Practice Ready? Students & Lawyers Disagree

The Top Ten Law Schools For ‘Job Accessibility’

 
As everyone awaits the release of the U.S. News law school rankings (March 10th), we can all enjoy the newest member of the law school ranking game, Super Lawyers. In 2013, Super Lawyers surveyed outgoing 3Ls and other recent graduates. With those results they made a Top Ten Law Schools for Value and Quality of Education. In the same year, they surveyed managing partners and lawyers from their Top 100 list and came out with the Top Ten Law Schools for Highest Caliber Graduates Most Prepared to Practice.
In the former ranking, taking the top spot was Columbia University. Coming in directly behind Columbia Law was Florida International University College of Law. Wait. Florida International? How can that be? Nothing against FIU College of Law, but it is somewhat confusing as to how this result was reached. In the class of 2013, nine months after graduation, 60.8 percent of FIU graduates had jobs. At Columbia, 95 percent had jobs. What’s more, 75 percent of Columbia graduates went to Big Law jobs. Only 13% came from FIU.
Here is the rest of Super Lawyers’ ranking:
Best Law Schools for Value and Quality of Education
1) Columbia Law School
2) Florida International University College of Law
3) New York University School of Law
4) Quinnipiac University School of Law
5) Texas Tech University School of Law
6) UCLA School of Law
7) UC-Berkeley School of Law
8) University of Chicago Law School
9) University of Michigan Law School
10) University of Virginia School of Law
For the second rankings (compiled from results from employer surveys), Columbia Law again came out on top, making it the school with the most ‘Job Accessibility.’ Duke University School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center followed in second and third. Rounding out the top five was Harvard Law School and Stanford Law School, respectively. There was a tie in the top ten, so 11 schools were included. Here is how schools in this category:
Best Law Schools for Highest Caliber Graduates Most Prepared
1) Columbia Law School
2) Duke University School of Law
3) Georgetown University Law Center
4) Harvard Law School
5) Stanford Law School
6) Temple University Beasley School of Law
7) University of Michigan Law School
8) University of Texas School of Law
9) University of Virginia School of Law
10) Washington University in St. Louis School of Law
11) Yale Law School.
Impressively, Texas, Washington University and Temple all snuck into a ranking comprised of Tier 14 schools. So, based on this ranking, if a T14 is not for you, these three schools wouldn’t be the worst options.
Source: Above the Law