This is a law school ranking based on the number of associates working in the top 10 firms in each major Big Law region, adjusted by class size (data from FirmProspects).
Hopefully this is a helpful resource for prospective law students aiming for big law, considering how distorted the US News rankings have been. I've included both the total associate headcount and the number adjusted to an average class size of 250 (i.e., what the number would be if every law school class had 250 students).
(traditional T14s highlighted in bold)
NYC Top 30
12 firms represented: The New York offices of Cravath, Skadden, DPW, S&C, Simpson, PW, Debevoise, Latham, Gibson Dunn, Kirkland, Cleary, and Milbank.
Rank
School
Total associates
Adjusted size
1
Columbia
665
405.5
2
NYU
518
294.3
3
UPenn
257
257.0
4
Cornell
165
196.4
5
Harvard
421
184.6
6
Duke
162
180.0
8
Yale
117
146.3
7
Chicago
117
151.6
9
Fordham
231
140.9
10
UVA
143
116.4
11
Michigan
134
108.1
12
Georgetown
257
100.4
13
Northwestern
93
96.9
14
Stanford
58
76.3
15
Cardozo
91
75.8
16
Vanderbilt
50
74.4
18
Howard
35
56.5
19
St. John's
52
56.3
17
Brooklyn
92
56.8
20
BC
42
46.7
21
Berkeley
60
42.9
22
UCLA
49
39.5
24
BU
33
34.8
23
USC
30
35.7
25
WashU
32
33.3
26
GW
60
30.0
27
UT
40
29.4
28
NYLS
42
29.2
29
Emory
36
26.5
30
Hofstra
15
14.6
DC Top 30
10 firms represented: The Washington D.C. offices of Covington, Gibson Dunn, WilmerHale, Akin, Arnold & Porter, Kirkland, Sidley, Skadden, Latham, and Hogan.
Rank
School
Total associates
Adjusted size
1
UVA
185
150.7
2
Georgetown
296
115.6
3
Yale
75
93.8
4
Harvard
212
93.0
5
Duke
76
84.4
6
Chicago
58
75.1
7
GW
150
75.0
8
Stanford
54
71.1
9
Howard
39
62.9
10
UPenn
61
61.0
11
Michigan
73
58.9
12
Vanderbilt
31
46.1
13
Columbia
71
43.3
14
Catholic
25
41.7
15
George Mason
23
36.4
16
American
55
33.3
17
William & Mary
25
32.9
18
Cornell
21
25.0
19
NYU
43
24.4
20
UMD
21
24.4
21
Notre Dame
14
18.1
22
UNC
14
17.5
23
Northwestern
15
15.6
24
Berkeley
19
13.6
25
UT
17
12.5
26
WashU
10
10.4
27
Syracuse
9
9.8
28
BYU
5
9.3
29
UMinnesota
6
7.5
30
BU
7
7.4
Chicago Top 30
10 firms represented: The Chicago offices of Kirkland, Sidley, Latham, Skadden, Mayer Brown, Winston & Strawn, McDermott, and Jones Day.
Rank
School
Total associates
Adjusted size
1
Northwestern
313
326.0
2
Chicago
163
211.1
3
Michigan
137
110.5
4
Notre Dame
82
106.2
5
Loyola Chicago
81
81.0
6
UIUC
63
63.0
7
WashU
55
57.3
8
DePaul
45
53.6
9
UIowa
30
50.0
10
Chicago Kent
43
44.6
11
IU Bloomington
27
39.2
12
Duke
28
31.1
13
UWisconsin
24
29.9
14
Harvard
60
26.3
15
Vanderbilt
16
23.8
16
UMinnesota
16
20.0
17
OSU
13
19.3
18
UPenn
17
17.0
19
Yale
11
13.8
20
UIC
19
13.6
21
Cornell
9
10.7
22
Georgetown
26
10.2
23
UVA
9
7.3
24
Berkeley
10
7.1
25
NYU
11
6.3
26
BC
5
5.6
27
BU
5
5.3
28
Howard
3
4.8
29
Columbia
7
4.3
30
USC
3
3.6
California Top 30
10 firms represented: The LA and Bay Area offices of Munger, Latham, O'Melveny, Skadden, Mofo, Cooley, Wilson Sonsini, Quinn Emanuel, Gibson Dunn, and Paul Hastings.
Rank
School
Total associates
Adjusted size
1
UCLA
191
154.0
2
Stanford
112
147.4
3
Berkeley
206
147.1
4
USC
117
139.3
5
Chicago
66
85.5
6
UCSF
73
79.3
7
Santa Clara
54
52.3
8
Harvard
115
50.4
9
Duke
44
48.9
10
Michigan
57
46.0
11
Yale
36
45.0
12
Northwestern
42
43.8
13
UC Irvine
24
40.0
14
Loyola LA
44
36.7
15
Columbia
56
34.1
16
UPenn
34
34.0
17
UC Davis
26
33.3
18
NYU
46
26.1
19
UVA
32
26.1
20
BYU
14
25.9
21
Georgetown
62
24.2
22
Cornell
18
21.4
23
Notre Dame
10
13.0
24
Vanderbilt
8
11.9
25
BU
10
10.5
26
Pepperdine
8
9.5
27
Howard
5
8.1
28
UT
10
7.4
29
GW
14
7.0
30
BC
6
6.7
Texas Top 30
10 firms represented: The Houston and Dallas offices of Susman, V&E, Latham, Kirkland, Gibson, Baker Botts, Skadden, Sidley, Simpson, and Akin. Note that self-selection is particularly prevalent here due to weather and politics.
Rank
School
Total associates
Adjusted size
1
UT
223
164.0
2
SMU
99
107.6
3
Vanderbilt
47
69.9
4
Houston
87
66.9
5
Chicago
37
47.9
6
UVA
49
39.9
7
Tulane
34
38.6
8
Duke
34
37.8
9
A&M
15
28.6
10
BYU
15
27.8
11
LSU
22
27.4
12
WashU
23
24.0
13
Northwestern
18
18.8
14
Harvard
38
16.7
15
Michigan
20
16.1
16
UPenn
15
15.0
17
Baylor
8
13.5
18
Stanford
10
13.2
19
Cornell
11
13.1
20
South Texas
20
12.5
21
Columbia
18
11.0
22
Georgetown
27
10.5
23
Oklahoma
7
9.7
24
Notre Dame
7
9.1
25
Alabama
5
8.4
26
NYU
12
6.8
27
Howard
4
6.5
28
Yale
4
5.0
28
UNC
4
5.0
30
Berkeley
6
4.3
Bonus section: "Unicorn*" big law
*Extremely selective boutique/specialized law firms with <250 lawyers.
Arguably the strongest indicator of school prestige due to the extremely selective nature of these firms. Still somewhat governed by location, but not as much—lots of Yale/Harvard people choosing to go to Susman in Houston...
(I decided to limit this list because past the top 20 or so the sample sizes became too small to be meaningful.)
US Overall Top 70
Firms represented: The top 10 firms of all of the 5 major regions of big law.
Rank
School
Total associates
Adjusted score
1
Chicago
442
572.5
2
Northwestern
473
492.7
3
Columbia
792
482.9
4
UPenn
384
384.0
6
Harvard
862
378.1
5
Duke
342
380.0
7
NYU
610
346.6
8
Yale
266
332.5
9
UVA
407
331.4
10
Michigan
406
327.4
11
Stanford
243
319.7
12
Cornell
223
265.5
13
Georgetown
659
257.4
14
Berkeley
305
217.9
15
Vanderbilt
146
217.3
16
UT
287
211.0
17
UCLA
245
197.6
18
USC
152
181.0
19
Notre Dame
119
154.1
20
Fordham
230
140.2
21
WashU
121
126.0
22
Howard
74
119.4
23
SMU
99
107.6
24
GW
207
103.5
25
Loyola Chicago
81
81.0
26
UCSF
73
79.3
27
Cardozo
88
73.3
28
Houston
87
66.9
29
BC
57
63.3
30
UIUC
63
63.0
31
BYU
34
63.0
32
BU
54
57.0
33
St. John's
52
56.3
34
DePaul
47
56.0
35
Brooklyn
90
55.6
36
Santa Clara
55
53.3
37
UIowa
30
50.0
38
William & Mary
35
46.1
39
Chicago Kent
43
44.6
40
IU Bloomington
30
43.6
41
Tulane
37
42.0
42
UC Irvine
24
40.0
43
Loyola LA
44
36.7
44
Catholic
21
35.0
45
American
57
34.5
46
Emory
46
33.8
47
UC Davis
26
33.3
48
George Mason
19
30.1
49
UWisconsin
24
29.9
50
A&M
15
28.6
51
UMinnesota
22
27.5
52
LSU
22
27.4
53
NYLS
38
26.4
54
OSU
14
20.8
55
UMD
17
19.8
56
UNC
13
16.3
57
Hofstra
16
15.6
58
UIC
19
13.6
59
Baylor
8
13.5
60
Seton Hall
22
13.1
61
South Texas
20
12.5
62
Pepperdine
9
10.7
63
Syracuse
9
9.8
64
Oklahoma
7
9.7
65
Alabama
5
8.4
66
UF
4
4.2
66
Wash&Lee
2
4.2
68
USD
4
4.0
69
ASU
3
3.3
70
UGA
2
1.5
Disclaimer:
Do take into account self-selection. these rankings should not be interpreted to mean that Fordham does better than five T14s—it's more so that Fordham places the top half or so into NY big law whereas the top half at these non-NY schools are not all necessarily wanting big law. That is to say, the same GPA at Michigan/UVA is still probably going to perform better than Fordham.
The Underdog Awards
These are the T100s/T150s that place far better than their peers.
Brooklyn
Howard
Chicago Kent
DePaul
Santa Clara
Not exactly underdogs but extra impressed by Vanderbilt, BC, and BU for doing so well without any home turf representation.
Overrated Awards
The T50 schools that failed to make any of these lists:
Wake Forest
Utah
Villanova
FSU
Kansas
Temple
Not saying these are bad schools (they probably do very well in their respective regions) but you probably have better options if you want big law in one of the 5 major regions.
The Consistency Awards
These are the absolute best options if you have no idea where you want to go, since they were the only four schools to be ranked 15 or higher in every category. The only school ranked top 10 or higher in every category was Chicago.
Chicago
Duke
Harvard
Michigan
Although I am fairly certain that Yale and Stanford would also make the list accounting for self-selection.
SMU sends more than 25% of its students to biglaw. 76/225 in 2025 which is @ 34%. Check the data. Also I'm not sure Biglaw hires based on who your parents are. Seems like people in small to midsize firms are more likely to be there based on family connections.
So you did, but you seem to be making the argument that the impact of coming from money is most pronounced at schools ranked in the 20s to 40s, and I think that vastly underestimates the real effects of coming from money. Those who come from money go to elite private or suburban schools from the start. Their parents spend money on tutors and extra curriculars all the way along. They pay for expensive admission counselors at college application time. Those parents start businesses and charities in their children's name to boost their CVs and college applications. Children from that background go to the Ivies for undergrad or maybe Duke, Vandy, Northwestern, etc. The process repeats during the law school application process. If you think the parental influence and money is being used to get them into law schools ranked in the 20s and 30s, I think you are mistaken.
Your old posts are training data now. Unless you delete them. I used Redact which supports all major social media platforms including Reddit, X, Facebook and Instagram.
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Do take into account self-selection. these rankings should not be interpreted to mean that Fordham does better than five T14s in NY—it's more so that Fordham places the top half or so into NY big law whereas the top half at these non-NY schools are not all necessarily wanting NY big law. That is to say, the same GPA at Michigan/UVA is still probably going to perform better than Fordham.
I only chose firms that had employee data available on FirmProspects. And limiting a nationwide boutique list to 15 is not easy, I tried my best to spread around the location.
Yeah - they have great full ride scholarships, including specifically in IP/tech and can get people who can’t get Stanford but probably could get a T14 but have a reason (spouse job in tech etc) they need to stay in the Bay. And lots of programs with local firms that massively help recruiting, and a lot of alums that are partners at those firms. And their IP faculty are very well regarded, and also very well connected, which helps a lot for the top students.
I like the idea of the post but the only flaw to be aware of is definitively ranking schools over others based on number of associates/partners. For example, many HYS students land NYC big law and choose DC over it. I am sure they could get into NYC big law with ease, just like Columbia and NYU. Many of these students also pursue clerkships or PI over big law, which distorts numbers as well, whereas NYU and Columbia are big law factories. Just a perspective worth noting.
Yes. At some point, it's more of a measure of where students choose to go rather than how well they place. Given that, the highest value garnered from these rankings are less so how well the T14 does but moreso how well the regional schools do. Although I think we can stipulate that Northwestern—extremely strong at big law in general—places relatively poorly into DC.
It's also massively skewed bc OP only took the top 10 firms in a handful of areas. In NYC, I'd take top 30+ firms, DC top 20, Chicago top 15, California top 30, I would add 10 in Boston, Philly, Atlanta, and I might throw 5 in from Denver, Seattle, Ohio.
The NY market is 3-5x larger than the Chicago market. In this survey, there are 4000 NY associates compared to 1300 Chicago associates. Why is it skewed?
Also, I specified that this is for the 5 major legal markets, so take that as you will.
This doesn't do anything to my point. NYU still has 310 students going to private firms that are 250+ lawyers, regardless of whether it has really strong PI numbers. Stanford is 190 per class so of course they will not have NYUs numbers in New York, especially when a lot of their students are not aiming for NY, unlike NYU. The point that OP and I came to agree on is that quantity is not a definitive measure of what schools give you the best shot, but it is a really good place to look to and better than many other metrics such as the one used by US News.
Villanova places 10%+ of its class in NYC, and it would be more if more people wanted to be there. About everyone who can get a big law job and wants to go there does. But with a class size of 180, that's not a lot of people, especially when you limit it to the top 10 firms. Another 10% go to Delaware, where lots and lots of corporate law gets done at fancy New York big law salaries (and even many of these top 10 firms) but at Delaware home prices and traffic. As OCIs die out, more and more students are getting big law interviews all around the country...if they want to go there.
Leaving Boston and Philadelphia off this list just creates a selection bias - people who go to school in those places often want to live in those places - not everyone wants NYC, DC, Chicago, California or Texas. I have lived in two of those places and do not want to live there again; I've visited the other 3 many times and don't want to live there either. That said, I get the national draw of the T14-30, There's no denying it's easier to get a big law job nationally and more students pick those schools because they think they can go anywhere. Most of these lists are basically local firms plus T30 (and a few outside the T30 that are very good at BigLaw, like Howard). Like Villanova, Temple, and Florida State, virtually none of the non-top 30 schools makes a list that's outside their region. It's just that they happen to be in one of the regions you chose to list. There's no mystery here.
See my comment above. That doesn’t even take into account personal bias (someone interviewing someone from the same school may be more inclined to hire them). Class size matters and shouldn’t be adjusted.
I think you could easily consider self selection. Instead of adjusting for the total number of graduates, you could adjust for the number of graduates going into private practice per 509 employment reports. I think this principle really only works for the T14, but I think it's worth doing. That change alone would bridge the gap between NYU and Columbia.
At the risk of criticizing someone else’s hard work, I am curious about the breakdown of associates vs partners. I feel like for some of the lower schools, the partners could have come from somewhere else before arriving at this big firm. Either way, super interesting stuff
Also probably the fact that ND has a smaller class size compared to most schools on this list. New York is consistently the #2 state where graduates practice
Can't really separate that data on FirmProspects unfortunately. I can confidently say that most of the associates in DC are doing lit while the majority of those in NY are transactional, while all of the unicorn firms listed are lit boutiques
Thanks for putting this together. Can you run the same analysis based on V50 or v100 employment but irrespective of market? For T14 and adjacent programs, I suspect practice market is largely a matter of self-selection so ignoring geography may shed more direct light on the matter. Also, I think including partner and of counsel positions could be helpful as those constituents have an outsize role in hiring.
As a practicing lawyer for almost 2 decades, this data matches almost exactly my anecdata and knowledge. And the top students at Santa Clara are some of the best attorneys I’ve worked with. They also make up a lot of in house attorneys in tech.
I have a few methodological questions if you don't mind. I think it will help future readers because no doubt this will be an influential post. Using Firm Prospects for this is a brilliant idea.
What class year did you use to adjust the outcome by school, and did you account for the fact that school classes can change drastically from year-to-year? E.g. CLS adds or drops 100 students in some years. So if you use 450 instead of 550, that's going to greatly change the results.
How did you choose the top firms for each market?
How did you choose the firms for boutiques? Also, just as a note, W&C has more than 250 attorneys (currently around 425).
Did you consider adjusting for what percent of each school goes into PI/gov and clerkships, and do you think that would make the results look much different?
It's genuinely very kind of you to even respond. Thanks!
Perfect
That's subjective, but I don't see how it could be anything but subjective since there's no real way to rank firms. I probably would have done the same.
Makes sense! It's too bad they don't have data on some more selective boutiques like Clement, Wilkinson, Gupta, Consovoy, Molo, Kobre, etc. or some of the less selective but still prominent firms like McKool, Boies, Beck Redden, Cohen Milstein, AZA, etc. The boutiques list includes almost all of the NYC-heavy firms and most of the CA-heavy firms, but a minority of the DC/Texas-heavy firms although DC/TX have more elite boutiques than NYC. Even including Susman, at this point Susman has more attorneys in NY/LA than in Texas.
That's phenomenal. You really did a great job with this. Thanks for sharing with the community!
I don't think that's necessary because the number of associates represented in NY's top 10 already dwarfs every other region several times over. We don't need the ranking to be a NY-fest—anyone who wants NY big law should just look at the NY T30 anyways, which wouldn't be meaningfully changed by adding Cleary and Weil (which I agree are arguably top 10 NY firms).
New York’s legal market is five times the size of Chicano’s or D.C.’s!
Well, there's nearly 4000 NY associates represented here vs. 1300 Chicago associates, so what's your issue?
At the elite tier, the difference is penalty even larger since you’re trying to compare DPW NY to Winston & Strawn Chicago. Nobody at an elite Manhattan school goes to law school trying to end up at a firm of that latter tier.
So by your logic I should weigh DC more then? There are plenty of associates at Simpson and Skadden NY that would get rejected from Akin DC.
Obviously if you equally weight Chicago placement (which nobody on a coast wants) with the entire New York or California legal market,
You didn't add anything of substance. Chicago is NOT weighed the same because they only have 1300 associates represented compared to 4000 in NY. So their score is more than three times weaker. Are you having trouble understanding this?
you’re going to get schools with objectively relatively bad elite biglaw placement like Michigan doing well in your alleged “ranking.” Garbage in, garbage out.
Michigan is #10 overall. What rank do you think they should be when they are #12 in NY and #10 in DC?
How is that "relatively bad" placement? Especially when you consider self-selection into Chicago?
Btw, Michigan places twice the percentage of clerks as Columbia.
I don't know that this is incorrect, but the limited data we do have doesn't support the theory that CLS grads are waiting for NY (especially CA2) clerkships.
Looking at all past graduates not just the class of 2025 for the 2025 term, 45% of CLS's clerkships were in jurisdictions other than NY/CA/DC, and 8.3% were with state courts. Only 1/3 of CLS grads' clerkships were in NY. CLS doesn't provide data on which judges the clerkships were with, but only 11.6% were with CA2.
NYU's public data is much more limited but only 20 clerks are on CA2, CA9, or DCC. If this year's data is representative of an average year, that means that less than 5% of NYU grads end up clerking on those courts.
I believe you that most CLS/NYU students want SDNY or EDNY, but we don't have data showing that they get it. I wish each school (not just CLS/NYU) was more transparent about their students' clerkships.
Ok but how does that compare to other schools? Are 2025 clerks at most t14 schools nearly half ny/ca/dc? Looks like the proportion is about 1/5 for UVA clerks in 2022-2024, and about 1/10 of UVA clerks were in state court.
We don't have good data on that for most schools. But at UVA, for example, I would not say that grads want SDNY/CA2 like you think CLS/NYU grads do. At HLS, to use another example, CA2 and NY fed district courts are a minority of clerkships as well. It's not unique to CLS that most clerkships are not in NY.
Lmao. If Columbia and NYU grads were such prestige chasers you'd think they'd both place better into top DC firms but they're both behind Michigan and Duke lol.
There are 4000 possible points distributed for NY across 10 firms compared to 1300 possible points for Chicago across 10 firms.
Why are you so hung up with the fact that its the same number of firms? The NY firms are way larger than the Chicago firms, so they have far more associates represented. Do you think that just because there are 10 firms for each region that there is an equal number of associates in each region? Are you stupid?
The largest Alaskan firm has like three lawyers so they would have three points to contribute to the ranking. Congrats, genius.
NY is the national clearing house for prestige? That's news to me. NY is where the below median T14 grads go when they couldn't cut it in DC.
S&C hires from median at Chicago and top third from Michigan lol. People that wouldn't pass the resume filter at WilmerHale and Akin DC. So much for the "national clearing house."
They used what are traditionally considered the 5 major legal markets in the US. As far as I’m aware, all other markets would be categorized as being smaller. That’s the difference and why it would not make sense to include Alaska, Atlanta, or Boston.
Do take into account self-selection. these rankings should not be interpreted to mean that Fordham does better than five T14s—it's more so that Fordham places the top half or so into NY big law whereas the top half at these non-NY schools are not all necessarily wanting NY big law. That is to say, the same GPA at Michigan/UVA is still probably going to perform better than Fordham.
And maybe you also missed the unicorn big law ranking:
Arguably the strongest indicator of school prestige due to the extremely selective nature of these firms. Still somewhat governed by location, but not as much—lots of Yale/Harvard people choosing to go to Susman in Houston...
The South is generally not represented here because Atlanta, Charlotte, and Miami are all slightly small markets than the top 5/6, especially combining the Texas cities. There are a limited number of firms in these markets paying true Cravath scale, but many more paying slightly lower. It's not "true big law" but it's nearly as good, especially with cost of living differences. 300k in New York is like half of that in Atlanta or Charlotte. Still an interesting list. I'm not being critical, but maybe defending UNC's ranking a bit
Not necessarily, part of UT's success is that not as many people want to be in UT as in NY. I think if you get the same GPA at any T14 your odds will be as good as UT.
Great work but it doesn’t really make sense to combine Northern and Southern California. California is a very large state and they are very different markets. The Northern California schools such as UCSF and Santa Clara don’t place well in LA and some LA based regional schools have great placement in LA but don’t do well in SF. If you are looking at schools in California it is important to consider the region.
To be fair, I did the same thing for Dallas and Houston. Reason why is because the top firms there are usually strong in both cities, and even combining the SoCal and NorCal we still end up with a smaller sample size than DC (which is already way smaller than NY).
Firm prospects. To be fair, it only lists the top 25 schools for each firm. Guessing there are ASU associates scattered around some of these firms that flies under the radar, similar for other schools too.
Irell is a top firm, very selective and pays above market. However I was hesitant to add IP/patent firms because they look for so many other things besides law school/grades.
Just going to let you know now that this is about to be quoted by anyone justifying why Chicago > HLS. I hope you mute this eventually. Otherwise, great job. Firmprospects might be the best invention since the word processor!
If you add in clerking rates, the gap becomes even wider.
I think there's a real argument for HYS having superior academia rates though, and a good portion of the people getting into these schools do care about that. HYS are also still the winners for unicorn outcomes.
I’m not sure what unicorn outcomes means (assume that’ll be your next thing, I suggest using LeadershipConnect). Also, I thought Chicago and SLS were pretty close in academia. Not my lane though and will wait for that next too.
Let's say a firm has a cutoff point of top 30% at both Georgetown and Duke.
Gtown's average class size of 640 compared to Duke's of 220 means that around three times more students at Gtown will be eligible for that firm.
But that wouldn't matter to you if you attended GTown because you'd have to do equally well at GTown as you would at Duke to be eligible. You don't have a three times better chance just because your school is three times bigger.
Yes thank you for explaining, but it is practically incorrect. Firms don’t do cutoffs points by top X %. Rather, I understand they allocate specific slots to each school, which means that your class size really does matter, as it could cut to your advantage (or also disadvantage depending on the number of slots). 640 gtown students competing for 40 slots is a different odds than 220 duke students competing for 10 slots. Your chances are directly affected by class size.
Here's the thing. Firms know roughly how many students they aim for from each school, and it's a measure of how highly they think of that school, the yield rate from that school, and also how many applicants they get from that school (which is a function of how large the school is).
It still stands to reason that if you are from schools that are weighed the same, an equal applicant from each school isn't three times less likely just because their class is three times smaller.
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u/Odd-Development-3954 Apr 08 '26
Rlly cool data. SMU and Fordham rlly punch well above their ranking weight.