Philly law schools better than expected at placing graduates, study finds

Philadelphia's law schools enjoyed a moment of vindication this week, when a new study found that they outperformed expectations - and their competitors - in Big Law placement.

The study counted the graduates from the last 25 years who are now partners in one of the nation's top 100 law firms.

The results, which the study claims are the first ever to measure such a statistic, rank Temple Law 26th in the nation, with 160 partners placed in law firms over the last quarter-century.

In contrast, Temple Law ranks 61st in the controversial U.S. News and World Report's graduate-school rankings, which weigh everything from a school's student-teacher ratio to its LSAT scores.

"Becoming a partner at a major law firm is certainly a product of your legal education," said Melissa Lennon, assistant dean for career planning at Temple Law.

"But," she added, "Temple attracts very grounded individuals who have a big-world view and understand it's not straight-up academic success that's going to place you in a future leadership role, wherever you end up."

Temple was not the only Philadelphia school to perform better than the U.S. News ranking might suggest.

In top-law-firm placement, Villanova Law ranked 35th in the nation. It placed 84th overall in the U.S. News list.

Widener Law, which has campuses in Wilmington and Harrisburg, is unranked in the U.S. News standings, but 70th in law-firm placement.

Philadelphia's strong legal market likely helps the region's schools usher alumni into law firms, Lennon said.

Penn Law is the only area school to perform worse than its U.S. News ranking - 11th nationally in law-firm partnerships, but seventh in the U.S. News report.

Rutgers University was not ranked because it was ambiguous whether its alumni attended Rutgers-Newark or Rutgers-Camden, which have separate programs.

Drexel University did not make the rankings – the new law school has had only a few years to place graduates, while other schools in the study have had 25.

Loyola Law School professor Theodore P. Seto, a former hiring partner at Philadelphia's Drinker, Biddle & Reath L.L.P., conducted the study by counting the alma maters of each partner at the top law firms in the nation, as named by the American Law Journal.

The study ignores that some schools have larger student bodies than others, Seto wrote.

"If employers cared solely about per-capita outcomes, they would all interview at Yale. They don't. For employers attempting to allocate scarce recruiting resources, aggregate numbers matter."