The 2025 ATL Top 50 Law School Rankings Are Here!

We are pleased to announce the release of the 13th annual Above the Law Top 50 Law School Rankings. 

Above the Law’s rankings are premised on the belief that most people who go to law school want to be lawyers. That’s why it is the outcomes for graduates (e.g., bar passage, job placement) rather than the inputs from entrants (e.g., LSAT score, undergraduate GPA) that matter most in our ranking methodology.

Our formula incorporates six factors. Employment represents the bulk of a school’s score as the key element of two separately weighted criteria: legal employment (full-time, long-term jobs that require bar passage) and “quality jobs” (which include positions in large, typically high-paying law firms and federal judicial clerkships). Ours are the only rankings that include the latest ABA employment data for the Class of 2024.

We also factor in first-time bar passage rate and the cost of obtaining a law degree. The final two components weigh the number of alumni serving as federal judges and the number who have clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court. (Read more about our methodology here.)

Here are the Top 10 law schools for 2025:

1. Duke (+2)
2. Cornell (+5)
3. University of Chicago (-1)
4. University of Virginia (-3)
5. Penn (+1)
6. Northwestern (+2)
7. University of Michigan (-3)
8. Yale (+5)
9. Columbia (-4)
10. Vanderbilt (no change)

In case you are wondering why some elite schools, like Harvard and Stanford, don’t appear in the top 10, it’s obviously not because these aren’t great law schools. They just didn’t score as well in our ranking criteria, which focus on certain concrete data, such as job placement and cost of attendance, and omit other factors (like median LSAT and peer assessments) that measure less tangible qualities of selectivity and prestige. That said, one uber-elite school did make the top 10 this year. Yale (previously No. 13) moved up five places, thanks to higher figures for bar passage, overall legal employment, and quality job placement.

In fact, most of the ranking shifts are the result of changes in schools’ employment and, to a lesser extent, bar passage scores. Duke has returned to the top spot that it last held in 2023, with the strongest employment scores of all 194 law schools this year. Cornell, whose scores were almost as impressive, has moved up to second place. Conversely, slightly lower quality job scores meant ranking drops for Michigan and Columbia, though both remain in the top 10.

One of the benefits of our formula is that it highlights schools that may not be top of mind for everyone but have succeeded in placing the bulk of their students in well-paying legal positions for a relatively lower cost. For example, the University of Illinois jumped 25 places this year, from No. 44 to No. 19, thanks to much higher bar passage and job placement rates. Meanwhile, schools who have returned to the Top 50 after a few years’ absence include Texas A&M, University of Colorado, University of Kansas, UC Davis, and Indiana University-Bloomington.

We recognize that not everyone shares our perspective on what makes a top law school. For those with different priorities, visit the ATL Law School DIY, an interactive tool where you can adjust the relative weights of 11 factors yourself to customize rankings based on your personal needs and goals.

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