Law School Rankings: Judicial Clerkships

Law.com, 2023 Go-To Law Schools: For Judicial Clerkships, Government and Public Interest Jobs, Small Schools Reign

This year, we've expanded our "Go-To Law Schools" project, which ranks the top Big Law feeder schools, to include data on additional employment outcomes, ranking the top 50 law schools that sent the highest percentage of graduates to government and public interest jobs, as well as to judicial clerkships.

Each year, Law.com ranks the 50 law schools that send the highest percentage of juris doctor graduates to associate positions at the largest 100 law firms in the country. This year, we’ve expanded our data with ”Go-To Law Schools: Additional Employment Outcomes,” ranking the top 50 law schools that sent the highest percentage of graduates to government and public interest jobs, as well as to judicial clerkships.

Using data collected from the American Bar Association Employment Outcomes—“full time long term” employment—Law.com has compiled three charts (below).

The rankings on these charts are, by default, sorted according to percentage of graduates who went into public interest and government jobs, as well as judicial clerkships. However, the chart is also interactive, so users can choose to instead sort the lists by number of students. And, as we’ll detail here, doing so causes some significant changes to the top 50. ...

Rank	School Name	Clerkships	Total JDs	% of Total Grads
1	Stanford	47	189	24.87%
2	Yale	51	213	23.94%
3	Chicago	44	217	20.28%
4	Notre Dame	32	210	15.24%
5	Virginia	42	327	12.84%
6	Harvard	77	611	12.60%
7	Alabama	16	132	12.12%
8	Duke	25	214	11.68%
9	Vanderbilt	19	178	10.67%
10	Texas	30	289	10.38%
11	Penn	27	262	10.31%
12	Michigan	32	325	9.85%
13	Baylor	14	145	9.66%
14	Washington & Lee	11	118	9.32%
15	Montana	7	82	8.54%
16	Washington University	19	227	8.37%
17	Northwestern	20	265	7.55%
18	Mississippi	11	149	7.38%
19	South Dakota	6	83	7.23%
20	Georgetown	45	665	6.77%
21	Louisville	6	92	6.52%
22	NYU	30	473	6.34%
23	UCLA	20	338	5.92%
24	Kentucky	5	86	5.81%
25	Pepperdine	10	174	5.75%

Stanford Law School ranked No. 1 in the judicial clerkships chart: 47 (nearly 25%) of its 189 2022 J.D.s; Yale Law School ranked No. 2: 51 (nearly 24%) of its 213 2022 J.D.s; the University of Chicago Law School ranked No. 3: 44 (20.3%) of its 217 2022 grads.

However, a non-T14 ranked No. 4—Notre Dame Law School having sent 32 (15%) of its 210 2022 grads to judicial clerkships.