The "Go-To" Law Schools, According to the Biggest Law Firms

Law school applicants getting ready to choose a law school will undoubtedly face a competitive legal hiring market, along with the prospect of servicing enormous debt on graduation. While it's fair to say that not everyone graduating from law school wants to or will be able to work in a big law firm, there's no escaping that one measure of a law school is the rankings and statistics that tell us how that school does with placing graduates in the biggest law firms. So, even if you think you might opt to work in the public sector or in another position outside of the big law firm world, it's worth looking at law school placement numbers at the big law firms when making that decision.

The National Law Journal (NLJ),has compiled its rankings of the Top 50 "Go-To" schools based on the percentage of 2009 J.D. graduates who landed jobs at NLJ 250 firms by Sept. 30, 2009, using survey data submitted by the 250 top law firms as ranked by NLJ.


At the top of the NLJ list is Northwestern University School of Law, which placed 55.5% of its graduates at NLJ 250 firms -- a sharp decline from 2008, when the highest percentage of graduates heading to NLJ 250 firms was 70.5%.

The top 25 schools in The National Law Journal’s annual Go-To Law School List are as follows:
1) Northwestern University School of Law -- 55.9%
2) Columbia Law School -- 55.4%
3) Stanford Law School -- 54.1%
4) University of Chicago Law School -- 53.1%
5) University of Virginia School of Law -- 52.8%
6) University of Michigan Law School -- 51%
7) University of Pennsylvania Law School -- 50.8%
8) New York University School of Law -- 50.1%
9) University of California, Berkeley School of Law -- 50%
10) Duke Law School -- 49.8%
11) Harvard Law School -- 47.6&
12) Vanderbilt University Law School -- 47.1%
13) Georgetown University Law Center -- 42.8%
14) Cornell Law School -- 41.5%
15) University of Southern California Gould School of Law -- 41.3%
16) University of Texas School of Law -- 36.6%
17) University of California at Los Angeles School of Law -- 35.9%
18) Yale Law School -- 35.3%
19) Boston College Law School -- 34.6%
19) Boston University School of Law -- 34.6%
21) George Washington University Law School -- 31.6%
22) Fordham University School of Law -- 29.4%
23) University of Notre Dame Law School -- 28.8%
24) Washington University School of Law, St. Louis -- 27.5%
25. University of Illinois College of Law -- 26.7%

The NLJ reports that "the 2009 percentages include deferred associates, so an even smaller group actually went to work last year. Remember, the list consists of the very top performing schools, where job prospects in years past have proven recession-proof. Not so in 2009. We’ve ranked the top 50 law schools by the percentage of 2009 juris doctor graduates who snagged jobs at NLJ 250 firms by Sept. 30, 2009. Numbers are based on information gathered from our annual NLJ 250 survey—statistics we get from the nation’s largest law firms."

The NLJ also identified firm favorites—the schools from which the top law firms on the NLJ 250 recruited most of its first-years in 2009.

Listen to our full podcast "Choosing the Right Law School," for more information on this topic.

Summer Associate Offers In January? NALP Report Recommends Changes in Recruiting At Law Schools

Ever wonder about the "logic" behind incoming 2L law students leaving their summer vacations in mid-August, heading back to campus, wearing their nicest business suits, to join the frenzied fray that is known as "on-campus interviewing (OCI)?"

Whether you look at it from the point of view of the students pressured to participate and decide early before fully considering the full range of employment options, the law firms trying to assess and anticipate future hiring needs two years in advance or the law schools pressured to schedule OCI just as the semester is starting, there's considerable dissatisfaction with the timing guidelines for law firm recruiting. Ashby Jones, Lead Writer for the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, observed in a recent Law School Podcaster show "the thing about law school and hiring is that it all happens in advance to a degree that a lot of people find sort of absurd."

These concerns, made worse by the economy, may finally lead to changes in the recruiting timeline. NALP's (National Association for Law Placement) Commission on Recruiting and the Legal Profession issued an initial report (PDF) this week recommending that law firms shift away from rolling offer deadlines to a framework based on specific dates ("Offer Kick-Off Days") before which offers for employment cannot be made. The ABA Journal reports that the NALP Commission recommends moving back the date for summer associate job offers until mid-January of the second year of law school (establishing an "offer kick-off day") and proposes "shortening the period of time during which offers remain open from 45 days to 14 days."

While this initial Phase I of the NALP Commission's report focused on potential changes that could be implemented as early as the 2010-2011 academic year, and thus focused mainly on timing guidelines, the NALP Commission also plans to look more closely at the topic of fundamental legal recruiting model changes. That could be pretty interesting.

While the American Lawyer reports that some law firms are worried the proposed changes will just mean they have to "wine and dine" candidates for a longer period of time, the NALP Commission suggests that a January Kick-Off Day might open up the possibility for employers "to experiment with more in-depth interviewing and assessment techniques" and "allow law firms to make decisions after receiving year-end financial data."

Jim Leipold, is the Executive Director at NALP, and was a recent guest on our Law School Podcaster segment, The Current Economic Envcironment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students. He gave us a bit of a preview of what we're hearing now and some insight into why the economy might be driving some of the possible changes in law firm recruiting. "Things were beginning to happen before the recession for a number of reasons but the recession accelerated most of those changes and I think will support those changes. I think, over time, we’ll see more firms drift toward recruiting later so, rather than the focus being on students as they return to school in the beginning of their second year, recruiting will probably begin to happen later in the second year, whether that’s late Fall or early Spring, and there too, different firms may choose to recruit at different times. So students are just going to have to be prepared for a much broader range of practices and understanding for each firm that they’re interested in what course that firm is choosing.”

To hear more on this topic, tune in to the full show, "The Current Economic Environment: What It Means for Law School Applicants and Students."