Fresh data released by the Princeton Review has reconfirmed that law graduates from the University of Pennsylvania face the best odds of any students in the United States when looking for a job in law after graduation. The annual study surveyed 19,400 students across 172 law schools, ranking them according to the percentage of graduates who are employed one year after graduation and their median salaries.

The top ten

The prestigious ranking’s top three spots have remained unchanged since last year, going to University of Pennsylvania, New York University Law School and University of Chicago Law School respectively. However, there has been a little movement further down the top ten list – University of Virginia School of Law climbed from ninth to fifth place, while Stanford University School of Law dropped from fourth to seventh place and UC Berkley School of law from seventh to tenth. Columbia University School of Law claimed fourth place, while Harvard University Law School came in sixth.

Median salaries

On average, more than nine out of ten graduates of the Princeton Review’s prestigious top ten were employed one year after graduation. However, this figure climbs even higher for those universities in the top five, where between 97 and 98 per cent of graduates found employment within 12 months of graduating. The median salary for graduates in the top five was similarly dizzying at $160,000 per year, dipping slightly to $145,000 per year for the entire top-ten cohort. However, with annual tuition alone averaging around $60,000 for schools in the top ten, most graduates of these prestigious institutions will have shelled out more than $200,000 over three years in order to obtain their lucrative law degree.

Sources: Forbes; Above the Law