Virginia Law School Tops Job Placement Among American Bar Association-Accredited Institutions

New figures reveal that in 2022, more than 95% of juris doctor graduates from a particular school landed permanent, full-time positions requiring bar passage, the highest percentage among all 197 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association. Virginia surpassed Columbia Law School, which held the top spot for job placements among 2021 law graduates. Though Duke Law School and Columbia came close with 95.33% and 95.21%, respectively, they fell short by just half a percentage point compared to Virginia's results. The University of Georgia School of Law and New York University School of Law also made it to the top five, with employment rates of 94.79% and 94.50%, respectively.
 

Kevin Donovan, senior assistant dean for career development at Virginia Law, said, "Our students did an outstanding job in navigating the challenging market changes during the pandemic." The recently released employment outcomes data by the ABA for the class of 2022 show a robust job market for these graduates, with nearly 78% securing employment that requires bar passage within ten months of graduating. This rate is higher than that of the class of 2021, which was approximately 76%. Furthermore, it surpasses the employment rate of the type of 2019, which was the last group to enter the job market before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
In analyzing the ABA's data on entry-level job markets, Reuters identified the law schools whose graduates performed the best. Among the top 20 schools with the highest percentage of 2021 graduates in permanent, full-time jobs that require bar passage, eight of the T-14 schools ranked by U.S. News & World Report were listed, compared to 10 the previous year. Meanwhile, public universities outside the T-14 made an impressive showing in 2022. Schools such as the University of Kansas School of Law, the University of Iowa College of Law, the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, the University of Minnesota Law School, the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law, and Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington, each had a full-time legal jobs rate of over 90%.