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The headline GW law employment statistics from the class of 2025 ABA report: 32.5 percent of graduates landed law firms of 101 or more attorneys, 2.6 percent took federal clerkships, and 96.8 percent were employed ten months after graduation. Solid numbers with a distinctly DC shape. Here is the full breakdown.
32.5 percent: 185 of 569 graduates in the class of 2025 went to firms of 101 or more attorneys, the standard BigLaw proxy in ABA employment data. That is roughly one graduate in three.
GW class of 2025 outcomeShare of graduatesFirms of 101+ attorneys32.5% (185 of 569)Federal clerkships2.6% (15 of 569)State and local clerkships7.0%Employed at 10 months, all categories96.8% (551 of 569)
Source: GW class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary, ten-month data, verified July 26, 2026.
Read the one-in-three honestly in both directions. BigLaw from GW is a realistic outcome that generally requires strong 1L grades, and it is far from the default outcome the way it approaches being at the T14.
Federal clerkships went to 2.6 percent of the class, 15 graduates. State and local clerkships were the larger channel at 7.0 percent, which is a common pattern outside the T14, where federal chambers hire disproportionately.
If a federal clerkship is your goal, GW makes it possible rather than probable, and class rank becomes the variable that matters. The grades-to-outcomes machinery is exactly what our numbers pillar maps.
The geography is the least surprising and most useful fact in the data. GW places overwhelmingly into its own metro.
Top states, class of 2025GraduatesDistrict of Columbia236New York88Virginia51
Source: GW class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary, verified July 26, 2026.
Two in five graduates start in DC itself, with Virginia adding to a dominant capital-region footprint, and New York the main out-of-region channel. Choose GW as a DC-market play and the data is squarely behind you.
Employment rates depend on their definition, so here is ours: 551 of 569 graduates employed in any ABA category at ten months, including bar-passage-required and JD-advantage positions. That is the broadest standard measure.
The strictest lens, full-time long-term bar-passage-required jobs only, always runs lower than the headline at every school. When comparing schools, use the same definition on both sides or the comparison is fiction.
Same ABA data, same class year, same definitions, three DC schools.
Class of 2025Firms 101+Federal clerkshipsEmployed 10 monthsGeorgetown61.6%5.0%96.6%GW32.5%2.6%96.8%American17.3%1.0%86.2%
Source: each school's class of 2025 ABA Employment Summary, verified July 26, 2026.
The pattern is a clean staircase: Georgetown nearly doubles GW's BigLaw rate, and GW nearly doubles American's, while overall employment stays high at the top two. Whether those gaps justify the cost gaps is the question our GW debt-math page and GW vs American head-to-head take on directly.
The ABA form is public and standardized, which makes ten minutes with the PDF worth more than any ranking blurb. Start with the denominator: rates are computed against all graduates, and a school cannot shrink it by ignoring inconvenient outcomes.
Then check the texture the headline hides: full-time versus part-time, long-term versus short-term, and whether positions are bar-passage-required, JD-advantage, or other professional. A high headline built on short-term or school-funded positions reads very differently from one built on full-time long-term law jobs.
Finally, look at firm-size distribution and geography together. They tell you what the school's placement machine is actually built to do, which no mission statement will.
JD-advantage positions are jobs where the degree helps but bar admission is not required: compliance, policy, consulting, some government roles. In GW's DC-heavy market these can be genuine first-choice careers rather than fallbacks, particularly in regulatory and policy work.
The honest read is individual: a JD-advantage outcome is a win if it was the plan and a detour if BigLaw was. The category deserves neither the panic nor the spin it usually gets.
The path to the 101+ firm cohort runs substantially through on-campus interviewing, which arrives early in 2L and screens heavily on first-year grades. That means the BigLaw fraction of this page is largely decided in the first two semesters of law school.
Applicants comparing schools on BigLaw rates should internalize the sequencing: the school sets the ceiling, and 1L performance determines where under that ceiling you land. Our 1L exam and grades material exists precisely because of this table.
One gap to flag honestly: the ABA summary reports employer types and sizes, not practice areas, so no practice-area table appears here. Where a school's own career office publishes practice-area detail, treat it as supplementary and check its definitions.
Anchor on three numbers per school: the 101+ rate for private-market power, the combined clerkship picture for courts, and the all-category employment rate for the floor. Then weight them by your actual goal, not by prestige reflex.
A government-bound applicant should weight GW's DC placement mass heavily and its BigLaw rate lightly; a private-market applicant reverses it. The same table, read against different goals, points different people to different schools, which is the entire point of published data.
Two line items deserve a glance before you compare schools: positions funded by the school itself, and short-term placements. Both are disclosed on the ABA form, and both can quietly inflate a headline employment rate when they cluster.
This is a reading habit, not an accusation; the point of standardized disclosure is that you can check rather than trust. Pull the PDF linked below, find those lines, and you will know more about GW's number than most applicants comparing schools on rankings alone.
While you are in the document, note the timing stamp: ten-month figures for the class of 2025 were collected as of March 2026. Every school's number carries the same clock, which is what makes cross-school comparison legitimate.
What share of 2L summer associate positions converted to offers last cycle? How many employers interviewed on campus or through consortia, and in which markets? What does the office do for the student at median grades, not the top decile?
The third question is the one that matters, because half of every class is below median and placement machinery is tested there. Offices with good answers give them readily; evasive answers are also information.
32.5 percent of the class of 2025 joined firms of 101 or more attorneys, 185 of 569 graduates, per ABA ten-month data.
2.6 percent, 15 graduates in the class of 2025. State and local clerkships were larger at 7.0 percent.
Washington, DC by a wide margin, 236 of 569 graduates, followed by New York at 88 and Virginia at 51.
96.8 percent employed at ten months across all ABA employment categories for the class of 2025, 551 of 569 graduates.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
July 30, 2026
July 30, 2026