Bad Year in Legal Employment

The National Law Journal issued its annual Go-To Law School List, and the results reek of the recession. Even the top schools placed little more than half of their respective graduating classes into NLJ 250 firms. The top 10 law schools this year in terms of total percentage of the class placed:

1. Northwestern -- 55.9%

2. Columbia -- 54.4%

3. Stanford -- 54.1%

4. Chicago -- 53.1%

5. Virginia -- 52.8%

6. Michigan -- 51%

7. Penn -- 50.8%

8. NYU -- 50.1%

9. Berkeley -- 50%

10. Duke -- 49.8%

Obviously, schools like Harvard (47.6%) and Yale (35.3%) had smaller numbers because graduates of those schools tend to pursue the clerkship and academia routes more heavily. Check out the full rankings.