Wake Forest's own numbers say yes: 43 of the 158 graduates in the reporting class — 27.2% — landed at firms of 501-plus attorneys, the single largest outcome category the school reports, and that changes how you should read the school's roughly $89,783 estimated annual cost of attendance (tuition of $57,920 plus $1,224 in fees, plus $30,639 in estimated off-campus living costs).
Start with the honest sticker price. Three years at the published cost of attendance runs close to $270,000 before any aid. But that number is not what most admitted students actually pay. Wake Forest reports that 76% of students receive grant aid, with a median grant of $40,000 a year for those who get one. Look at the distribution: 54% of students land in the half-tuition-to-full-tuition scholarship band, 18% get less than half tuition, and only 1% receive a full ride. In plain terms, if you're admitted with numbers near or above the school's medians, you should expect to be negotiating from the large middle band — a meaningful discount, not a token award — rather than assuming either a full ride or sticker price.
Now put that net cost against the placement data. Wake Forest's employment outcomes are unusually well distributed for a school ranked No. 30 in the 2026-27 U.S. News cycle. Beyond the 43 graduates in Big Law, another 11 went to firms of 251-500 attorneys, 9 to firms of 101-250, and a further 18 spread across firms of 51-100 and 26-50 — meaning a substantial share of the class is earning firm salaries well above the median private-sector wage even outside the 501-plus tier. Add 15 federal and state/local clerkships, 13 graduates in business and industry, 12 in government, and 6 in public interest, and the picture is a class that is overwhelmingly employed in law-related work: 98.7% of graduates are in jobs that require bar passage or give a JD advantage. That figure — not a placement rate into any single tier — is the real floor under the cost-benefit case, because it tells you how rare unemployment or underemployment is coming out of this school.
The geographic detail matters too. Wake Forest's largest reported employment category is North Carolina itself, and the NC Business Court is listed among the school's centers and institutes, and the school also maintains a Metropolitan Externship in Washington, D.C. For an applicant whose goal is a Big Law seat in Charlotte, Raleigh, or another regional hub rather than a New York tower, Wake Forest's placement into the 501-plus category is arguably more directly relevant than it would be for a school whose Big Law placements skew toward a single coastal market — though the pack does not break out which offices or cities those 43 Big Law hires went to, so treat that inference as directional, not a documented fact.
Bar passage adds another layer to the value case, because a scholarship or salary projection means nothing if a graduate can't get licensed. Wake Forest's first-time bar pass rate was 89.61%, well above the state's overall first-time average of 81.43%, and the ultimate pass rate within two years reached 98.45%. In North Carolina specifically, the school's most recent reported bar passage rate was 93.33%, consistent with a multi-year pattern of outperforming the state average. That gap matters financially: a delayed bar result can mean a delayed start date, a lost signing bonus, or months of interest accruing on law school debt with no salary to offset it. A student paying close to sticker price is taking on more risk if the underlying bar outcomes are shaky; Wake Forest's numbers reduce that particular risk relative to the state as a whole.
Where the math gets genuinely case-by-case is the gap between the 27.2% who land in Big Law and the roughly 72% who don't. For that majority, outcomes still look solid — clerkships, government, mid-size and smaller firms, business roles — but the salaries attached to those paths are not disclosed in what Wake Forest reports publicly, and the shared reality of the legal job market is that compensation outside the largest firms drops off sharply rather than gradually. An applicant modeling their own return on a $90,000 annual cost of attendance should not assume a Big Law outcome as the baseline case; the 27.2% figure describes the actual class distribution, not an individual's likely landing spot. The realistic planning exercise is to price your own debt load against the median grant and scholarship bands Wake Forest actually reports, and to ask what monthly payment you could sustain on a non-Big-Law salary — because for roughly three out of four graduates, that is the salary the debt has to be repaid against. For the mechanics of how federal loan caps, repayment plans, and scholarship negotiation interact with a number like this, see the shared guides on law school scholarship negotiation and whether law school is worth it.
Wake Forest admitted 24.63% of applicants for its most recent entering class — 710 offers out of 2,883 applications for a class of 204 — and its LSAT range runs 163 at the 25th percentile, 166 at the median, and 168 at the 75th percentile, with GPAs of 3.6, 3.79, and 3.9 at the same three points. Those six numbers are the honest starting point for figuring out where you stand, and none of them should be read as a probability of admission — they're planning anchors, not odds.
A 166 LSAT places you squarely at Wake Forest's reported median, meaning roughly half of enrolled students scored above that mark and half below it. A 168 sits at the 75th percentile, the score band above which only about a quarter of the entering class falls — a position that, per this guide's compliance rules, tells you where you sit on the school's own scale, not what your odds are. A 163 sits at the 25th percentile, meaning about three-quarters of the class scored higher, but a full quarter of enrolled students still scored at or below that number, which is worth remembering if a 163 is where your practice tests are landing. The GPA bands move the same way: a 3.79 is the class midpoint, a 3.9 is what a quarter of the class exceeded, and a 3.6 is the point below which a quarter of the class fell.
Because Wake Forest reports both a 25th-75th LSAT band and a 25th-75th GPA band, the two numbers interact rather than operating in isolation — a file with a GPA above 3.9 and an LSAT below 163 is being read differently than a file with the reverse pattern, though the pack doesn't disclose how the school weighs one against the other in any given cycle. What is clear from the raw numbers is the volume of competition: with 2,883 applications chasing 204 seats, the school is reading a large file pool relative to its class size, consistent with a school in the U.S. News No. 30 band drawing a wide national applicant pool. Wake Forest also reports accepting only the LSAT among standardized tests — the data pack does not list the GRE or any alternative test as accepted, so applicants weighing a GRE-only strategy should confirm current testing policy directly with the admissions office before assuming it's an option here.
For an applicant whose diagnostic or first official LSAT sits below 163, the practical question is whether a retake is likely to move you meaningfully relative to Wake Forest's bands — a jump from 160 to 166, for instance, moves you from below the 25th percentile to the school's exact median, which is a materially different position in the file even though it says nothing about the outcome of any individual application. The mechanics of how to prepare for a retake, and how much movement is realistic from a given starting score, are covered in the shared guide on how to study for the LSAT. What Wake Forest's own data does establish is the shape of the bar you're measuring against: a 163/3.6 floor at the 25th percentile, a 166/3.79 center of mass, and a 168/3.9 mark that only a quarter of each entering class clears.
Most of Wake Forest Law's 2024 graduating class of 158 did not land at a 501-plus attorney firm, but nearly all of them found work that required a JD or was JD-advantaged — 98.7% of graduates reported that outcome, one of the clearest signals the school offers about overall placement strength.
The 43 graduates (27.2%) who went to the largest firms get the headline, but the rest of the class spread across a genuinely varied set of firm sizes and sectors. Eighteen graduates (11.4%) went to firms of 1-10 attorneys and another 26 (16.5%) landed at firms in the 11-100 range — the boutique and regional-firm tier that is common in a market like North Carolina's. A further 20 graduates (12.7%) went to firms sized 101-500, the mid-size regional and national firms that sit just below Biglaw scale. Twelve graduates (7.6%) went into government work, six (3.8%) into public interest roles, and 13 (8.2%) moved into business and industry positions. Clerkships accounted for 15 graduates — 7 at the federal level and 8 in state or local courts, a meaningful judicial-clerkship presence for a class this size.
Geographically, the data pack identifies North Carolina as Wake Forest Law's largest single employment market, which tracks with the school's placement in Winston-Salem and its long institutional ties to the state's courts and bar. For an applicant evaluating outcomes, the honest picture is this: Wake Forest sends a substantial and specific slice of its class into Biglaw, but the more representative outcome is a small-to-mid-size firm, government office, or clerkship, concentrated in North Carolina and the broader region — worth weighing directly against your own career goals rather than assuming the Biglaw number describes a 'typical' graduate.
Wake Forest's reported first-time bar passage rate is 89.61%, against a state average of 81.43% — a gap of roughly 8 percentage points that the data pack confirms directly. The school's own reporting on North Carolina-specific results shows similarly strong numbers: the Class of 2023 posted a 92.00% NC pass rate (92.39% overall), and the most recently reported NC pass rate was 93.33%. However you slice the reporting period, Wake Forest graduates are consistently passing at a higher rate than the state average, and the school's ultimate two-year bar passage rate reaches 98.45% — meaning the overwhelming majority of graduates who don't clear the bar on the first attempt do clear it within two years.
The pack doesn't isolate a single cause, so treat any explanation of why as informed inference rather than a documented fact — but the surrounding data points are worth knowing regardless of causation. Wake Forest reports a 7:1 student-faculty ratio, a first-year section capped at roughly 45 students, and a curriculum built around a heavy volume of applied learning: 491 filled seats in simulation courses, 129 filled clinic seats across ten clinics, and 69 filled field placements in a single reporting cycle. None of that is a bar-prep program by name, but it reflects a law school where students get sustained, hands-on legal training well before they sit for the exam.
For an applicant, the practical takeaway is narrower than 'Wake Forest prepares people well for the bar' — it's that the reported first-time and ultimate pass rates are strong relative to the state average, and that North Carolina's UBE-based exam is where the large majority of graduates who stay regionally will be tested, given that North Carolina is the school's largest reported employment market.
Illustrative: 3-year borrowing at the 2026-27 federal rate (8.07%) over 10 years; your figures depend on your offer and salary.
For most admitted students who receive a grant at Wake Forest, the award is neither trivial nor complete: the median grant among full-time students who receive one is $40,000 a year, against annual tuition and fees of about $59,144 and a total estimated cost of attendance near $89,783. That means a typical grant recipient is covering roughly two-thirds of tuition through the scholarship itself, while still facing a meaningful gap from living costs and the remaining tuition balance — a gap usually filled by federal loans, savings, or private borrowing.
The distribution matters more than the headline 76% grant rate. Only 1% of students land a full-tuition scholarship, while 54% fall into the half-to-full-tuition band and 18% receive an award covering less than half of tuition. In practical terms, the single most common outcome at Wake Forest is a grant that materially discounts tuition without eliminating it — the 'middle' the question points to is that half-to-full band where the majority of grant recipients actually sit, not the rare full ride at the top or the smaller partial awards at the bottom.
For a socioeconomically under-resourced applicant, this distribution has a direct planning implication: a scholarship offer near or above the $40,000 median should be treated as a strong outcome relative to the school's own numbers, while an offer well below that median leaves more of the roughly $89,783 total cost of attendance to be financed through debt. Because Grad PLUS loans are gone for new borrowers as of July 2026 and federal Direct Unsubsidized loans cap out well short of full cost at many private law schools, the size of the gap between your grant and the full cost of attendance is worth working through concretely before enrolling — including whether a written offer is negotiable. For the mechanics of comparing offers and requesting reconsideration, see /law-school-scholarship-negotiation, and for how the federal loan changes affect what's left to finance, see /law-school-loans-and-pslf.
Wake Forest's Pro Humanitate motto — "for humanity" — shows up in the law school's course catalog as much as in its marketing: students logged 5,857 hours of pro bono work in 2024-2025, a figure that held at 5,518 hours the following year. That volume comes out of a curriculum built around its in-house clinics: the Appellate Advocacy Clinic, Child Advocacy Clinic, Community Law and Business Clinic, Innocence and Justice Clinic, Civil & Criminal Externship Clinic, Veterans Legal Clinic, Environmental Law & Policy Clinic, Intellectual Property Law Clinic, Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic, and Trade & Development Clinic.
The range matters as much as the number. A student drawn to criminal justice can spend a semester on the Innocence and Justice Clinic, working actual wrongful-conviction claims, while a classmate interested in transactional work can staff small-business clients through the Community Law and Business Clinic or handle cross-border matters in the Trade & Development Clinic. The Veterans Legal Clinic and Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic put students inside two of the more institutionally complex corners of practice — VA benefits and hospital-based legal need — well before graduation.
Clinics aren't the only hands-on track. Wake Forest also reports 129 filled clinic seats, 69 filled field-placement (externship) slots, and 491 filled seats in simulation courses such as trial practice and negotiation, on top of 29 co-curricular offerings. Put together, that's a law school where a meaningful share of the 204-student entering class will do supervised client or simulated-client work multiple times before the bar, not as an elective add-on but as a structural expectation tied to the school's founding ethos.
What the pack doesn't break out is how the pro bono hour totals or clinic seats are distributed by class year or how many students complete more than one clinic — so a student choosing Wake Forest for hands-on training should ask directly about clinic sequencing and caps when visiting.
Wake Forest has been training North Carolina lawyers since 1894, and the school's own alumni roster reads like a partial history of the state's courts and legislature. Graduates include two former chief justices of the North Carolina Supreme Court (Joseph Branch and I. Beverly Lake Jr.), a former justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court (Rhoda Billings), a former chief judge of the North Carolina Court of Appeals (John C. Martin), sitting and former federal judges across multiple North Carolina district courts, and former U.S. Senator Kay Hagan.
That network is matched by placement data: North Carolina is reported as the largest employment destination for recent graduates, and the school's home-state bar results back up the local pipeline — a 92.00% North Carolina bar passage rate for the Class of 2023 (92.39% overall) and a 93.33% North Carolina passage rate reported for 2026. The NC Business Court is listed among the school's centers and institutes.
For an applicant planning to practice in North Carolina, this combination — 130-plus years of alumni embedded in the state judiciary and bar, plus a graduating class that disproportionately stays in-state — is a tangible, verifiable form of home-field advantage that a national-brand school without North Carolina roots can't replicate.
Wake Forest Law's degree menu extends past the standard JD into joint degree programs — JD/MBA, JD/MHA (Master of Health Administration), and JD/MDiv (Master of Divinity) — alongside standalone LLM, SJD, and MLS programs; the school's own pages differ on whether the total is two or three joint degrees. That MDiv pairing is unusual among law schools generally and signals a deliberate connection to Wake Forest University's broader graduate offerings, not just business and health administration.
For students who want time abroad, the school runs summer study-abroad programs in London, Venice, and Vienna, and offers a Metropolitan Externship in Washington, D.C. for students who want a semester of hands-on placement inside the federal policy and regulatory apparatus rather than (or alongside) international study. Wake Forest also participates in the Yellow Ribbon Program, relevant to veteran and military-affiliated applicants weighing the joint-degree or study-abroad tracks against their VA education benefits.
The pack doesn't specify GPA/credit mechanics, cost add-ons, or application timing for the joint degrees or study-abroad terms, so applicants interested in any of these tracks should confirm program-specific requirements directly with admissions before assuming a given path is available in a particular year.
Wake Forest admitted roughly a quarter of its applicants in the most recent cycle on record — 710 offers out of 2,883 applications, for a 24.63% acceptance rate, to fill an entering class of 204. That is a selective but not hyper-selective pool, and the numbers that matter most to how your file reads are the school's LSAT and GPA medians: 166 LSAT and 3.79 GPA, with a 25th-75th LSAT range of 163-168 and a 25th-75th GPA range of 3.6-3.9.
The useful way to read those bands is as planning anchors, not odds. A 168 LSAT sits at Wake Forest's 75th percentile — a strong position relative to the enrolled class, not a guarantee. A 163 sits at the 25th percentile, meaning roughly a quarter of admitted students scored at or below that mark, so it's a workable number but one that likely needs to be paired with other strengths in the file (GPA trend, work experience, writing sample) rather than carried alone. The same logic applies to GPA: a 3.9 clears the 75th-percentile bar, a 3.6 sits at the 25th, and the space between is where most of the admitted class actually lands.
Because the modern LSAT (since August 2024) is built from two scored Logical Reasoning sections and one scored Reading Comprehension section, with Logic Games removed and an unscored Argumentative Writing sample submitted separately, a candidate retaking the test is training for a narrower skill set than earlier cohorts faced — mostly argument analysis and reading-based reasoning. Schools consider your highest score, so a retake that moves you from the mid-160s toward Wake Forest's 168 75th-percentile mark is a meaningful use of additional prep time; see the LSAT prep spoke for how to structure that study (/how-to-study-for-the-lsat).
Where your numbers land also feeds directly into cost. Wake Forest reports that 76% of students receive grant aid, with a median grant of $40,000 against a full-time tuition and fees figure near $59,000 and an estimated total cost of attendance around $89,800. Eighteen percent of the aided band receives less than half-tuition support, 54% receive between half and full tuition, and 1% receive full tuition — meaning the bulk of grant recipients land in that half-to-full range, and a file that clears the 166/3.79 medians is the kind of file that has leverage to negotiate within that band. Because Grad PLUS loans are being eliminated for new borrowers and federal Direct Unsubsidized loans cap out well below many private law schools' full cost of attendance, the gap between your grant offer and Wake Forest's roughly $89,800 estimated annual cost is money you or your family will otherwise have to source from savings or private loans — which is exactly why LSAT and GPA improvements that move you toward or past the medians are worth pursuing before you apply, and why comparing offers is worth doing deliberately (see /law-school-scholarship-negotiation and /law-school-loans-and-pslf). For the mechanics of building a competitive file and timing your application within the cycle, the general timeline spoke is a useful companion (/law-school-application-timeline), and for weighing the eventual debt-to-outcome math, see /is-law-school-worth-it.
A competitive Wake Forest application starts with knowing where you sit against the school's own numbers: its LSAT range runs from a 163 at the 25th percentile to a 168 at the 75th, with 166 as the median, and GPAs cluster from 3.6 to 3.9 around a 3.79 median. Neither figure predicts an outcome — Wake Forest's file readers weigh the full record — but they tell you how to frame your addenda and personal statement. A candidate below the 25th percentile on either metric benefits from directly addressing the gap (a retake plan, an upward grade trend, work experience) rather than hoping the committee won't notice.
Because Wake Forest received roughly 2,880 applications for a class of about 204, admitted files tend to show clear, specific reasons for choosing this school rather than generic private-law-school language. The school's Pro Humanitate identity and its small, 45-person first-year sections are the kind of concrete details worth reflecting in a statement of purpose, since they signal you've done more than skim a rankings page.
On the LSAT itself, most applicants improve through sustained work with official practice material rather than a single cram session; a school's median is a planning anchor, not a probability estimate, and preparation strategy is covered in depth at /how-to-study-for-the-lsat. For sequencing your file, letters, and deadlines around a target cycle, see /law-school-application-timeline. If a Wake Forest offer arrives with a partial scholarship, treat the negotiation as a separate skill from admission — the mechanics of comparing offers and asking for more aid are laid out at /law-school-scholarship-negotiation.
Wake Forest's sticker cost is not what most admitted students actually pay. Annual tuition and fees run about $59,144, and with an estimated $30,639 for off-campus living, the school's own total cost of attendance estimate lands near $89,783 for a single year — but 76% of students receive some grant aid, and the median grant among recipients is $40,000 a year. That single fact matters more than the sticker price: a median grant of that size effectively cuts a year's cost by roughly 45%, which is why comparing schools on tuition alone is misleading.
Aid at Wake Forest is not evenly distributed. Of students receiving grants, the pack shows 54% land in a "half tuition to full tuition" band, 18% receive less than half tuition, and only 1% receive a full ride — so the realistic planning assumption for most admitted students is a partial, not total, discount. Where you land in that range typically tracks where your LSAT and GPA sit relative to the school's 166/3.79 medians; a file above both medians is generally the one with leverage to negotiate a better package, a process covered generally at /law-school-scholarship-negotiation.
Wake Forest also participates in the Yellow Ribbon Program, which matters specifically to veterans and eligible service members using Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits — the program lets a participating school voluntarily contribute additional funds beyond the GI Bill's tuition cap, matched dollar-for-dollar by the VA, which can close much or all of a private-school tuition gap for those who qualify. Anyone eligible for GI Bill benefits should confirm Wake Forest's current Yellow Ribbon contribution and cap directly with the law school's financial aid office, since participation terms are set and can change annually.
On the federal loan side, the rules changed materially starting with the 2026-27 borrowing year: Grad PLUS loans have been eliminated for new borrowers, and law students now borrow through the Direct Unsubsidized Loan program alone, capped at $50,000 per year and $200,000 in aggregate for law, within an overall $257,500 federal lifetime limit. At Wake Forest's estimated cost of roughly $90,000 a year, a student without a substantial scholarship or personal resources could plausibly hit that annual federal cap and need to cover the remainder through savings or private loans — a private loan market that, unlike federal loans, prices on credit and does not offer income-driven repayment or forgiveness. This makes the size of your Wake Forest grant, not just its existence, the number that determines whether federal loans alone can carry you through three years. (Verify current federal loan caps and rates before relying on them, as these figures are time-sensitive.)
On repayment, new federal borrowers will choose between a Standard Plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), an income-driven option; the Standard Plan by default earns no credit toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness, while enrolling in RAP is how a borrower preserves PSLF eligibility — a consideration relevant to the roughly 11% of recent graduates who pursued government or public-interest roles. General mechanics of loans, RAP, and PSLF are covered at /law-school-loans-and-pslf. For students weighing salary trajectory against total borrowing, the broader framework is at /is-law-school-worth-it, and the Wake Forest-specific version of that question follows below.
The honest answer is that Wake Forest is a strong bet for a specific kind of applicant — one aiming at North Carolina or the broader Southeast, comfortable with a mid-sized private-school price tag softened by real scholarship money, and not requiring the national name recognition of a top-14 school to reach a large firm. Whether that description fits you is the actual question, and it has less to do with Wake Forest's U.S. News rank of 30 than with matching your goals against what the school's outcomes data actually shows.
Start with employment, because that's where "worth it" gets tested. Among Wake Forest's roughly 158 graduates, 98.7% were employed in a job that either requires bar passage or gives an advantage from a JD — a very high placement rate on its own terms. More specifically, 27.2% of graduates landed at firms of 501 or more attorneys, the "Big Law" tier where the shared-context salary peak around $215,000 is concentrated; that's a meaningfully large slice of the class for a school outside the traditional top 14, and it suggests Wake Forest has real pipelines into large firms, not just occasional placements. But the firm-size distribution also shows the rest of the class spread widely: 18 graduates at firms of 1-10 attorneys, 8 at 11-25, 10 at 26-50, 8 at 51-100, 9 at 101-250, and 11 at 251-500 — meaning a majority of the class is not in Big Law, and outcomes for that majority will look more like typical regional-firm compensation than the six-figure peak. Twelve graduates (7.6%) went into government roles and six (3.8%) into public interest, with 7 federal and 8 state/local clerkships rounding out the credentialing side of the class.
The bar exam is the other half of the outcomes picture, and here Wake Forest's numbers are unambiguous: a 89.61% first-time pass rate against a state average of 81.43%, and a 98.45% ultimate pass rate within two years. That gap over the state average — roughly 8 points — is a genuine signal that the school's curriculum and bar-prep support are doing real work, not just admitting students who would have passed anywhere. If you're evaluating Wake Forest against a school with a similar rank but a thinner bar-passage margin over its state average, that gap is one of the more concrete, hard-to-fake differentiators available in outcomes data.
Now put cost against that picture. Wake Forest's estimated all-in cost of attendance is about $89,783 a year, or roughly $270,000 over three years before any aid — a number nobody should borrow against without first knowing their actual scholarship offer. With 76% of the class receiving grants and a median grant of $40,000, the realistic net cost for a well-qualified admit is substantially lower than sticker, but the grant bands show real variation: only 1% get a full ride, while 54% land in a half-to-full-tuition band and 18% get less than half off. That means a scholarship offer well below the median should be treated as a data point about your position in the applicant pool, not a final number to accept without comparing offers elsewhere — a process the scholarship-negotiation spoke walks through in detail.
Run the actual math for your situation this way: take your likely net cost after Wake Forest's specific offer (not the sticker price), estimate a realistic starting salary based on where your target practice area falls in the firm-size distribution above (Big Law tier, mid-size regional firm, or government/public-interest scale), and check that against current federal loan limits — a person borrowing close to the new $200,000 aggregate law cap should have a clear, realistic sense of whether their expected income supports that debt on the Standard Plan, or whether they'll need RAP and possibly PSLF if headed into government or nonprofit work. Graduates in Wake Forest's 27.2% Big Law slice typically earn salaries at the higher end of the shared-context range, which affects how that debt load compares to income; graduates in the 1-10 attorney firm tier, which represents the largest single non-Big-Law category in the class, are generally working with a different salary range, which is a relevant factor in planning loan repayment.
Wake Forest also isn't a place you attend for the biggest possible national platform — it's a place you attend if North Carolina, Virginia, or the broader Southeast legal market is where you actually want to practice, and if the long list of the school's alumni serving as state and federal judges and state legislators suggests the regional network you'd be joining matters to your plans. If your target market is New York or California Big Law with no regional tie, weigh that against schools with denser pipelines into those specific markets. If your target is Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Raleigh, or the mid-Atlantic, Wake Forest's bar-passage margin, its NC Business Court connection, and its 27% Big Law placement rate combine to make a stronger, more specific case than a rank number alone ever could. For the general framework behind this kind of calculation, see /is-law-school-worth-it.