.png)
The best law schools for academia, measured by the only credible public dataset: the Sarah Lawsky Entry Level Hiring Report. In the 2024-2025 cycle Yale placed 24 tenure-track hires, Harvard 9, Columbia 7, NYU 7 and Chicago 6, out of 126 hires across 85 schools. The concentration is extreme.
Counts are tenure-track entry-level hires reported to Lawsky for the 2024-2025 cycle, the most recent year with a verified school-by-school breakdown.
#SchoolEntry-level hires, 2024-25 cycleFederal clerkship rateClass size1Yale2423.2%2112Harvard916.6%6023NYU75.5%4174Columbia74.1%4585UChicago622.7%2166Stanford419.5%1907Duke311.7%2308UVA310.7%3089Michigan39.9%34310Vanderbilt210.8%16711Northwestern25.7%26412Georgetown25.0%70313BU21.4%21414Notre DameNot in the reported top tier17.1%16415TexasNot in the reported top tier14.3%30816WashUNot in the reported top tier11.7%27317GeorgiaNot in the reported top tier9.4%17018Texas A&MNot in the reported top tier8.1%12419PennNot in the reported top tier7.9%25220BYUNot in the reported top tier7.1%12721BerkeleyNot in the reported top tier6.4%28322CornellNot in the reported top tier5.6%19723UNCNot in the reported top tier4.4%18324Wake ForestNot in the reported top tier4.4%15825UCLANot in the reported top tier3.9%33226USCNot in the reported top tier3.5%22727WisconsinNot in the reported top tier3.5%25528MinnesotaNot in the reported top tier3.2%22229GWNot in the reported top tier2.6%56930Boston CollegeNot in the reported top tier2.3%21331Ohio StateNot in the reported top tier1.3%157
Hiring counts: Lawsky Entry Level Hiring Report 2025 | https://prawfsblawg.com/lawsky-entry-level-hiring-report-2025/ | verified July 26, 2026. Clerkship and class size columns from each school's 2025 ABA 509 report and class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary, verified July 26, 2026.
Yale, by a margin nothing else in legal education matches. Its 24 hires in a single cycle is more than Harvard, Columbia and NYU combined, from a graduating class of 211.
The top five schools account for 53 of 126 reported hires, or roughly 42 percent of the entry-level academic market in that cycle. Legal academia is more concentrated than any other outcome tracked on this site.
The most recent report, covering 2025-2026, records 105 tenure-track hires across 75 schools but publishes its school-by-school breakdown only inside a JavaScript tool we could not retrieve (https://taxprofblog.aals.org/2026/06/03/prof-lawskys-entry-level-hiring-report-2025-2026/). We publish the year we could verify rather than the year we could not.
Three limits accompany every use of this data and we will not bury them. The data reflects only hires reported to Lawsky as of the report date, so it is self-reported and inherently incomplete.
It counts acceptances rather than offers, so it shows how many people from a school accepted a tenure-track job, not how many received one. And it is not normalized by school size, so small programs with strong placement look weaker than they are and large ones look stronger.
Yale's dominance survives all three caveats, since its class of 211 is smaller than Harvard's 602. Normalizing would widen its lead, not narrow it.
The modern path runs through credentials that are largely accumulated after graduation, which is why school choice matters less than the raw counts suggest.
The standard sequence is a strong JD from a school with academic placement, a federal clerkship, then a fellowship or a VAP position that produces published scholarship, then the entry-level hiring market. Note the clerkship column in the table: the schools that place professors are largely the same schools that place federal clerks.
Scholarship is the binding constraint. Entry-level candidates are hired on published or nearly published work, and the fellowship years exist to produce it.
None of that is decided in your admissions cycle. What the school gives you is faculty who write recommendation letters that hiring committees read, and a peer group who will be on those committees in fifteen years.
If academia is a serious goal, this is one of the few outcomes where the top of the table is not interchangeable with the middle. The gap between 24 hires and 2 is not a gradient.
But hedge the plan, because the market is small: 105 to 126 tenure-track hires nationally per year against roughly 42,817 students who entered law school in fall 2025. Nearly every applicant who wants to teach will end up doing something else first, and many permanently.
The honest advice is to choose a school that also serves your fallback. A school strong on clerkships and large-firm placement gives you an academic shot and a career if the shot misses.
Fifty-three of 126 reported hires in the 2024-2025 cycle came from five schools, which is roughly 42 percent of the entry-level academic market. No other legal outcome concentrates like this.
Yale's 24 hires came from a graduating class of 211, smaller than Harvard's 602. Normalizing by class size widens Yale's lead rather than narrowing it, which is the opposite of what the report's own no-normalization caveat usually implies.
The schools outside the top five are not absent from academia; they are absent from a single year's reported entry-level hires, which is a small and noisy sample. A school with two hires one year may have five the next.
Treat the table as a strong signal about the top and a weak signal about the middle, which is how the report's author describes it.
Roughly 105 to 126 tenure-track entry-level hires happen nationally per year, against about 42,817 students who entered law school in fall 2025. The ratio is the single most important number on this page.
The standard sequence is a JD from a school with academic placement, a federal clerkship, then a fellowship or visiting assistant professorship producing published scholarship, then the market. Each stage filters heavily.
Scholarship is the binding constraint at the end, and the fellowship years exist to produce it. Applicants who plan for academia without planning for a fellowship are planning for half the path.
Choose a school that serves the fallback too. The schools strongest on academic placement are largely the same ones strongest on clerkships and large-firm placement, which means the hedge is usually free.
Every number in the table comes from a primary disclosure: each school's 2025 ABA Standard 509 Information Report for admissions, cost and aid, and its class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary for outcomes. Both are filed annually and both are free to read.
We did not use rankings, surveys or reputation. Where a figure required arithmetic, such as a percentage or a net cost, we state that it is our arithmetic and give the inputs so you can check it.
Where we could not verify something, the table says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate. That is why some rows read not published or not verified instead of carrying a number that would look more complete and mean less.
It cannot tell you your outcome. Every figure here describes a class of several hundred people, and your position inside that distribution is set by first-year grades that have not happened yet.
It cannot price your offer, because aid depends on where your numbers sit against each school's medians rather than on the median award. Half of every school's grant recipients got less than the figure shown.
And it cannot capture fit, culture, or whether you will do your best work in that building for three years. Those are discoverable only by visiting and asking current students specific questions, which is worth more than any table on this site.
Assume the fellowship years are part of the plan rather than a contingency, because entry-level candidates are hired on published scholarship and the fellowship exists to produce it.
Build relationships with faculty who place students, starting in first year rather than third. Academic hiring runs on recommendations from scholars whose judgment hiring committees trust.
And keep a career that works if the market does not. The schools strongest on academic placement are also strong on clerkships and firm placement, which makes the hedge close to free.
Yale, by a wide margin. It placed 24 tenure-track entry-level hires in the 2024-2025 cycle, more than Harvard, Columbia and NYU combined, out of 126 hires nationally across 85 schools.
The standard path is a JD from a school with academic placement, a federal clerkship, then a fellowship or visiting assistant professorship that produces published scholarship, then the entry-level hiring market. Scholarship is the binding constraint.
The most recent report records 105 tenure-track entry-level hires across 75 schools, against annual averages of 92 since 2014 and 122 across 2022 to 2025. It is a very small market.
It is the standard source and it is self-reported and incomplete by its author's own statement. It counts acceptances rather than offers and is not normalized by school size, so publish it with those caveats attached.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026