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Howard law employment statistics: 38.1% (59 of 155; bands 101-250 3, 251-500 11, 501+ 45) of the Class of 2025 went to firms over 100 lawyers and 1.9% (3 of 155; state and local clerkships a separate 5) took federal clerkships, from the school's own ABA reporting, with top markets of DC 40, NY 29, MD 8.
38.1% (59 of 155; bands 101-250 3, 251-500 11, 501+ 45) of the Class of 2025 went to firms of more than 100 lawyers, from Howard's own ABA employment reporting (https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdf).
Overall employment at the ten-month date was 73.5% across 155 graduates, from the same source.
Large-firm placement is the number most people mean by outcomes, and it is worth reading beside the clerkship figure rather than alone.
1.9% (3 of 155; state and local clerkships a separate 5) took federal clerkships, from the same report (https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdf).
Clerkship rates track faculty relationships and grading distributions more than they track admissions selectivity, which is why schools with similar medians differ so much.
If a clerkship is the goal, the rate matters less than whether this school's recommenders are known to the judges you would apply to, and no published number captures that.
Our sheet records the top markets as DC 40, NY 29, MD 8, from the same reporting.
Geography is the most underrated column in any outcomes table. A school's placement is largely a statement about which city its network reaches, and that is far harder to change from inside than a grade is.
Read the concentration rather than the list. A school sending most of a class to one market is powerful there and a harder sell everywhere else.
OutcomeClass of 2025SourceEmployed at ten months73.5%https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdfFirms over 100 lawyers38.1% (59 of 155; bands 101-250 3, 251-500 11, 501+ 45)https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdfFederal clerkships1.9% (3 of 155; state and local clerkships a separate 5)https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdfTop marketsDC 40, NY 29, MD 8https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdfGraduates in the class155https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdf
Salary. The ABA employment summary reports status and employer type, not pay, and our verified fact set holds no salary figure for this school.
Who got which outcome. The percentages describe a class, and large-firm jobs concentrate at the top of the curve. A median student's odds are not the class average.
Durability. Ten months is an early snapshot counting a job held on one day. It is the standard because it is comparable, not because it is complete.
Howard publishes tuition of $39,780 and a total cost of $78,031 (509-derived: tuition plus the 509 living-expenses line, not an official published budget), against a median grant of $23,657 reaching 48% of students, all from its own 509 (https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-02/Std509InfoReport_2025_0.pdf).
Outcomes only mean something next to that number. A given placement rate at full sticker and the same rate at half price are different propositions, and the second is usually the better one.
Run the arithmetic against your own likely award rather than the class median, because no 509 publishes grant size by admissions band.
Our master admissions file carries detailed committee texture for 31 schools: what the essay has to do, how hard the school protects yield, how it uses interviews, and how it behaves on scholarship. Howard is not one of the 31.
So this page makes no claim about how Howard's committee reads a file. Everything here comes from what Howard itself publishes: its ABA Standard 509 report and its own admissions pages.
A page that filled that gap with plausible-sounding advice would be indistinguishable from one that knew something, which is exactly why we would rather leave the hole visible. If you want committee-level read on this school, the honest source is the admissions office.
Georgetown's own 2025 ABA Standard 509 report shows 120 students transferring in, and 51 of them came from schools in the DC market (https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdf). That is close to half its entire transfer intake drawn from one metro.
Howard sent 3 of them. That is a small number and it is not zero, and it is a published number rather than a rumour, which is more than can be said for most of what gets written about transferring.
We are putting it on this page because it is the single most under-discussed route out of a regional DC school, and because the schools on both ends have every reason not to advertise it. Georgetown does not market its transfer intake and no feeder school markets its outflow.
DC-market schoolStudents transferring into Georgetown, 2025 509Maryland Carey5Howard3Catholic1UDC1
The denominator matters more than the numerator. Howard graduated 155 in the Class of 2025, and a transfer cohort in the low single digits is a route for the very top of a first-year class rather than a plan available to most students.
Transfer admission runs on first-year class rank above everything else. No school publishes a transfer GPA band, Georgetown included, so anyone quoting you a cutline has invented it.
What the 51 of 120 figure does tell you is that the pathway is real and structurally regional. Georgetown recruits from its own market, and being in that market is itself the qualification you cannot acquire later.
The cost of taking it is rarely priced: you leave the class you know, potentially a journal cycle you already competed for, and the faculty relationships that produce clerkship recommendations. Those are real and they are not on any 509.
Our sheet records Howard's top markets as DC 40, NY 29, MD 8, from its own ABA employment reporting (https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-04/EQSummary-72-03-31-2026%2010-32-54_0.pdf). Read the concentration rather than the list.
Alongside that, 38.1% (59 of 155; bands 101-250 3, 251-500 11, 501+ 45) of the class went to firms over 100 lawyers and 1.9% (3 of 155; state and local clerkships a separate 5) took federal clerkships, from the same reporting.
In the Washington market specifically, those two numbers pull in different directions. Federal agencies, the Hill and the public interest sector employ heavily and appear in neither the large-firm column nor the clerkship column, so a modest large-firm rate here does not mean what it would mean in New York.
That is the honest way to read a DC school's outcomes: the large-firm figure describes one route out of several, and the geography column tells you which city's version of all of them you are buying into.
Put your own numbers beside the bands first. Howard publishes 153 to 160 on the LSAT and 3.40 to 3.80 on GPA, from its 2025 509 (https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-02/Std509InfoReport_2025_0.pdf), and everything else follows from where you land in those.
Then price it against the 509 again: total cost of $78,031 (509-derived: tuition plus the 509 living-expenses line, not an official published budget) against a median grant of $23,657 reaching 48% of students. Three years of the gap is the number that will still matter in a decade.
Then decide what you would do with the degree, because a school's value is mostly a statement about a market rather than about a ranking, and the market is the part you cannot change from inside.
If any of those three is unresolved, that is the work to do next, and it is more useful than reading another page about this school.
Open the school's own admissions pages and confirm every deadline, prompt and requirement against the live application, because everything on this page carries a date for a reason.
Place yourself against the published bands rather than the acceptance rate: 153 to 160 on the LSAT and 3.40 to 3.80 on GPA, from the 2025 509 (https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-02/Std509InfoReport_2025_0.pdf). Your position there decides what the rest of the application has to do.
Decide what this school is to you before drafting anything: a reach where the file must argue, a match where it must not get in the way, or a safety where the real question is how much money you can extract. Those are three different applications.
Every Howard figure on this page was read from Howard's own 2025 ABA Standard 509 Required Disclosure Report at https://law.howard.edu/sites/law.howard.edu/files/2026-02/Std509InfoReport_2025_0.pdf, and recorded in our data sheet with that URL against each individual field rather than as a single citation at the bottom.
Application mechanics come from Howard's own admissions pages at the school's own admissions pages. Where our sheet holds a field as unverified, this page says so instead of presenting it as settled.
The 509 refiles every December, so every number here has a known expiry date. We would rather you knew that date than trusted the page indefinitely.
Every LSAC figure on this page was taken from LSAC's own pages and last checked on July 26, 2026. Prices, dates and policies move without notice, so the source link sits next to each number rather than in a bibliography at the bottom.
Where LSAC has not published something, this page says so in those words rather than filling the hole with a plausible number. That is the difference between a gap and a guess, and only one of them is safe to plan around.
3. Georgetown's own 2025 ABA Standard 509 report names Howard Law in its Transfers table, alongside every other law school in the Washington DC market; American is the largest single feeder in that table at 29 students, ahead of GW at 11 and Maryland at 5, retrieved July 31, 2026. Verified July 2026.
DC-area schoolStudents who transferred to GeorgetownSourceAmerican29https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdfGW11https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdfMaryland Carey5https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdfHoward3https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdfCatholic1https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdfUDC1https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdfGeorge Mason1https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdf
Howard Law sits at 3 in the same table (https://www.law.georgetown.edu/admissions-aid/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2025/12/Std509InfoReport-63-12-17-2025-13-38-17.pdf), retrieved July 31, 2026. A transfer route is a real option and a risky plan, because it turns on first-year grades nobody can predict. Verified July 2026.
Transferring also forfeits any scholarship the original school gave you, which is the cost applicants most often leave out of the comparison.
38.1% (59 of 155; bands 101-250 3, 251-500 11, 501+ 45) of the Class of 2025 went to firms of more than 100 lawyers, per the school's own ABA employment report.
1.9% (3 of 155; state and local clerkships a separate 5) took federal clerkships, from the same report.
The top markets were DC 40, NY 29, MD 8. Concentration matters more than the list: a school weighted to one market is a harder sell elsewhere.
73.5% at the ten-month date across 155 graduates.
It is a documented route rather than a rumour. Georgetown's own 2025 509 shows 120 transfers in with 51 from DC-market schools, and Howard sent 3. It runs on first-year class rank, and no school publishes a transfer GPA cutline.
Written by Ali, Georgetown Law, founder of Lovare Institut.
August 5, 2026
August 5, 2026