The Best Law Schools For Getting A Biglaw Job (2025)

Lawyers love rankings, and there’s nothing they love more than rankings about prestigious job placement rates and the law schools that helped graduates land those impressive jobs. Readers are in luck, because today, we’ve got yet another ranking on the subject.

For more than a decade, Law.com has published a list of the best law schools to go to if you want to work in Biglaw after graduation. Law.com refers to these institutions of higher education as the “go-to law schools,” and this year, they’re ranked by the percentage of 2024 graduates who took associate positions at the 500 largest law firms based on attorney head count.

Before we get to the list of the go-to law schools, it’s worthwhile to speak about the landscape for entry-level employment in the legal profession. The ABA recently released the data for the class of 2024, and their success in the job market was historic.

That said, things are going great for the Top 10 Go-To Law Schools:

1. Northwestern: 71.85%

2. Penn: 67.11%

3. UVA: 66.33%

4. USC Gould: 64.71%

5. Chicago: 58.29%

6. NYU: 58.13%

7. UC Berkeley: 57.84%

7. UCLA: 57.80%

9. Notre Dame: 56.36%

10. Boston College: 55.43%

You can access the full list of the Top 50 Go-To Law Schools by clicking here.

Columbia ruled this ranking for a decade, but now the law school can’t be find in the Go-To Top 50 at all. Could this be because law schools are now providing data for this ranking, rather than law firms? We know that other T14 law schools — like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Michigan — choose not to participate in this ranking, so maybe Columbia joined them. Something to ponder. Nonetheless, Northwestern continues its winning streak, and some intriguing newcomers enter the Top 10 (Notre Dame and BC). Congrats!

Perhaps even more notable than these numbers are the tuition figures appended to this year’s ranking. Law school costs versus employment percentages can vary greatly. Unless you’re tied to a specific location, why pay ~$56,000 to go to a school that sends a little more than 40 percent of its graduates to Biglaw when you can spend ~$37,000 less to go to a school that sends about the same percentage of its graduates to Biglaw?

Either way you slice it, this list is incredibly useful. It’s a great way for law students, both current and prospective, to gauge their employment prospects. Use these rankings wisely — or ignore them, at your peril.

The 2025 Top 50 Go-To Law Schools: Big Law [Law.com]

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Bluesky, X/Twitter, and Threads, or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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