2010 Princeton Review Law School Rankings: Best (and Worst) Career Preparation

Last week, I blogged the lists of the Top 10 law schools in eleven categories posted on Princeton Review's web site in connection with its publication of the 2010 edition of Best 172 Law Schools (with the University of Cincinnati College of Law on the cover).  The rankings are the result of Princeton Review's survey of 18,000 students at the 172 law schools, along with school statistics provided by administrators.

I have extracted from the individual profiles of the 172 law schools all of the available data to rank the schools in six categories. I will report each day on one of the ranking categories.

Career Rating: How well the law school prepares its students for a successful career in law, on a scale of 60 to 99. The rating incorporates school-reported data and the average responses of law students at the school to a few questions on our law student survey. We ask law schools for the average starting salaries of graduating students, the percentage of graduating students who find employment after graduation, and the percentage of students who pass the bar exam the first time they take it. We ask students about how much the law program encourages practical experience; the opportunities for externships, internships, and clerkships; and how prepared to practice law they feel after graduating.

Here are the law schools with the highest and lowest career ratings (an asterisk indicates that the school's administrators did not supply the Princeton Review with the requested statistical information):

	School	Score		School	Score
1	Michigan	99	142	Akron	70
	Northwestern	99		Arkansas-Fayetteville	70
	NYU	99		Campbell	70
4	Boston Univ.	98		District of Columbia	70
	Chicago	98		Nova	70
	Stanford	98		Texas Wesleyan	70
7	Boston College	97		Utah	70
	Pennsylvania	97		Wake Forest	70
	Vanderbilt	97		Whittier	70
10	Geo. Washington	96	151	Oklahoma City	69
	Georgetown	96		Touro	69
	Texas	96	153	Florida State	68
13	Fordham	95		Hamline	68
	Harvard	95	155	South Carolina	67
	UCLA	95		Valparaiso	67
16	Columbia	94	157	Missouri-Columbia	66
	Notre Dame	94		St. Thomas (Miami)	66
	Virginia	94	159	Regent	65
19	Cardozo	93		Washburn	65
	Cornell	93	161	Ohio Northern	64
	Duke	93		South Dakota	64
	USC	93	163	La Verne	63
23	Emory	92		Rutgers-Newark	63
	UC-Berkeley	92	165	Idaho	62
	Yale	92		Wyoming	62
			167	Appalachian	61
				Arkansas-Little Rock	61
				Thomas Cooley	61
			170	Phoenix*	60
				Southern*	60
				Charleston	n/a

Unfortunately, the Princeton Review did not release the response rate per school, so it is impossible to determine how the rankings are affected by each school's representation among the respondents.

For prior years' rankings, see:

• 2009 Princeton Review Career Preparation Rankings
• 2008 Princeton Review Career Preparation Rankings
• 2007 Princeton Review Career Preparation Rankings