
18 Washington and Lee 26 8 60.01
19 U Illinois 19 0 59.78
20 UC Berkeley 12 -8 59.38
21 U Alabama 39 18 59.2
22 UCLA 23 1 58.76
23 Fordham 28 5 57.05
24 Georgetown 32 8 56.44
25 U Utah (Quinney) 36 11 56.38
26 Boston College 25 -1 56.32
27 Stanford 27 0 56.26
28 U Iowa 33 5 56.19
29 UNC - Chapel Hill 20 -9 55.87
30 Boston U 34 4 55.75
31 U Florida (Levin) 24 -7 55.52
32 Emory 29 -3 55.44
33 Howard NR N/A 54.34
34 U Minnesota 31 -3 53.81
35 U Kansas 30 -5 53.75
36 Wake Forest 21 -15 53.32
37 U Kentucky 37 0 52.45
38 SMU (Dedman) 40 2 52.27
39 Indiana U - Bloomington (Maurer) 41 2 52.19
40 Ohio State (Moritz) 38 -2 52.17
41 Florida State 45 4 51.97
42 Brigham Young 22 -20 51.11
43 U Tennessee - Knoxville 48 5 49.72
44 Northeastern NR N/A 48.95
45 William and Mary NR N/A 48.83
46 UC Davis NR N/A 48.46
47 Villanova 35 -12 47.74
48 Georgia State NR N/A 47.19
49 U Nevada, Las Vegas NR N/A 47.07
50 U Wisconsin - Madison 49 -1 46.85


Let's put it simply:



Scales tipped toward OUTPUT

What happened last year?

The Class of 2022

Total Law Grads: 36,078

Real Lawyer Jobs
76.8%
Other
16.9%
Unemployed/Seeking
5.3%
Law School-Funded Positions
1%
23.2%
of 2022 graduates did not secure a "real" lawyer job!


Methodology

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

Methodology: score weighting

Some further notes on methodology


QUALITY JOBS SCORE (40%)

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 data from the American Bar Association.)

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. (Some data courtesy of Law School Transparency.)

EDUCATION COST (10%)

The cost of a law school education matters not only to those students who take out loans to fund it, but also to those lucky enough to be able to pay for it outright. After all, law school is a major investment and how you view the return on that investment depends not only on the outcome (i.e., employment) but on how much you laid out to get there. And, because where you attend school plays a part in those expenses (e.g., three years living in New York City will leave a bigger hole in your bank account than three years in Lawrence, Kansas), we’ve also factored regional adjustments for cost of living into our scores for total cost. (Data on education cost courtesy of Law School Transparency.)

DEBT PER GRADUATE (10%)

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. This figure represents a three-year average of the average amount of debt (i.e., amount borrowed) per graduate. (Data on average loan disbursement 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 2018) 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.