Academia

GW In Top Ten Schools For Full-Time Employment

We have been discussing the difficult times for law graduates in the last couple years. I am happy to share some good news for a change. The George Washington University Law School is in the top ten law schools in the country for full-time long-term employment — a study based on 2011 graduates published by the ABA and completed by Law School Transparency. Notably, GW beats out Georgetown by 81.3 to 62.6 percent. The biggest surprise is Louisiana State University which ties for tenth with GWU.


The biggest winner is Virginia, which takes the number one spot. In the overall ranking, GW came in 20th in the annual listing by U.S. News and World Report.

Here are the employment rankings:

Virginia 94.7
Columbia 94.1
Stanford 91.1
Harvard 90.1
New York University 90.1
University of Chicago 88.2
Yale 87.8
Pennsylvania 84.3
Duke 82.1
George Washington 81.3
Louisiana State University 81.3

The rates are obviously disappointing for many of the lower ranked law schools. Many expect the bottom tier law schools to succumb to the economic pressures, but I am not so certain. I do believe that it would be a better service to the pool of law students to have a pruning of schools, which include diploma mills that flourish in states with loose regulations. Most worrisome is the level of debt being assumed by students at lower ranked schools.

The study shows an average of just over half of the graduates getting full-time jobs.  That means that graduates at many of the lowest ranks schools are facing a much much higher rate of unemployment.  While GW and other schools continue to struggle with the economy, they will weather this cycle fairly well.  The question is whether the unemployment rate will affect the viability of the bottom twenty percent of law schools and result in a reduction on that end.  The concern is that many fine law school in the mid-tier range could be hurt by this downturn, which would be a shame because these are often very good schools with talented faculties.

13 thoughts on “GW In Top Ten Schools For Full-Time Employment”

  2. If you look at the hard numbers posted by US News these numbers are skewed and false. Not that the numbers reported by law schools mean much. Schools hire their own, and a guy/girl could be working at ShitLaw/DocReview and be an “employed” statistic. Look at the NLJ 250 numbers and you can see a much clearer picture. The legal profession is in the shitter. That is why I took a full scholarship at a GW peer school over offers from schools where I’d be staring at 210k+ in debt. I remember when in 2007 I initially applied to law school Columbia University, UChicago was at 75% at the top jobs. UVA was 60%. Now Upenn leads the pack at 56%. UVA is a paltry 40% when you consider the debt shouldered it does not make sense.

    http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?interactive=true&id=1202543436520

    Last year’s numbers truly sucked.

  4. The vast majority of schools did abysmally–40s to low 60s (not much better than the outright diploma mills) and they look like a heterogeneous group in terms of prestige.

  5. The George Washington University Law School is in the top ten law schools in the country for full-time long-term employment — a study based on 2011 graduates published by the ABA and completed by Law School Transparency.
    ——————————–
    Congratulations!
    but how do you get a study on long term employment from 2011 grads????

    you know, truth in advertising and all…..

  6. The bottom line, though, is that law school is really a big ripoff. You don’t need law school to become a great lawyer, nor to even pass the bar. And, in fact, it’s still possible to become a great lawyer without going to law school in a very small number of states, such as New York and California. That was the way Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Darrow did it. But today, law school is a very big business and it’s a big racket. The American Bar Association helps to keep it that way.

  9. As far as law grads go, I’ve been consistently more impressed with grads from either Tulane or Loyola than LSU. LSU is a political/legacy law school and the only one located in the capitol, i.e. many if not most of them have connected jobs as part of the local political machine waiting for them before they ever start school. If they were anywhere else other than the very insular Baton Rouge and uniquely Napeleonic code driven state in which they reside (which has only three choices in law schools), they would not fare nearly as well IMO.

  10. Congratulations, Prof Turley! It speaks well of you and your colleagues abilities in teaching.

  12. Keep in mind that 80 GW grads are in school-funded full-time, long-term jobs. If you take these out of the calculation, GW fared horribly.

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