By Michelle Weyenberg and Jack Crittenden
[Editor’s Note: Read Part 1 here; Read Part 2 Law firm elitism here; Part 3 Elitism among federal clerks and judges here; Part 4 Elitism in hiring law professors here; The 20 Most Prestigious Law Schools here.]
For more than 30 years, U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of law schools has been the definitive voice on which schools were the elite. Harvard Law School and Yale Law School topped the list for most of those 30 years, with Stanford University Law School sneaking in more recently.
The publication’s ranking, which seeks to identify the best law schools based on academic quality and graduates’ success, took a beating this past year. Yale Law led a boycott that was eventually joined by nearly half of the nation’s 199 law schools.
Law school deans attacked the publication over its methodology and its huge influence on legal education. But while U.S. News has been the arbiter of which schools are elite, its methodology has always been broader than that.
We at The National Jurist decided to take a narrower approach to identifying the most prestigious law schools.
We crunched the numbers to identify the law schools that most successful at placing alumni in the following coveted positions: large law firms, federal judgeships and clerkships, and law professorships.
We weighted law firms at 50%, because the vast majority of law graduates work at firms. We considered the percentage of each school’s recent graduates who were employed at large law firms (30% of the study), and the percentage of alumni who are Super Lawyers (20% of the study). Super Lawyers, uses a patented process of independent research and peer input to recognize the top attorneys nationwide.
We assessed the percentage of a school’s recent graduates who were employed in federal clerkships (15% of the study), and the percentage of alumni who were federal judges (15% of the study). While fewer in number, federal judgeships are considered the most prestigious legal jobs in the nation.
To determine the final 20% of the study, we looked at the percentage of alumni who have been hired as law professors since 2012. While also small in number, law professors have an huge impact on legal education and the future of the legal profession.
Harvard Law and Yale Law dominate when it comes to federal judges and law professors. But surprisingly, University of Chicago edges them out to be ranked as the top school in our study. This is largely based on better performance by recent graduates. University of Chicago scored a 4.31 for recent graduate criteria — large law firm employment and federal clerkships, which accounts for 45% of the study. It scored a 4.0 for alumni criteria — Super Lawyers, federal judges and law professors.
Harvard Law is No. 2 on our list, which is better than its No. 5 ranking by U.S. News & World Report. It earns a 4.0 GPA for recent graduate criteria and 4.26 GPA for alumni.
Yale Law is No. 3, with 3.91 GPA for recent graduate criteria and 4.17 for alumni. Yale earns a lower grade for law firm placement, largely because it sends a smaller percentage of graduates to big firms. Many of its alumni go into education, clerkships and public interest work.
The top three schools in our ranking all earn a final GPA higher than 4.0 and stand out as clear leaders when it comes to landing the most prestigious jobs.
The next three schools — University of Michigan Law School, University of Virginia School of Law and Stanford Law School — all fall just short of a 4.00 final GPA. Both University of Michigan and University of Virginia perform better in our study than in U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of law schools. Other top schools that perform better in our study include Vanderbilt (No. 7 versus No. 16), University of Texas (No. 9 versus No. 16) and Notre Dame (No. 13 versus No. 27).
Law schools that fare worse in our study compared to U.S. News include New York University (No. 14 versus No. 5) and UCLA (No. 29 versus No. 14), earning it the moniker as the most overrated law school in the nation.
