Columbia Sends Highest Percentage of Grads to Top Law Firms

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Columbia Sends Highest Percentage of Grads to Top Law Firms

Posted Apr 14, 2008, 07:27 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss

Columbia Law School is first on a list of schools that send the highest percentage of graduates to the top 250 law firms.

Columbia sent almost 75 percent of its 2007 grads to the top 250 law firms, followed by Northwestern, which sent about 73.5 percent of its grads to those firms, the National Law Journal reports.

Northwestern was 11th on the list last year. Northwestern dean David Van Zandt said the school has focused on making its grads more attractive to big law firms by enrolling more students with postgraduate work experience and more from the Northeast where many of the big law firms are located. The school has also made "a tremendous effort to reach out to employers," he told the NLJ.

Here are the NLJ’s top 10 law schools for the highest percentage hired by the top 250 law firms:

Columbia, 74.8%
Northwestern, 73.5%
University of Chicago, 73.1%
New York University, 72.8%
University of Pennsylvania, 69%
Cornell, 62.2%
Harvard, 61.1%
Duke, 59.3%
University of Virginia, 58.1%
University of Michigan, 56.4%

Harvard Law School had a different honor. It sent the highest concentration of graduates—21 grads in all—to just one firm, Kirkland & Ellis. Latham & Watkins hired 20 grads each from Northwestern and Columbia.

A different chart by the magazine shows Yale had the highest percentage of 2005 graduates that went on to judicial clerkships.

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Posted by F Rivero - 2 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 18 hours, 53 minutes ago

Where is the article showing which law schools send the highest percentage of graduates to public interest law firms or to government service? There is no such article, you say? And there won’t be one? And this does not lend credence to the notion that Big Law gets nearly exclusive media attention from the ABA? Nonsense, I’m sure.
Posted by JHO - 2 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours, 16 minutes ago

F Rivero - - The ABA merely circulated news from the the National Law Journal, so your hostility seems misplaced. You may want to hop on the National Law Journal’s website and comment there. I’d bet the ABA would circulate a news story about a study showing the percentage of graduates to public interest firms, or government service, if one existed. If it exists forward it on, or use this comment field to provide a link.
Posted by detroit - 2 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours, 5 minutes ago

Columbia lawyer is no better than an Alamaba or Idaho lawyer.

Top 10 law schools are overrated
Posted by Steve - 2 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours, 5 minutes ago

Well, it is the characterization in the headline that these grads are going to “Top Law Firms” that grates. Congratulations to schools that have carefully selected and molded law students to desire initially high pay private jobs defending and promoting corporate America, and who are willing to sell 2700 hours per year of their lives to do so. “Top law firms” don’t always have “Top” people or “Top” work and the lawyers who work there surely don’t have “Top” lives.
Posted by JSD - 2 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes ago

I agree with the tenor of Rivero’s remarks. The ABA Journal has consistently published articles and statistics that tout the salaries and reputations of “top-tier” law schools, “big” law firms, and “prestigious” positions. It’s as if the ABA Journal is published for the few lawyers (relatively speaking) who work in “big” firms, or went to “top-tier” schools. You’d think a publication, especially one as broad as the ABA Journal, would be interested in the volume of it’s readership, yet the ABA Journal’s pattern of topics tends to exclude the vast majority of lawyers who, frankly, could hardly give a damn about its subjects of choice. It’s almost a tabloid at this point. I do appreciate the ABA’s role, and I certainly appreciate the significant contributions any publication has the potential to make, but a publication as general, sweeping, and broadly representative as the ABA Journal should really aim higher, and, naturally, broader.
Posted by Chris - 2 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 15 hours, 34 minutes ago

The assertion that a law school molds people to want high paying jobs is superficial. After graduating from Duke law school, I spent my first two years after law school as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa. But supporting my family determines in part where I work now, not how I was molded by law school. As an “Alamaba” lawyer (my currrent home, not my law school) and a partner at a top 250 law firm, I find these numbers interesting. The numbers would be better if the numbers taking judical clerkships were added, along with those law students’ eventual jobs. How many law students take public serice jobs and how nany do not have jobs would make the numbers even more interesting.
Posted by ernie - 2 months, 2 weeks, 16 hours, 15 minutes ago

What percentage of lawyers graduate and earn $160,000 salaries? What percentage of graduates work for BigLaw firms? Isn’t the ABA supposed to represent the profession and not just the “elite”? I just read an editorial about how law schools turn off idealistic students and push them towards the rat race…from reading these weekly stories it seems the ABA is contributing to this sad development

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