Winning the Time Management Game in Law School

The Best Law Schools for Prestigious Government Jobs

You want to make big changes at the policy level. Maybe you want to tackle healthcare policy or climate change. Yet, you don’t know what the first step is. How do you even apply for a top-level government position? The first step—choose a good law school.
Above The Law recently reported a list, compiled by Adam Feldman of Empirical SCOTUS, of the law schools with the most graduates in prestigious government jobs. The following law schools have consistently produced United States Attorneys, sitting federal judges, and state attorneys general and solicitors general.
Here are the top five for all attorneys and judges:
1.) Harvard Law School
2.) Yale Law School
3.) Georgetown University Law Center
4.) University of Texas School of Law
5.) University of Michigan Law School
For the top schools that produced the most attorney generals and solicitor generals, Harvard Law topped the list.
Although Harvard produces the most attorneys, it ranks 3rd according to US News rankings. Georgetown ranks 15th, Yale ranks 1st, University of Chicago ranks 4th, and University of Virginia ranks 8th
.The finding that is most surprising in this data is perhaps the fact that certain lower ranked schools actually place more top state attorneys than higher ranked schools. For instance, The University of Florida places 10th among the list for producing attorney/judge count, yet it ranks 41st on US News rankings.

Source: Empirical SCOTUS
Another important perspective to consider is a school’s student enrollment compared to the number of lawyers/attorneys it produces. As Feldman states, “this gives a sense of the number of placements per students in each school.” When considering student enrollment, Yale tops the list. Yale has 632 enrolled students and placed 81 lawyers and/or attorneys on the list. By contrast, Harvard holds a higher enrollment count of 1,171 students, but also has a higher placement count with 140.
When looking at these numbers, it is clear that there are several factors that prospective law students should consider when looking at schools that will give the best outlook for a career in government. US News rankings can give a base level prestige ranking of a law school, but looking at which schools actually produce attorneys is crucial.
Check out the full data at Empirical SCOTUS.
Sources: Above The Law, Empirical SCOTUS, US News

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