LS Rankings Based On 100+ Lawyer Firm Jobs & Fed Clerkship Forum

[skri65]

I wanted to see what the best schools to go to are if the goal is to work at law firm of 100+ lawyers or a federal clerkship. So I went to LSTSCOREREPORTS and took each schools percentage of the class who worked at a law firm of 100+ lawyers and then added this number to the percentage of the class who landed a federal clerkship. This gave me a final value. I then ranked the schools with respect to this final value and came up with the below rankings.

I thought it was also worth posting how overrated/underrated these schools were compared to their respective USNWR rankings, GIVEN THIS CRITERIA. This overrated/underrated value is given in the parenthesis. It is shocking to me how high the absolute value of some of these values in parenthesis are

Disclaimer: LSTSCOREREPORTS.com gets all the credit for the stats. I did the extra math in my head while at work, so the total values, or initial values for that matter, may be incorrect. If they are, I really don't care..again I was just messing around and figured I'd share it with you all. Additionally, these rankings only value placement into a large law firm and placement into federal clerkships. If you want to work at a small law firm, land a state/local clerkship, find PI work, or work in business, that's great and I don't mean to diminish your goals. These rankings will mean nothing to you and you can carry on. Furthermore, these rankings may not take into account this or that. Again, I didn't intend for these to be perfect or even valuable for anybody else for that matter.



School Name: (Percentage of Class in Law Firm of 100 or more lawyers) + (Percentage of Class in Federal Clerkship) = Final Value%

(in parenthesis is difference between this rank and its USNWR ranking)

1. Stanford: 49.5 + 23.4 = 72.9% (+1)
2. Columbia: 61.4 + 8.1 = 69.5% (+3)
3. UPenn: 58 + 9.1 = 67.1% (+4)
4. Yale: 33.2 + 33.2 = 66.4% (-3)
5. Harvard: 48.7 + 16.3 = 65% (-2)
6. NW: 53.3 + 8 = 61.3% (+6)
7. Duke: 44.9 + 11.1 = 56% (+4)
8. Chicago: 44.8 + 9.4 = 54.2% (-3)
9. NYU: 43.1 + 10.9 = 54% (-3)
10. UC Berkeley : 41.6 + 9.7 = 51.3% (-3)
11. UVA: 37.1 + 10.6: 47.7% (-4)
12. Cornell: 38.8 + 8 = 46.8% (+2)
13. UMICH: 34 + 10.6 = 44.6% (-3)
14. Vanderbilt: 30.3 + 10.1 = 40.4% (+2)
---------------------------------------
15. USC: 34.3 + 4.3 = 38.6% (+3)
16. Georgetown: 33.5 + 3.9 = 37.4% (-3)
17. UTEX: 23 + 7.1 = 30.1% (-1)
18. Boston College: 26 + 3.9 = 29.9% (+11) !
19. UCLA: 23.5 + 4.4 = 27.9% (-4)
20. Fordham: 24.8 + 2.3 = 27.1% (+9)
21. Emory: 18.7 + 6.7 = 25.4% (+3)
22. UND: 20 + 5.3 = 25.3% (0)
23. GW: 19.9 + 4.6 = 24.5% (-3)
24. BU: 19.8 + 1.8 = 21.6% (+2)
25. WUSL: 17.7 + 3.8 = 21.5% (-2)
26. W&L: 12.4 + 7.8 = 20.2% (-2)
27. Indian University: 13.8 + 4.6 = 18.4% (-1)
27. UIllinois: 13.7 + 4.7 = 18.4% (+8)
29. UAlabama: 9.8 + 8.5 = 18.3% (0)
30. OSU: 14.3 + 3.9 = 18.2% (+9) !
---------------------------------------
31. UNC: 13 + 4.5 = 17.5% (+7)
32. UMN: 12.3 + 4.2 = 16.5% (-13)!
33. UGA: 8.8 + 7.5 = 16.3% (+1)
34. WVU: 12.8 + 3.2 = 16% (+66+ TIER 3)!!!
35. SMU: 14 + 1.8 = 15.8% (+16)!
36. UWASH: 13.2 + 1.6 = 14.8% (-16)!
37. Cardozo: 11.8 + 2.9 = 14.7% (+19)!
38. W&M: 6.9 + 7.4 = 14.3% (-3)
39. UF: 11 + 3.2 = 14.2% (+9)
40. BYU: 10.8 + 2.7 = 13.5% (-1)
40. UHouston: 11.4 + 2.1 = 13.5% (+17)!
42. U Kentucky: 6.7 + 6.7 = 13.4% (+20)!
43. Case Western: 12.9 + 0.5 = 13.4% ( +24)!
43. UC Davis: 11.3 + 2.1 = 13.4% (-14)!
46. Wake Forest: 10.8 + 2.5 = 13.3% (-2)
47. Hastings: 10.9 + 1.9 = 12.8% (-3)
47. Temple: 9.7 + 3.1 = 12.8% (+11)!
49. Howard: 10.8 + 1.9 = 12.7% (+51+ TIER 3!)!!!
50. UCinc: 12.5 + 0 = 12.5% (+19)!
---------------------------------------------
51. Tulane: 7.9 + 3.7 = 11.6% (0)
52. U of Iowa: 7.7 + 3.8 = 11.5% (-23)
52. Villanova: 8.7 + 2.8 = 11.5% (+48+ TIER 3)
54. Cleveland Marshall: 10.8 + 0.5 = 11.3% (+46+ TIER 3)
55. URichmond: 7.2 + 3.6 = 10.8% (+3)
55. GSU: 8.1 + 2.7 = 10.8% (+3)
55. Loyola U Chicago: 9.2 + 1.6 = 10.8% (+12)
58. Brooklyn: 8.4 + 2.2 = 10.6% (+7)
59. UWisconsin: 9.8 + 1.6 = 10.4% (-24)
60. George Mason: 7.6 + 2.4 = 10% (-21)
61. American: 8.1 + 1.7 = 9.8% (-12)
61. UMD: 6.1 +3.7 = 9.8% (-22)
63. Loyola (LA): 7.4 + 2.2 = 9.6% (-12)
64. UCONN: 7.8 + 1.7 = 9.5% (-2)
65. USD: 6.9 + 2.5 = 9.4% (0)
66. FSU: 6.1 + 2.9 = 9% (-15)
67. U Colorado: 4.5 + 4 = 8.5% (-23)
68. UMiami: 7.8 + 0.3 = 8.1% (+1)
69. Seton Hall U: 5.5 + 2.5 = 8% (0)
70. Pepperdine: 5.2% + 2.6 = 7.8% (-21)
71. U of Arizona: 6.3 + 1.3 = 7.6% (-28)
72. ASU: 5 + 1.5 = 6.5% (-46)!
73. Baylor: 4.5 + 1.3 = 5.8% (-22)
74. ¬IIT (Chicago-Kent): 5.4 + 0.3 = 5.7% (-12)
75. U Denver: 4.5 + 0.7 = 5.2% (-6)
75. Utah: 4.5 + 0.7 = 5.2% (-28)
77. Lewis and Clark: 2.1 + 1.3 = 3.4% (-19)

Whoops: Hofstra = 5.8%

Edit: this definitely could have been created via excel. Oh well. I was bored.

[cahwc12]

Not to undermine your hard work, but you could have done this in a spreadsheet in less than two minutes using the ABA complete employment data spreadsheet available at http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org/

[law2015]

Skri65, you must be a 0L to write such a useless and dumb thread.

[dingbat]

Skri65, you must be a 0L to write such a useless and dumb thread.

Don't be a dick. It's not useless. I think it's the most useful information available, but there isn't a single list. LST only counts full time JD required employment, without caring about quality. NLJ250 doesn't include federal clerkships (and only counts NLJ250 firms). This is important, don't belittle it.

Not to undermine your hard work, but you could have done this in a spreadsheet in less than two minutes using the ABA complete employment data spreadsheet available at http://employmentsummary.abaquestionnaire.org/

If you could create a current version of the spreadsheet linked in this thread, I'm sure the mods will add the updated version to that sticky, and everyone who uses it will be very grateful

[El_Sol]

Skri65, you must be a 0L to write such a useless and dumb thread.

Disagree. Great thread!

[Crowing]

Imo looking at just one year's data is not extremely useful and you get a better overall picture if you look at say the past 3-5 years.

[suralin]

Imo looking at just one year's data is not extremely useful and you get a better overall picture if you look at say the past 3-5 years.

+1

[dingbat]

Imo looking at just one year's data is not extremely useful and you get a better overall picture if you look at say the past 3-5 years.

I've looked at placement data as far back as 2005 (admittedly, more for curiosity; 2008 or older is irrelevant)

[manofjustice]

Imo looking at just one year's data is not extremely useful and you get a better overall picture if you look at say the past 3-5 years.

+1

+2

[vzapana]

Imo looking at just one year's data is not extremely useful and you get a better overall picture if you look at say the past 3-5 years.

I've looked at placement data as far back as 2005 (admittedly, more for curiosity; 2008 or older is irrelevant)

Did an analysis of T-14 schools. I couldn't find 2009 and older data for all the schools (Columbia started completing the NALP survey in 2010, for instance), so I stuck with 2010 and 2011 data only. It's a limited analysis because of this, so take it with a grain of salt.

To compare apples to apples, I looked at "long-term" employment with 101+ law firms and federal judges. I didn't look at simply FTLT (full-time, long-term) employment, because the 2010 NALP survey didn't require you to report that data. Nonetheless, the math doesn't change too much. Only two schools reported PTLT (part-time, long-term) employment: Georgetown and University of Virginia. And Gtown reported only 3, while UVA reported only 1.

I calculated the 2010 and 2011 employment ratios for each school, then I averaged the two values. Here are the results:

1.) Stanford: 77.3%
2.) Columbia: 74.1%
3.) Harvard: 68.9%
4.) Penn: 68.0%
5.) Cornell: 63.7%
6.) Chicago: 63.2%
7.) Yale: 62.9%
8.) Northwestern: 60.8%
9.) NYU: 60.4%
10.) Duke: 56.9%
11.) Berkeley: 54.9%
12.) Virginia: 54.4%
13.) Michigan: 52.7%
14.) Georgetown: 42.1% [YIKES]

I also calculated the percent change from the 2010 to the 2011 ratios. (Positive numbers are good; negative, bad.) This should give a sense of which schools have job numbers that are in free fall. Here are those results:

1.) Yale: 11.6%
2.) Northwestern: 1.6%
3.) Penn: -2.5%
4.) Duke: -3.0%
5.) Stanford: -10.7%
6.) Harvard: -10.7%
7.) Columbia: -11.6%
8.) Berkeley: -12.2%
9.) Michigan: -13.0%
10.) Georgetown: -18.3%
11.) NYU: -19.0%
12.) UVA: -20.9%
13.) U. Chicago: -25.1%
14.) Cornell: -42.1% [YIKES]

[RetakeFrenzy]

Thanks for doing this!

The list just made me love BC even more

[dingbat]

Imo looking at just one year's data is not extremely useful and you get a better overall picture if you look at say the past 3-5 years.

I've looked at placement data as far back as 2005 (admittedly, more for curiosity; 2008 or older is irrelevant)

Did an analysis of T-14 schools. I couldn't find 2009 and older data for all the schools (Columbia started completing the NALP survey in 2010, for instance), so I stuck with 2010 and 2011 data only. It's a limited analysis because of this, so take it with a grain of salt.

To compare apples to apples, I looked at "long-term" employment with 101+ law firms and federal judges. I didn't look at simply FTLT (full-time, long-term) employment, because the 2010 NALP survey didn't require you to report that data. Nonetheless, the math doesn't change too much. Only two schools reported PTLT (part-time, long-term) employment: Georgetown and University of Virginia. And Gtown reported only 3, while UVA reported only 1.

I calculated the 2010 and 2011 employment ratios for each school, then I averaged the two values. Here are the results:

1.) Stanford: 77.3%
2.) Columbia: 74.1%
3.) Harvard: 68.9%
4.) Penn: 68.0%
5.) Cornell: 63.7%
6.) Chicago: 63.2%
7.) Yale: 62.9%
8.) Northwestern: 60.8%
9.) NYU: 60.4%
10.) Duke: 56.9%
11.) Berkeley: 54.9%
12.) Virginia: 54.4%
13.) Michigan: 52.7%
14.) Georgetown: 42.1% [YIKES]

I also calculated the percent change from the 2010 to the 2011 ratios. (Positive numbers are good; negative, bad.) This should give a sense of which schools have job numbers that are in free fall. Here are those results:

1.) Yale: 11.6%
2.) Northwestern: 1.6%
3.) Penn: -2.5%
4.) Duke: -3.0%
5.) Stanford: -10.7%
6.) Harvard: -10.7%
7.) Columbia: -11.6%
8.) Berkeley: -12.2%
9.) Michigan: -13.0%
10.) Georgetown: -18.3%
11.) NYU: -19.0%
12.) UVA: -20.9%
13.) U. Chicago: -25.1%
14.) Cornell: -42.1% [YIKES]

Cornell shows the problem with looking at only one year. They has a banner year in 2010, much better than usual.
I recommend looking at the NLJ250 goto list; it shouldn't be too hard to find the last 3-4 years and can go much further. It doesn't include federal clerkships, but can be used to determine how stable biglaw hiring is at a school (relative to each other)

[Spinoza]

Skri65, you must be a 0L to write such a useless and dumb thread.

Lol, what a retard. One of my favorite things is when people try to be authoritative and end up just embarrassing themselves. Whether this was a fail attempt at a troll or more straightforward failure, thank you Law2015 for entertaining me.

I wouldn't worry too much about not having PI and government stuff in there. For most schools it would not change how we view them, and for the others we know who they are (no one is worried that Yale students have less attractive job prospects from these numbers).

Also, in using this information, people should always keep in mind that differences in % employment between two schools might have very little impact on your chances of getting a job coming out of either school. If only 50% of students get good jobs coming out of School A and 70% get good jobs coming out of School B, school B is likely to be more competitive with more able students/job candidates. Accordingly, your own chance of getting a job is probably roughly similar at both schools. This is an oversimplification, to be sure, but no one is surprised when the kid who gives up an offer from Columbia to get a full ride at Duke ends up excelling there.

[Big Dog]

Great stuff, thank you.

My question has to do with the threshold of law firms 100+.

Another blog (and the National Law Journal) seems to indicate that Big Law = firms of NLJ 250+. Any thoughts on the difference? Are those from 100-250 just as good for salary/work experience?

Yes, I realize that the Law Journal excludes clerkships, which are hugely valuable.)

[Yukos]

Skri65, you must be a 0L to write such a useless and dumb thread.

If only 50% of students get good jobs coming out of School A and 70% get good jobs coming out of School B, school B is likely to be more competitive with more able students/job candidates. Accordingly, your own chance of getting a job is probably roughly similar at both schools. This is an oversimplification, to be sure, but no one is surprised when the kid who gives up an offer from Columbia to get a full ride at Duke ends up excelling there.

This is a really dangerous assumption. Even if we assumed law school exams (EDIT: results) are not at all arbitrary (which we shouldn't), the different in credentials between most of the T14 is marginal. A student at Duke's LSAT median* of 170 and a student at Columbia's median of 172 would be in the same score band, meaning even LSAC would admit they're statistically more or less the same.

Moral of the story: if you're choosing between the T14, the percentage of students who get biglaw is much more important than the presumed difference in "intelligence" or "skill" between the students.

*Class of 2014 LSAT median because Duke hasn't released class of 2015 medians.

[suralin]

Skri65, you must be a 0L to write such a useless and dumb thread.

If only 50% of students get good jobs coming out of School A and 70% get good jobs coming out of School B, school B is likely to be more competitive with more able students/job candidates. Accordingly, your own chance of getting a job is probably roughly similar at both schools. This is an oversimplification, to be sure, but no one is surprised when the kid who gives up an offer from Columbia to get a full ride at Duke ends up excelling there.

This is a really dangerous assumption. Even if we assumed law school exams are not at all arbitrary (which we shouldn't), the different in credentials between most of the T14 is marginal. A student at Duke's LSAT median* of 170 and a student at Columbia's median of 172 would be in the same score band, meaning even LSAC would admit they're statistically the more or less the same.

Moral of the story: if you're choosing between the T14, the percentage of students who get biglaw is much more important than the presumed difference in "intelligence" or "skill" between the students.

*Class of 2014 LSAT median because Duke hasn't released class of 2015 medians.

+1

[Tiago Splitter]

Great stuff, thank you.

My question has to do with the threshold of law firms 100+.

Another blog (and the National Law Journal) seems to indicate that Big Law = firms of NLJ 250+. Any thoughts on the difference? Are those from 100-250 just as good for salary/work experience?

Yes, I realize that the Law Journal excludes clerkships, which are hugely valuable.)

The NLJ 250 is the 250 biggest firms, the smallest of which has about 160 attorneys. The ABA collects data based on placement into firms of 100-250, 250-500, and 501+. Given this, the data from the NLJ 250 and the ABA data are hard to match up. It's generally assumed that most firms of greater than 100 attorneys pay well and even if they don't quite make the NLJ 250 are as good as the typical firm in the bottom of that list. This isn't always true, of course, but including the non-NLJ 250 firms of greater than 100+ lawyers in the list of good outcomes is a safer assumption than not including them. Having said that most T-14 schools place a very small percentage into firms of 100-250, so whether you include them or not doesn't make a big difference.

[Ruxin1]

Great stuff, thank you.

My question has to do with the threshold of law firms 100+.

Another blog (and the National Law Journal) seems to indicate that Big Law = firms of NLJ 250+. Any thoughts on the difference? Are those from 100-250 just as good for salary/work experience?

Yes, I realize that the Law Journal excludes clerkships, which are hugely valuable.)

The NLJ 250 is the 250 biggest firms, the smallest of which has about 160 attorneys. The ABA collects data based on placement into firms of 100-250, 250-500, and 501+. Given this, the data from the NLJ 250 and the ABA data are hard to match up. It's generally assumed that most firms of greater than 100 attorneys pay well and even if they don't quite make the NLJ 250 are as good as the typical firm in the bottom of that list. This isn't always true, of course, but including the non-NLJ 250 firms of greater than 100+ lawyers in the list of good outcomes is a safer assumption than not including them. Having said that most T-14 schools place a very small percentage into firms of 100-250, so whether you include them or not doesn't make a big difference.

I believe someone, Kurst? made a graph of the schools of 50+ with federal clerkships. Which I think is important because a lot of southern markets have solid, smaller firms.

[Tiago Splitter]

I believe someone, Kurst? made a graph of the schools of 50+ with federal clerkships. Which I think is important because a lot of southern markets have solid, smaller firms.

This spreadsheet was made for 2010:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... Bd3c&gid=2

Not sure if anyone has put together the equivalent for 2011.

[JO 14]

I've looked at placement data as far back as 2005 (admittedly, more for curiosity; 2008 2011 or older is irrelevant)

[Yukos]

Great stuff, thank you.

My question has to do with the threshold of law firms 100+.

Another blog (and the National Law Journal) seems to indicate that Big Law = firms of NLJ 250+. Any thoughts on the difference? Are those from 100-250 just as good for salary/work experience?

Yes, I realize that the Law Journal excludes clerkships, which are hugely valuable.)

The NLJ 250 is the 250 biggest firms, the smallest of which has about 160 attorneys. The ABA collects data based on placement into firms of 100-250, 250-500, and 501+. Given this, the data from the NLJ 250 and the ABA data are hard to match up. It's generally assumed that most firms of greater than 100 attorneys pay well and even if they don't quite make the NLJ 250 are as good as the typical firm in the bottom of that list. This isn't always true, of course, but including the non-NLJ 250 firms of greater than 100+ lawyers in the list of good outcomes is a safer assumption than not including them. Having said that most T-14 schools place a very small percentage into firms of 100-250, so whether you include them or not doesn't make a big difference.

How does boutique placement fit into this? If you consider placement into all boutiques (many/most by definition excluded from these lists) would that include enough students to meaningfully change these stats? For Yale at least it seems like boutique placement would be noticeable.

(I realize it would be impossible to capture students going to boutiques in a table like this, I'm just wondering if the very top schools are being a little undersold)

[Ruxin1]

Great stuff, thank you.

My question has to do with the threshold of law firms 100+.

Another blog (and the National Law Journal) seems to indicate that Big Law = firms of NLJ 250+. Any thoughts on the difference? Are those from 100-250 just as good for salary/work experience?

Yes, I realize that the Law Journal excludes clerkships, which are hugely valuable.)

The NLJ 250 is the 250 biggest firms, the smallest of which has about 160 attorneys. The ABA collects data based on placement into firms of 100-250, 250-500, and 501+. Given this, the data from the NLJ 250 and the ABA data are hard to match up. It's generally assumed that most firms of greater than 100 attorneys pay well and even if they don't quite make the NLJ 250 are as good as the typical firm in the bottom of that list. This isn't always true, of course, but including the non-NLJ 250 firms of greater than 100+ lawyers in the list of good outcomes is a safer assumption than not including them. Having said that most T-14 schools place a very small percentage into firms of 100-250, so whether you include them or not doesn't make a big difference.

How does boutique placement fit into this? If you consider placement into all boutiques (many/most by definition excluded from these lists) would that include enough students to meaningfully change these stats? For Yale at least it seems like boutique placement would be noticeable.

(I realize it would be impossible to capture students going to boutiques in a table like this, I'm just wondering if the very top schools are being a little undersold)

Someone posted this in a UT thread how they get two or three students into Susman/Jenner/etc. every year, and they estimated would boost placement a few % points.

[dingbat]

I've looked at placement data as far back as 2005 (admittedly, more for curiosity; 2008 2011 or older is irrelevant)

that's the dumbest thing i've heard - especially in light of the fact that class of 2012 data isn't available yet.

[JO 14]

If you like older stats, great. Tune into the history channel.

[Yukos]

If you like older stats, great. Tune into the history channel.

Sick burn.