Where to Go: Law Students Ask Themselves What Law Schools Will Provide Jobs at the Nation's Largest Law Firms

04/16/08

<<For pre-law students eager to be placed at a top law firm, choosing the right law school is an important decision. Top schools, however, which students may have considered attending — Yale, Harvard, and Stanford — are being rivaled by others. Two schools, in fact, are boasting of their student/law firm success rates — and with good reason. The schools? Columbia and Northwestern.

Out of the top 20 law schools, Columbia, not Harvard, ranks number one. The number of graduating students from Columbia that get accepted into NLJ 250 law firms is high: in 2007 nearly 75% of the student body found jobs at the "nation's largest law firms."

"Many students come here because they love New York City, and a significant fraction of them decide to stay," said Columbia's law school dean, David Schizer.

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Second on the list is Northwestern. Here, nearly 73.5% of the student body received job offers from NLJ 250 law firms. And the law school has another reason to tout its accomplishments: last year, it was ranked 11th on the list.

Said Northwestern's dean, David Van Zandt, "We've made a tremendous effort to reach out to employers."

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Another school to rank higher was the University of Southern California, jumping from number 20 to 14. Two new schools made the list as well: UCLA at number 17 and Boston University at number 18.

According to UCLA School of Law's dean, Michael Schill, UCLA is "being more aggressive" when it comes to increasing students' chances of being placed with NLJ 250 law firms.

However, Harvard continues to dominate law schools with the "highest concentration of graduates going to one firm." Twenty-one students were given jobs at Kirkland & Ellis, a Chicago-based law firm with 1,316 attorneys.

Law schools that fell off the list this year include University of Texas School of Law and Fordham University School of Law.

Learn the 10 Factors That Matter to Big Firms More Than Where You Went to Law School