The Top Law Schools for Legal Industry Jobs: A Data Review

Law360.com, May 13, 2026

By Daniel Moritz-Rabson

Law360 (May 6, 2026, 2:03 PM EDT) -- The majority of graduates from many of the country's most competitive law schools are still heading to BigLaw firms for their first full-time legal jobs, according to the American Bar Association's latest data.

Duke University School of Law's class of 2025 had the highest percentage of graduates find roles at firms with 501 or more attorneys, with nearly 71% of the university's law students obtaining jobs at these firms. Columbia Law School followed closely behind, with 70.1% of last year's graduating class finding roles at major firms, according to figures for the class of 2025 released in late April, which evaluated 195 schools.

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School were next highest with 67.4 and 67.1% of graduates, respectively, employed at large firms. Both figures indicated that a higher proportion of graduates from these schools had landed jobs at BigLaw firms when compared with the prior graduating class.

In contrast, the share of Cornell University Law School graduates heading to major firms dropped sharply. The school's class of 2024 ranked first in the U.S. in terms of the proportion of graduates heading to BigLaw, with 71.9% landing jobs at these firms. Just under 57% of the class of 2025 secured roles at firms with 501 or more attorneys.

When evaluating programs based on the total number of graduates who landed BigLaw jobs, Georgetown University Law Center ranked first for the sixth consecutive year, with 386 former students landing placements. Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School came in second and third, with 323 and 321 placements, respectively, a result that mirrored the outcomes of prior years.

The rate of graduates starting their careers at law firms continued a years long increase, rising from 54.4% to 55.9% for the class of 2025. Meanwhile, the proportion of graduates taking jobs in government, business and public interest roles, as well as landing clerkships, all declined.

"The data reinforces what we're seeing in recruiting, that law firms remain the main way that entry-level attorneys are getting employed, but they are highly selective," Niko McIver, a senior director at Lateral Link, told Law360 Pulse.

McIver noted she was not surprised that the strongest results for BigLaw placements were concentrated at schools with top 10 ranking and near major legal markets.

Government jobs ranked as the second most common type of post-law school employment category, with 11.2% of graduates taking these roles. That figure is a nearly one percentage point drop from the class of 2024, in which 12.1% of graduates got government roles, but was still within the typical range logged in recent years. Since 2018, the proportion of law school grads taking government jobs has fluctuated between 10.2% and 12.1%.

These jobs continue to have allure for many graduates who are looking for opportunities that align with their values, Jackie Bokser LeFebvre, a managing director at Major Lindsey & Africa's associate recruiting team, told Law360. Gen Z individuals, who now dominate law school ranks, are more interested in taking government jobs than their millennial counterparts were, LeFebvre said. She added that these roles offer graduates a chance to pursue work that is personally meaningful.

"I think the second piece of it is that this cohort is interested in having a little bit more balance in their life. And government affords that," LeFebvre said.

The percentage of graduates who took clerkships declined slightly for the second straight year, falling from 9.2% to 9%. Even so, some schools still placed high rates of graduates in these roles.

Yale Law School displaced the University of Chicago Law School as the institution with the highest proportion of graduates earning federal clerkships. More than 23% of Yale's law school graduates took on these roles.

Those two schools tied for second in terms of the raw number of former students placed into federal clerkships, with 49 people from each institution. Harvard Law School, which has much larger law school cohorts than Yale and the University of Chicago, placed 100 graduates in federal clerkships.

These clerkships provide a professional boost to attorneys who enter BigLaw later in their careers, McIver, who was previously a legal recruiting manager for Perkins Coie LLP, told Law360 Pulse.

"BigLaw values federal clerkships more so than state clerkships," she said. "So I think that that could be part of what attracts entry-level people to be applying for [federal clerkships], because they get a clerkship bonus" from BigLaw firms.

While the top schools for obtaining federal clerkships were predominantly private, public universities held a more prominent role among the institutions with the highest proportion of graduates getting state court clerkships.

Seton Hall University School of Law, a private institution, once again sent the largest ratio of graduates to these roles. More than 43% of the university's law school students found employment as state court clerks. Rutgers Law School came in second, with 32.6% of graduates — or 120 people, the highest raw number of any law school — going on to state clerk positions.

The University of Baltimore School of Law, the University of Minnesota Law School, the University of Hawaii's William S. Richardson School of Law and the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law — all public universities — were all among the top 10 schools with the highest proportion of students who earned state court clerkships.

A lower proportion of law school graduates took public interest jobs, with the total figure dropping from 8.9% for the class of 2024 to 8.2% for the class of 2025. Educational institutions in the coastal states dominated for sending the highest proportion of graduates into public interest roles.

As it had in prior years, the City University of New York School of Law ranked far above competitors, with 46.9% of graduates finding public interest jobs. Florida A&M University College of Law was a distant second, with 27.8% of grads taking public interest jobs. The City University of New York came out far ahead of other schools in the portion of graduates going into public interest.

The number of graduates landing in-house roles continued a yearslong slide. In 2018, 11.5% of graduates found jobs in that sector. But the rate has declined significantly since, dropping every year except 2021 and landing at 6.3% for the class of 2025.

Mindy Baggish, a senior legal recruiter at Swan Legal Search, said this trend may be linked to the types of lawyers that businesses seek.

"Companies typically prefer hiring experienced lawyers for their in-house legal departments. From a fiscal standpoint, they need someone who can hit the ground running," Baggish wrote in an email to Law360 Pulse. "Recent law school graduates do not have that breadth of knowledge and experience yet. Practicing at a firm first, however, literally gives them the practical experience they need to be informed legal advisers and legal experts for a company later on."

McIver agreed with that analysis.

"My main takeaway would be that the decline does not necessarily mean law students are less interested in in-house roles. It may simply reflect that in-house opportunities are usually harder to access directly out of law school, especially when companies can hire attorneys who already have several years of firm experience," she wrote in an email to Law360 Pulse.

Even so, a number of schools sent large proportions of their graduates to in-house roles. More than a quarter of graduates from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law found corporate jobs. The next two highest spots were held by the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico School of Law and the University of Puerto Rico School of Law, which sent 24.4 and 19.4%, respectively, of their law graduates to in-house roles.

"We try and prepare students to be ready for practice in a way that may appeal to people in business," Neil Sirota, the associate dean for career and academic advising at University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, told Law360 Pulse, noting the school offers intellectual property and technology licensing classes. "I think we're able to give them that kind of skills training that appeals to people in industry."

--Editing by Alex Hubbard and Orlando Lorenzo. Graphics by Jason Mallory.

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