A law degree is a huge investment. At the University of Pennsylvania, the sticker price for a three-year J.D. is $240,000 and the average debt carried by graduates is $130,000. But according to a new guide to law schools put out by Princeton Review, the New York-based test prep and educational services company, Penn law school is a good bet, especially if you plan to work for a private firm. Among the class of 2014, the average starting salary was $160,000, the going rate for big New York-based law firms like Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Proskauer Rose. Associates may work 80-hour weeks but they can expect to be able to steadily pay down their debt as their salaries rise. According to the website Above the Law, which tracks the legal profession, eighth-year associates at Cravath pull in $280,000. Those compensation figures don’t count bonuses which can run as high as $100,000 for older associates, according to Above the Law.
Penn’s figures are totally reliable, with 100% of its 278 J.D. grads from the class of 2014 reporting on their employment situation 10 months after graduation. Two hundred seventy three of Penn grads are employed full-time (the remaining are working for the school, pursuing advanced degrees or working part-time). One comment from a student, quoted by the guide: “Everyone is very confident that they will get a great job when they graduate, so there is no sense of competition that I hear about from my friends at comparable schools.”
In the No. 2 slot: New York University School of Law, with 97% of its 479 grads employed ten months out. If you go to NYU’s employment statistics page, you’ll see that it breaks down the percent of students reporting their employment status by business, with high numbers across the board. Again the median starting salary is $160,000. NYU costs even more than Penn, at a current all-in price of $244,000 for three years, but of course New York is an expensive city. One student tells Princeton Review that NYU’s school career officers “can get anyone a job” and “give tons of information about employers and hiring statistics, and are willing to meet with students all the time.” “Career center is amazing!!!” is a common comment, says the guide.
In third place: The University of Chicago. Its numbers are also totally reliable, with 100% of its small 2014 class of 210 students having reported their employment situation 10 months after graduation. Median salary: $160,000. Only three grads are unemployed and looking for work. A comment from a first-year student: “It seems like every week or two, we have major national firms and agencies flying people out to recruit, and almost nobody had any trouble finding a summer job.” The employment rate of students is “phenomenal,” says another Chicago student.
Check out the Princeton Review book, The Best 173 Law Schools, or see our slideshow above for the top 10. If you register (it’s free), much of the book’s information is online here.
The top 10 schools all have similarly outstanding employment statistics, though you’ll find that some of the median salaries differ slightly. For instance No. 9, University of Virginia School of Law, has a median starting salary of $135,000, while No. 10, Georgetown Law, like every other school on the list, has $160,000. Princeton Review heavily relied on salary in its ranking but it also collected 19,700 student surveys, folding in that data. Questions included the extent to which schools offer and encourage practical experience, how students rate their schools’ opportunities for judicial externships, internships and clerkships, and how prepared to practice law the students feel after graduating. For the methodology, click here.
One note: While almost all of the top firms pay $160,000 starting salaries, there is at least one outlier, the Brewer law firm, a litigation boutique based in Dallas, with 30 lawyers. The starting salary at Brewer: $185,000.
Another note: I decided to emphasize the percent of students reporting on their employment status at each school, and I came to believe you should look at this figure too, after talking extensively to the head of a non-profit watchdog group, Law School Transparency, who helped me see that the number of students reporting back to their schools is very important. If only half report on their status, the other half could be unemployed. Usually this only applies to lower-tiered schools. Most law schools list this number on their employment statistics page, but don’t hesitate to call the school and ask, if you don’t find the number there.
Finally, why is Yale missing from the list? According to Princeton Review, it’s the toughest law school to get into in the country. But if you look at the employment statistics on Yale's site, you'll see that its grads earn a median starting salary of just $72,000. That’s because so many of its graduates take jobs as low-paying judicial clerks. Of the 230 students in the class of 2014, 64 took jobs as judicial clerks. Federal court clerks make as little as $51,000. Supreme Court clerks earn $76,000. Also 24 grads took public interest jobs, which also pay much less than private firms.
The employment picture for law school graduates has slightly improved in the last year, but it’s still not great. Ten months after graduation, 71% of the class of 2014 had landed long-term full-time jobs where bar passage was required or preferred, according to figures released by the American Bar Association in April. That’s slightly up from the 67% who’d found law jobs over the same period in 2013. Still, nearly a tenth of 2014 graduates were unemployed and looking for work and many were in short-term part-time jobs.
You’ll likely be in good shape if you graduate from a school in Princeton Preview’s top tier, but you should think more carefully about the high costs and tough job market you’ll face if you go to a school with poor employment numbers.
