Two well-regarded annual reports ranking the top US law schools were recently released: American Lawyer’s annual “Go-To Law Schools Report” and US News’ “Grad Compass: Law School Rankings“.
American Lawyer’s rankings are based on percentage of graduates that landed jobs with NLJ 250 firms, and number of associates promoted to partner; while US News’ rankings are based on enrollment, LSAT scores, GPA, acceptance rate, assessment scores by lawyers and judges, and number of graduates employed 9 months after graduation. As you will notice as you dig deeper into the rankings, the data yields relatively different lists–with the most notable differences at the very top and bottom of their respective Top 40’s. Yet taken together, they provide a robust evaluation criteria for prospective students.
Compiling the results from the respective Top 40’s, we made some calculations of our own. We found that on average, the cost of attending a top 40 law school is $42,500 per year (or $127,500 for 3 years), with an average enrollment of 810 students, an average placement rate into NLJ 250 jobs of roughly 21%, and an average associate to partner promotion rate of 13 (former) students per year.
Below is a snapshot of the Top 8 law schools:
|
Go-To Rank |
US News Rank |
Law School |
Tuition |
3 Year Total |
Enrollment |
% to NLJ 250 |
Partners Promoted |
|
1 |
t-7 |
Pennsylvania |
$50,718 |
$152,154 |
805 |
60.37% |
17 |
|
2 |
5 |
U of Chicago |
$47,502 |
$142,506 |
624 |
55.09% |
27 |
|
3 |
4 |
Columbia |
$52,902 |
$158,706 |
1,331 |
53.26% |
27 |
|
4 |
6 |
New York University |
$48,950 |
$146,850 |
1,464 |
52.93% |
33 |
|
5 |
12 |
Northwestern |
$51,920 |
$155,760 |
801 |
51.43% |
21 |
|
6 |
3 |
Harvard |
$48,786 |
$146,358 |
1,679 |
50.34% |
66 |
|
7 |
11 |
Duke |
$49,617 |
$148,851 |
644 |
48.42% |
15 |
|
8 |
2 |
Stanford |
$49,179 |
$147,537 |
571 |
47.25% |
11 |
|
TOP 40 AVERAGES AS OF 2012 |
$42,502 |
$127,506 |
810 |
20.75% |
12.96 |
||
Other notable schools making the Top 40 but not listed above include: Virginia (11 Go-To, T-7 US News), Michigan (12 Go-To, 10 US News, Georgetown (13 Go-To, 13 US News), Yale (14 Go-To, 1 US News), UCLA (15 Go-To, 15 US News), Southern California (16 Go-To, 18 US News), Vanderbilt (17 Go-To, T-16 US News), Texas (18 Go-To, T-16 US News), George Washington (21 Go-To, 20 US News), Notre Dame (26 Go-To, 22 US News), William and Mary (30 Go-To, T-35 US News, Howard (31 Go-To, not ranked US News), North Carolina (32 Go-To, 38 US News), and Washington and Lee (35 Go-To, T-24 US News), among others.