Apr 22

Why do law students follow U.S. News ranking?  In a , Andy and I demonstrate the serious financial perils of overreliance on USNWR.

The story has a lot of data.  The chart below, however, ended up on the editing room floor.  I call it the "funnel cloud."  It shows the percentage of students at each law school that were hired by a NLJ 250 firm.  [Side note: Why is the NLJ 250 a good barometer?  Because the starting salaries
make law school tuition look like a bargain.  Based on data made
available to us through the ,  the weighted average (based on firm size) starting salary at an NLJ250 firm for 2007 was $152,424.]

The empirical findings of this 2007 article by Dinovitzer and Garth, which is based on After the JD data, suggest that this elitism has unintended negative consequences in terms of high attrition rates. 

Here are links to other graphics in our recent NLJ story:

Employment trends for law school grads: The top 100 out of 194 ABA-approved schools ranked by percentage of 2005 graduates at NLJ 250 firms.

By Region (defined by states containing Top 10 legal markets):

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