Deciding to pursue your dream of attending law school may be easy, but choosing which schools to apply to requires a little more work. Luckily, LawHub offers in-depth reports for each state and school that cover admissions, cost, jobs, salaries, and more. You can even receive a personal report recommending some law schools for you based on your preferences and career aspirations.
The Discover Law Schools tool lets you search for information on specific schools or view all the schools that place students in jobs in the states you would like to work in after graduating.
Among the information you’re provided with on first glance for each school is the annual tuition amount for full-time students, the cost of living in that city, the median salary of graduates, and an employment score – the percent of graduates from each year who have a full-time job that requires a law license, excluding solo practitioners. Graduates’ job outcomes and state placement are broken down by percentages. Further details include an underemployment score, the percent of graduates from each year who pass the bar exam on their first try, the number of students starting law school each academic year, and more.
Beyond that initial snapshot, there are tabs for more detailed data on jobs, admission, salaries, bar exam, financials, environment, and part-time enrollment. If you’d like more information than what is provided on LawHub, you can also navigate directly to the school’s website.
The states you’ve searched are automatically saved for easy access when you return to the tool, ensuring that the information you need to make this important decision is always at your fingertips. It’s easy to move between the reports to compare the details of each school, and the information is presented in charts and graphs to help you visualize it better.
You can also answer a series of four questions to receive a personal report recommending the best law schools for you based on geographic and job preferences:
Is it important for you to work in a high-prestige job?
High-prestige jobs include associate positions at the largest law firms in the country as well as competitive public service positions and federal clerkships.
Select your priority level (no interest, low interest, medium interest, or high interest) for each type of job:
Any lawyer job. A job as a lawyer requires you to pass the bar exam and practice law.
Any law firm job. This includes practicing law in a private practice of any size.
A large firm. This includes practicing law at the largest firms in the U.S.
Public service. Jobs working for the government or for a nonprofit fall into this category.
Clerkship. This type of position has you working for a judge in their chambers, typically just for one to two years.
Where do you want to work after graduation?
You can select multiple states. This decision matters now, before you even enroll in law school, because 2 in 3 employed law school graduates’ first job is located in the state where they attended school.
What is your highest LSAT score and what is your LSAC CAS GPA?
Your LSAT score on a range of 120 to 180 is used to determine your chances of admission for each school. Your CAS GPA of between 0 and 4.33 is also used in admissions. Grading systems vary, so we convert your GPA into a standard format that considers all of your undergraduate coursework.
Your answers to these questions offer a starting point as you research schools to determine which ones are the best fit for your goals. Submitting this information unlocks more figures to compare for each individual school, such as your admission chances based on your LSAT score, GPA, and demographics paired with the school’s acceptance rate.
After you’ve completed these questions, you can always return to the Discover Law Schools tool to fill in new answers if you’ve changed your mind about your career trajectory or have updated test scores or grades to report. You can mark individual schools as favorites to save them to your list and toggle between your favorites and the schools LawHub suggests would be a good match for you. The results can be sorted by job score, admission chances, employment score, location match, tuition, or median salary. You can even pick up to four schools at a time to compare side by side. These quick comparisons include a job score that reflects how closely a school’s job outcomes match your goals.
Thinking through your law school options in this manner will offer you clarity regarding the details of the school you might want to attend and the type of law career you want your education to position you to pursue. Devoting time to thinking through these details before applying to schools will help assure that you’re only considering schools that are mutually a good fit. We save you time by gathering all the information you need in one place, tailored to your individual circumstances. Check out the Discover Law Schools tool from the Law School Transparency page of LawHub today.