Legal News

Top Firms Drawing Fewer Top Law School Grads

By Ashby Jones

Yes, it’s true: If you graduate from a “T14″ law school, your chances of going off to work at a big law firm are better than they are if graduate from a lower-ranked school.

But they’re not as good as they used to be. It’s a point illustrated on Tuesday in this National Law Journal story.

The NLJ crunched the numbers, and found that hiring of graduates of the top law schools by the nation’s largest law firms slid by 10% during 2010 compared with 2009. The majority of those schools sent fewer graduates into the big-firm market.  Click here for the NLJ report, which contains a chart of how the top 50 law schools fared on this front.

In 2010, the top 50 schools sent 3,822, or 27.3%, of their graduates to NLJ 250 firms, compared with 30.3% of their 2009 graduating classes, reports the NLJ. Among the 47 schools that made both the 2010 and 2009 lists, 38 sent fewer 2010 graduates to NLJ 250 law firms.

But a smattering of schools have positive news to report. They include Cornell, which 58.3% of its 192 graduates in 2010 to NLJ 250 firms, compared with 41.5% of the 2009 class.

On the other hand, No. 6 University of Virginia School of Law sent 46.8% of its graduates into the 2010 big-firm market, compared with 52.8% of the 2009 class. Harvard and Penn also experienced jumps from ’09 to ’10.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 01, 2011 (boomark / email).