Ranking law school employment outcomes for the Class of 2024 using a Principal Component Analysis — Excess of Democracy

Many elite schools have similar outcomes, so it is no surprise to see many schools clustered around the 90-100 score band. There are few surprises among the top schools. But some schools, like San Diego, Buffalo, and Northeastern, significantly outperform what one might expect from the USNWR law school rankings. Recall, this analysis tries to measure the overall quality of employment outcomes, so overperformance or underperformance in any one job category cannot explain the outcomes. It is really the sum of the parts of the employment outcomes.

Now, of course, there are even caveats with this data. As I mentioned, the Harvard Law graduate going to McKinsey or Goldman Sachs is a different kind of “JD advantage” job than many might secure. A federal clerkship for a “feeder” appellate judge on the DC Circuit is different than a regional magistrate judge clerkship. Wachtell has “only” 265 attorneys and does not fit the 501+ category of employment. The list goes on.

But, on the whole, you can see how PCA helps us sort through the many messy categories of employment toward a more holistic view of employment outcomes.

How does this compare with the USNWR methodology for employment?

What PCA tells us about the USNWR methodology

USNWR ranks law schools on a several criteria, but the biggest category by far is employment outcomes. USNWR gives “full weight” to five kinds of outcomes:

Full weight was given for graduates who had these 45 types of jobs [sic]. The 100% weighted jobs were those who had a full-time job that lasted at least a year and for which bar passage [sic] was required, or a full-time job that lasted at least a year where a J.D. degree was an advantage.

Plus, we give full weight to school-funded full-time, long-term fellowships where bar passage is required or where the J.D. degree is an advantage. We also give full weight to those enrolled in graduate studies in the ABA employment outcomes grid.

“Full-weight” to “bar passage required” jobs fits the “a job is a job” approach that USNWR has had for this category—there is no weighting for sub-categories of employment. It’s the best indicator for law school outcomes in our PCA.

But JD advantage jobs, as Professor Anderson noted more than a decade ago, do not fit this category of high quality outcomes. It is a category that ought to receive some lesser weight in the overall rankings. (The other three categories are more marginal in the aggregate, although funded jobs tend to positively correlate with outcomes and graduate degrees negative, and given that these categories are highly manipulable for individual schools even if they do not much affect the aggregate is another, separate consideration.)

While USNWR weighs other positions with some lesser value, “full weight” jobs (as I’ve written a term that only makes sense as a label for USNWR rankings) are a reflection by USNWR that these positions are the “best” outcomes. So how do these 50 schools compare if their rank in the PCA scores are placed up against their rank in “full weight” outcomes?