Top Law Schools

In The National Jurist there was an article about the salaries for grads of every law school. The U.S. Department of Education has revealed the median salaries earned by 1st year law school graduates, and the stats are amazing.

Only 15 law schools showed graduates earning more than $100,000 during their first year on the job.

The 15 Schools and their median income were:
1. Columbia Law School............$180,300
2. New York University.............$175,800
3. Cornell Law School.............. $175,200
4. University of Pennsylvania......$175,100
5. Northwestern University........$171,900
6. University of Chicago............$170,500
7. Duke University...................$162,200
8. Harvard Law School..............$158,200
9. Stanford Law School.............$156,700
10. University of Virginia.......... $151,500
11. UC-Berkeley..................... $135,400
12. Yale Law School.................$128,900
13. University of Michigan..........$126,800
14. Vanderbilt University...........$108,800
15. Georgetown University.........$105,000

The article did mention:

A number of observers also noted that lots of lawyers get less-than-lucrative first jobs but go on to make better money later in their careers, so it's hard to base the value of a law degree on first-year salary.

For the full article: https://www.bluetoad.com/publication/fr ... &ver=html5

Where did your school land in the ranking by income? Do you think that this article is true?

This looks low. Wouldn’t median be higher at these schools? And it excludes UT-Austin, which posted $155,000 for c/o 2018 median. Interesting methodology.

https://law.utexas.edu/career/employmen ... tatistics/

The numbers are correct, but misleading. You are picking up on two factors here:

1) Good school place a lot of people in Big Law, which has a starting salary around 190k.
2) Great schools also place people in clerkships or public interest positions, with lower salaries.

You would get more information from the ABA employment disclosures, which will break down how many people go to big-law, clerkships, or some other type of employment. There is a world of difference between people taking <100k to take a prestigious federal clerkship to people taking <100k because they are working at a mid-sized firm in the middle of nowhere.

HydroFlask666 wrote:This looks low. Wouldn’t median be higher at these schools? And it excludes UT-Austin, which posted $155,000 for c/o 2018 median. Interesting methodology.

https://law.utexas.edu/career/employmen ... tatistics/

According to the article University of Texas's 1st year associates only make $90,100.

AdminMegan wrote:

HydroFlask666 wrote:This looks low. Wouldn’t median be higher at these schools? And it excludes UT-Austin, which posted $155,000 for c/o 2018 median. Interesting methodology.

https://law.utexas.edu/career/employmen ... tatistics/

According to the article University of Texas's 1st year associates only make $90,100.

As with all law schools, very few UT 1st year associates in private practice actually make $90k. They either make $150-190k, or they make $40-60k. There are a tiny number of midlaw and small firm jobs in the $90k, but no graduate should expect that as a likely outcome. Means and medians are extremely misleading.

These number don't really make any sense as medians -- means? Sure.

I think these medians help at least for people to look at more realistic salaries, though. I've seen posts here and way more on reddit from people thinking that going to very regional schools will get them a $100k salary easily after graduation, when that's a reach.

The DOE uses IRS data from people who borrowed federal loans to attend, so it might leave out some students. But, it's more reliable, from my perspective, than self reported data where a third or quarter of the class is left out, which a lot of schools do