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The best law schools for new york biglaw, ranked by the share of the class of 2025 that actually took jobs in New York. Columbia leads at 72.5 percent, then NYU at 73.6 percent and Cornell at 61.9 percent. Placement share, not reputation, is what this table measures.
Share is graduates employed in New York divided by total graduates, computed from each school's ABA employment summary.
#SchoolShare to New YorkGraduates thereClass sizeFirms 101+1NYU73.6%30741767.4%2Columbia72.5%33245878.4%3Cornell61.9%12219765.5%4Penn41.3%10425271.4%5Duke34.8%8023074.8%6Harvard34.4%20760258.8%7Yale33.2%7021137.4%8Michigan32.7%11234359.5%9Georgetown27.0%19070361.6%10UChicago26.4%5721663.9%11UVA24.4%7530869.2%12BU21.5%4621452.3%13Boston College20.2%4321356.8%14Stanford20.0%3819048.9%15Berkeley17.0%4828362.2%16Vanderbilt15.6%2616761.1%17GW15.5%8856932.5%18Northwestern13.3%3526471.6%19WashU12.1%3327353.5%20Notre Dame10.4%1716440.9%21Texas9.4%2930843.8%22UCLA9.0%3033260.8%23Wake Forest8.9%1415839.2%24USC8.8%2022767.8%25UNC6.6%1218338.3%26Ohio State3.8%615735.0%
Sources: each school's 2025 ABA 509 report and class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary, verified July 26, 2026. Share column is our arithmetic. Schools with no reported New York placement in their top three markets are omitted.
Columbia and NYU, overwhelmingly, and the numbers are close enough that the choice between them is not a New York question. Columbia sent 332 of 458 graduates to New York; NYU sent 307 of 417.
Cornell is the third genuine New York school, sending 122 of 197 graduates there, which is a higher share than any school outside the two Manhattan campuses.
Then the pattern changes. Penn sent 104 graduates, Harvard 207, Michigan 112 and Duke 80, which are large absolute numbers from schools whose graduates spread across several markets.
If New York is certain, the top three rows are the answer and the rest of the table is a fallback list. Concentration matters because it drives alumni density, on-campus interviewing presence, and how many firms treat the school as a home school.
If New York is likely but not certain, Harvard, Penn, Michigan, Duke, UVA and Georgetown all place substantially there while keeping other markets open. Georgetown is the clearest dual-market school in this set, sending 261 graduates to DC and 190 to New York.
Note what the BigLaw column adds. Columbia at 78.4 percent, NYU at 67.4 percent and Cornell at 65.5 percent combine high New York concentration with high large-firm placement, which is the specific combination a New York BigLaw plan wants.
The top-of-market first-year base moved to $235,000 effective July 1, 2026 (est: per David Lat, https://davidlat.substack.com/p/milbank-biglaw-pay-raise-235k-starting-salary-june-2026). New York is where that scale is set and most consistently paid.
Against the new federal loan caps of $50,000 a year and $200,000 lifetime, with Grad PLUS eliminated, that salary is what makes a $120,000-a-year cost of attendance financeable. Columbia at $119,944 and NYU at $120,046 are both well above the annual cap. 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).
That is the honest frame for a New York plan: the market pays enough to service the debt, and the plan depends on reaching it.
Concentration is a feature if you are certain and a constraint if you are not. A school sending three quarters of its class to one city has a network built for that city and thinner elsewhere.
Also read it against cost. Cornell places into New York at 61.9 percent from Ithaca, at a cost of attendance of $118,364 and a median grant of $30,000 reaching 91 percent of students, which is a materially different financial path to the same market.
A school sending three quarters of its class to one city has an alumni network, an on-campus interviewing roster and a set of firm relationships built for that city. That is an advantage if you are certain and a constraint if you are not.
Columbia and NYU are the extreme cases, and Cornell at 61.9 percent is the strongest concentration from outside the city itself.
Georgetown is the clearest dual-market school in this set, sending 261 graduates to Washington and 190 to New York from a class of 703. For an applicant genuinely undecided between the two coasts' power centers, that is a real feature.
Harvard, Penn, Michigan, Duke and UVA all send substantial numbers to New York while spreading across several markets, which is the optionality profile if your plans could change.
Columbia at $119,944 and NYU at $120,046 both cost well above the $50,000 annual federal borrowing cap that took effect July 1, 2026, so a New York plan now depends on scholarship, savings or private credit for the gap.
The offsetting fact is that New York is where the $235,000 first-year scale is set and most consistently paid, which is what makes the debt serviceable on a normal timeline.
Cornell is the interesting alternative on this axis: 61.9 percent New York placement at a $30,000 median grant reaching 91 percent of students, which is a materially different financial route to the same market.
Run the three-year net cost against the expected salary before treating any of these as interchangeable.
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.
Weight the schools that place heavily in New York while spreading elsewhere: Harvard, Penn, Michigan, Duke, UVA and Georgetown all send substantial numbers without concentrating three quarters of a class there.
Georgetown is the clearest dual-market option in this set for anyone weighing New York against Washington, since it places heavily into both.
And remember that concentration cuts both ways. The network that makes a New York school powerful in New York is thinner everywhere else, which matters if your plans change in year two.
NYU at 73.6 percent of the class of 2025, Columbia at 72.5 percent and Cornell at 61.9 percent are the three genuine New York schools. Harvard, Penn, Michigan and Duke send large absolute numbers while spreading across markets.
Columbia or NYU if New York is certain, since both combine roughly three-quarters placement in the city with large-firm rates above 67 percent. Cornell is the strongest third option.
No. It concentrates alumni networks, on-campus interviewing and firm relationships in the city, which raises the odds. Large-firm hiring still screens on first-year grades.
The top-of-market first-year base moved to $235,000 effective July 1, 2026. New York is where that scale is set and most consistently paid.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026