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Which 10 law schools turn out the most law profs?

By Jackson A. Thomas

September 3, 2026, 9:27 am CDT

The path to becoming a law professor is relatively cut and dried: Go to law school, earn a JD, work on a law review, complete judicial clerkships, build a portfolio of scholarly writing, and apply and interview. Add one more consideration: where to attend law school, which might also factor in significantly as to whether someone successfully becomes a law professor.

Derek Muller, a professor at the Notre Dame Law School in Indiana, recently examined which law schools produced the most professors over the past decade on his Substack, the Law School Docket.

Using hiring data compiled by Sarah Lawsky, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law at Urbana-Champaign, Muller examined where professors who were hired between 2017 and 2026 had received their law degrees.

Yale Law School, Stanford Law School and Harvard Law School took the top three spots. And it’s no surprise, given those schools’ high ranking in U.S. News & World Report’s 2026 rankings of best law schools.

So what other schools are most likely to produce future law professors? Here are the top 10 law schools that produce the most, ranked by placements as a percentage of the graduating class:

1. Yale University: 8.6% (182 professors)
2. Stanford University: 2.6% (48 professors)
3. Harvard University: 2% (119 professors)
4. The University of Chicago: 1.9% (41 professors)
5. New York University: 1.5% (69 professors)
6. Vanderbilt University: 1% (19 professors)
7. The University of Michigan: 0.9% (30 professors)
8. Northwestern University: 0.8% (22 professors)
9. Columbia University: 0.8% (35 professors)
10. The University of California at Berkeley: 0.7% (25 professors)

See the full list here.

Hat tip to Above the Law.

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