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The best law schools for biglaw, ranked by the share of the class of 2025 that landed firms of 101 or more attorneys. Columbia leads at 78.4 percent, then Duke at 74.8 percent and Northwestern at 71.6 percent. All 31 schools below, with class sizes so you can see the raw counts too.
Firms of 101 or more attorneys is the standard BigLaw proxy in ABA employment data, summing the 101-250, 251-500 and 501+ columns and dividing by total graduates.
#SchoolFirms 101+CountClass sizeEmployed 10moTop market1Columbia78.4%35945897.6%NY 3322Duke74.8%17223099.6%NY 803Northwestern71.6%18926497.7%IL 1404Penn71.4%180252100.0%NY 1045UVA69.2%21330898.7%DC 876USC67.8%15422797.4%CA 1817NYU67.4%28141799.3%NY 3078Cornell65.5%12919799.5%NY 1229UChicago63.9%13821698.1%IL 6110Berkeley62.2%17628398.9%CA 18111Georgetown61.6%43370396.6%DC 26112Vanderbilt61.1%10216799.4%TN 3313UCLA60.8%20233297.3%CA 26614Michigan59.5%20434398.0%NY 11215Harvard58.8%35460298.7%NY 20716Boston College56.8%12121396.7%MA 11917WashU53.5%14627398.5%MO 5218BU52.3%11221496.7%MA 10619Stanford48.9%9319093.2%SF Bay 5020Texas43.8%13530899.7%TX 22721Notre Dame40.9%6716497.6%IL 4122Wake Forest39.2%6215898.7%NC 7523UNC38.3%7018397.3%NC 10324Yale37.4%7921194.8%NY 7025Ohio State35.0%5515794.3%OH 10826BYU34.6%44127100.0%UT 6627GW32.5%18556996.8%DC 23628Georgia28.8%4917095.9%GA 12629Minnesota28.8%6422296.0%MN 12230Wisconsin25.1%6425596.9%WI 14131Texas A&M23.4%2912499.2%TX 103
Sources: each school's 2025 ABA 509 report and class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary, verified July 26, 2026.
Columbia at 78.4 percent, placing 359 of 458 graduates into firms of 101 or more attorneys. Duke follows at 74.8 percent and Northwestern at 71.6 percent.
Yale sits at 37.4 percent, well down the table, and this is the single most misread row in law school data. Yale is not failing to place graduates; it is sending 23.2 percent into federal clerkships and a large share into public interest and academia.
The same is true of Stanford at 48.9 percent with 19.5 percent clerking. A low BigLaw number at the very top of the market usually means graduates are choosing something else, not failing to get offers.
Across these 31 schools the range runs from 23.4 percent to 78.4 percent, which is more than a threefold spread. The median school here places roughly half its class into large firms.
Read that range against the employment column and a second pattern appears. Nearly every school in this set employs 94 percent or more of its graduates at ten months, so the difference between schools is not whether graduates get jobs but which jobs.
Regional schools concentrate that placement locally. Texas sends 227 of 308 graduates to Texas, Georgia sends 126 of 170 to Georgia, and Ohio State sends 108 of 157 to Ohio, so their large-firm rates are regional large-firm rates.
School choice sets your ceiling; 1L grades determine where under that ceiling you land. Large-firm hiring runs through on-campus interviewing early in the second year, and it screens heavily on first-year performance.
That sequencing has a practical consequence most applicants miss. At a school placing 70 percent into large firms, missing that outcome usually means finishing well below median; at a school placing 30 percent, reaching it usually means finishing well above.
Neither is better in the abstract. What matters is your honest expectation of where you will finish, which is a question nobody can answer for you at application time.
The top-of-market first-year base moved to $235,000 effective July 1, 2026, set by Milbank on June 2, 2026 and matched by more than a dozen firms within two weeks (est: per David Lat, https://davidlat.substack.com/p/milbank-biglaw-pay-raise-235k-starting-salary-june-2026).
Hold one context number alongside it so nobody mistakes the top of the market for the market. The national median first-year associate base was $200,000 as of January 1, 2025, with firms of 700 or more lawyers at $215,000 to $225,000 (https://www.nalp.org/privatesectorsalaries).
Against the new federal loan caps of $50,000 a year and $200,000 lifetime, that salary is what makes a full-price legal education financeable at all, which is exactly why the BigLaw column has become a financing question rather than a prestige one. The caps come from the Reimagining and Improving Student Education final rule, published May 1, 2026 and effective July 1, 2026, which attributes them to the Working Families Tax Cuts Act (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/01/2026-08556/reimagining-and-improving-student-education-federal-student-loan-program-final-regulations).
If large-firm work is your goal, weight this column heavily and pair it with the market column, since a 60 percent rate concentrated in a city you will not live in is not your 60 percent. Our New York table, DC table and California table break placement out by market.
If it is not your goal, invert the reading. A school low on this table and high on clerkships or public interest is not worse, it is pointed somewhere else.
And price the outcome against net cost rather than sticker, which is what our value table does directly.
Columbia places 359 of 458 graduates into firms of 101 or more attorneys, a rate of 78.4 percent that leads this set. It sends NY 332 into New York, which is the tightest school-to-market pairing here.
Duke at 74.8 percent and Northwestern at 71.6 percent follow, both from classes near 250. Penn at 71.4 percent is the fourth, and it is the only school in this set reporting 100.0 percent employment at ten months.
NYU at 67.4 percent and USC at 67.8 percent round out the schools above two thirds. USC is the surprise, outperforming several T14 schools on this specific measure.
At the other end, Texas A&M at 23.4 percent, Wisconsin at 25.1 percent and Georgia at 28.8 percent are regional schools whose graduates concentrate locally, and their large-firm rates are regional large-firm rates rather than national ones.
Nearly every school in this set employs 94 percent or more of graduates at ten months, which tells you the difference between schools is which jobs rather than whether jobs exist. That reframes the whole table.
The floor is the number to watch when comparing. Ohio State at 94.3 percent and Georgia at 95.9 percent sit lowest here, and even those are high in absolute terms.
Read employment and large-firm placement together and you get a school's actual distribution: high on both means a firm pipeline, low on firms and high on employment means graduates going elsewhere by choice or by market.
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.
Your realistic outcome is the school's rate filtered through your expected class position, which nobody can predict at application time. That uncertainty is the strongest argument for choosing on net cost rather than on placement rate alone.
The schools where the two align best are the ones high on both placement and grant breadth. Duke, Michigan and Northwestern all combine large-firm rates above 59 percent with grants reaching 76 percent or more of students.
If you would not attend at the median grant, you are betting on an above-median award and an above-median class position at the same time, which is two bets rather than one.
Columbia at 78.4 percent of the class of 2025, placing 359 of 458 graduates into firms of 101 or more attorneys. Duke follows at 74.8 percent and Northwestern at 71.6 percent.
Across these 31 schools the range runs from 23.4 percent to 78.4 percent. Nearly every school employs 94 percent or more of graduates at ten months, so the difference is which jobs rather than whether.
Because its graduates choose other paths. Yale places 23.2 percent into federal clerkships, the highest rate in this set, plus a large share into public interest and academia. A low BigLaw rate at the top of the market usually reflects choice rather than access.
No. School choice sets the ceiling and first-year grades determine where under it you land, because large-firm hiring screens heavily on 1L performance during second-year recruiting.
The top-of-market first-year base moved to $235,000 effective July 1, 2026. The national median first-year associate base was $200,000 as of January 2025, so the Cravath scale is the top of the market rather than the market.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026