Top Law Schools

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someone will probably say it doesn't matter but I would also like to know.

dmcbride wrote:Looking for 15-30 range schools, who places the best out of their local market if you want to leave the area after law school?

UCLA and UT are probably fairly competative with the lower T14. ND has a reputation of being less regionally limiting due to alumni network. (No clue if that corresponds to reality) I think schools from 15-20 are very broadly regional. BU will get you most places in the Northeast, for example. WUSTL most places in Midwest and even south. And so on.

Vandy?

Vanderbilt seems to place decently outside the south. One of its largest markets is New York. Then besides the obviously large amount of kids to stay in TN or go to GA, they sprinkle the rest of the class throughout several states, both southern and not.

tallboone wrote:http://www.calvin.edu/admin/csr/student ... w/data.htm

This link is not very informative. It only shows how many grads of a select number of law schools are found at a seemingly random set of large law firms. Moreover, the information is dated. The chart only shows the home office of the firm so you can't actually tell which region the grads actually went to. For example, an Emory grad could have gone to the Atlanta office of a New York firm. That doesn't necessarily mean that Emory places well outside of its home region or with New York firms.

One thing the chart does show is the a rough indication of the overall placement power of a law school with the law firms shown in the chart. It is one metric of the prestige of the school and the attractiveness of its grads. Other metrics I would recommend you look into are NLJ250 placement, federal clerkship placement (lawclerkaddict.com), placement into academia, and placement into the small, very prestigious firms like Munger Tolles or Keker and Van Nest (check their websites for attorney profiles). I think you would end up with the usual suspects outside of the T14, like Texas, Vandy and UCLA in terms of national prospects.