We are pleased to announce the release of the 12th annual Above the Law Top 50 Law School Rankings.
Most people who go to law school want to be lawyers. At ATL, we believe that the relative quality of a law school should therefore be measured by how well it delivers on the promise of gainful legal employment, especially given the hefty price of a legal education. We don’t care how big a school’s library is, what grades students earned as undergrads, or what deans think about their competitors. We care what happens after you graduate. That’s why the ATL rankings prioritize outcomes above all other factors. Ours are also the only rankings that incorporate the latest ABA employment data for the class of 2023.
Employment represents the bulk of a school’s overall score in our methodology, featuring in two separately weighted criteria: legal employment (full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage) and “quality jobs” (which include positions in large, typically high-paying law firms and federal judicial clerkships). While we removed student debt as a separate element this year, we continue to factor in the cost of obtaining a law degree.
Another change to this year’s formula is the addition of first-time bar passage rate. This is in line with our premise that it is the result of a law school education that matters most to graduates, since if you want to practice law, you have to pass the bar (for the most part), and no one wants to take the exam over and over. The last two elements of a school’s score also relate to outcomes in that they consider the number of graduates serving as federal judges and U.S. Supreme Court clerks. (For more about our ranking formula, see the methodology.)
Here are the Top 10 law schools for 2024:
- University of Virginia
- University of Chicago
- Duke
- University of Michigan
- Columbia
- Penn
- Cornell
- Northwestern
- Notre Dame
- Vanderbilt
You may notice that some of the usual suspects (e.g., Harvard, Yale, Stanford, NYU) aren’t among the top 10. That’s obviously not because they aren’t great law schools, but because they didn’t score as well in our ranking criteria, which focus on certain concrete data, such as job placement and cost of attendance, and omit other factors (like average LSAT scores and peer assessments) that measure less tangible qualities of selectivity and prestige.
One of the benefits of our formula is that it shines a light on schools that may not be typically considered among the most prestigious but which actually succeed in placing the bulk of their students in well-paying jobs as lawyers for a relatively lower cost. For example, newcomers to the Top 50 include Baylor, Tulane, and West Virginia University.
The good news overall is that the 2023 graduating class had more success in terms of job placement than the class that preceded it. According to the ABA, the percentage of unemployed graduates dropped slightly from 5.3% to 5.0%, and the percentage of graduates who obtained full-time, long-term jobs requiring bar passage (a/k/a “real” lawyer jobs) increased from 76.8% to 79.3%. For potential law students who hope to count among those graduates with “real” lawyer jobs, we encourage you to review our rankings; use them wisely, in conjunction with other resources, to find the best fit for your career goals.
[For those with different priorities, check out the new ATL Law School DIY, where you can adjust the relative weights of 12 factors yourself to customize rankings based on your personal needs and goals.]
This year’s law school rankings are sponsored by Themis Bar Review, which offers a comprehensive suite of legal education products and resources for students and law schools. Themis is committed to students’ success in law school, the bar exam, and beyond. Thousands of students have trusted Themis for its proven methodology and its first-in-class Bar Review course that consistently delivers high pass rates.
