How We Work

Employment Data
Methodology

Every employment figure on Atlas-Legis comes directly from official ABA disclosures — no rankings publications, no third-party aggregators, no adjustments. Here's exactly how the numbers are sourced, defined, and calculated.

01
Raw-Data Integrity
Official ABA counts, preserved exactly as reported. Nothing added, nothing removed.
02
Denominator Clarity
Every percentage is clearly labeled — total graduates vs. subcategory totals are never mixed.
03
Comparative Neutrality
No composite scores, no weighting schemes. Schools are presented, not ranked by us.
Source

Where the data comes from

All employment figures are drawn from the ABA Employment Summary Reports for the Class of 2024, which every ABA-accredited law school is required to publish under accreditation rules. These are the most authoritative, standardized employment disclosures available for U.S. law schools.

Unit of analysis: The graduating class of each reporting institution. Data reflects outcomes as reported by each school to the ABA — Atlas-Legis does not modify, estimate, or infer any values.
Calculations

How percentages are computed

No percentages are stored in our dataset. Every figure you see on the site is calculated live from raw graduate counts at the moment you open a school's profile. This preserves precision and makes the underlying math fully auditable.

Unless otherwise noted, total graduates is always the denominator — this is the total number of graduates reported by the school, including those with unknown employment status. Values are rounded to one decimal place. No smoothing, weighting, or statistical adjustments are applied.

Definitions

What each metric means

Bar-Required Jobs % of total graduates
Positions that require bar admission: all law firm roles, all judicial clerkships, government, and public interest jobs. This is the broadest measure of traditional legal employment.
( Law Firms + Clerkships + Government + Public Interest ) ÷ Total Graduates
BigLaw % of total graduates
Employment at law firms with 251 or more attorneys — the threshold commonly used to define "BigLaw" in legal recruiting. Combines the 251–500 and 501+ attorney firm-size bands.
( 251–500 attorneys + 501+ attorneys ) ÷ Total Graduates
Federal Clerkships % of total graduates
Placements in federal judicial clerkships only. "All Clerkships" is the broader figure that also includes state/local, tribal, and international clerkships.
FTLT Employment Rate Headline metric
The share of graduates in full-time, long-term employed positions across law firms, clerkships, government, public interest, business, and education. This is the headline figure displayed on each school's profile because it best reflects sustained legal career entry.
( LF + Clerkships + Gov + PI + Business + Education ) ÷ Total Graduates
Law Firm Distribution Two views
Law firm outcomes appear in two formats:

As % of total graduates — how many of all graduating students landed at each firm size.

As % of law firm hires — the distribution within firm placements only. This view always sums to 100% and shows where in the firm-size spectrum a school's law firm placements are concentrated.
JD-Advantage % of total graduates
Positions that don't require bar passage but where a JD is considered advantageous — such as compliance, consulting, or legal operations roles. These are not counted within bar-required employment.
Transparency

What we don't do

A few things Atlas-Legis deliberately avoids:

✕
No composite employment scores. We don't combine metrics into a single score that obscures the underlying tradeoffs between BigLaw placement, public interest work, and clerkships.
✕
No imputation. If a school didn't report a value, it shows as unavailable. We never estimate or fill in missing data.
✕
No third-party aggregators. Every number traces directly back to a school's official ABA filing — not a rankings publication or secondary source.
✓
What we do instead: Present the full ABA-reported distribution so you can weigh what matters to you — whether that's BigLaw, public service, clerkships, or geography.