Considering that a global pandemic rendered a massive blow to the economy just as they wrapped up their legal studies, the J.D. class of 2020 did surprisingly well on the entry-level job market. The latest figures from the American Bar Association show that the percentage of recent graduates who landed full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage within 10 months of leaving campus was 70%. That’s down from 72% the previous year—which was a historic high—but the decline was not nearly as much as many legal educators feared.
Those aggregate numbers don’t provide a full picture of what happened at individual law schools, and where graduates did—and didn’t—find work. Law.com has dug through the trove of jobs data released this month by the ABA to break down how each law school performed in 10 different areas. We’ve ranked schools according to the percentage of 2020 J.D.s in bar passage-required jobs (the University of Chicago Law School edged Columbia Law School out of the top spot in that category this year); the percentage of grads in federal clerkships (again, Chicago unseated Stanford Law School there); and jobs at large law firms (Columbia retained its No. 1 position.)
