UW among 50 law schools with best job placements for 2016 grads

While things remain grim for many law schools, the one at the University of Wisconsin recently landed among the top 50 in a much-watched metric: the percentage of graduates who landed real lawyer jobs.

According to data from the American Bar Association, (charted courtesy of law.com)  71.3 percent of Badger lawyers from the class of 2016 are working full-time in long-term jobs that required bar passage and were not funded by the school. That was good for 48th place, not great, but better than not making the list.

The top 10, in descending order, were Chicago, Duke, Columbia, Michigan, Cornell, Stanford, Penn, Virginia, NYU and Harvard, with percentages ranging from 93.4 to 87.9.

The players are largely the same, in slightly different order and higher percentages when employment includes jobs for which a law degree is an advantage.

The ten schools reporting the highest percentage of unemployed 2016 graduates had numbers ranging from 23 to 30 percent. The schools include many that have been the butt of criticism for years, like Western Michigan Cooley, Southwestern, Thomas Jefferson and Florida Coastal.