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Employment Prospects Survey |
| Full time law degree |
Duke Law School is an ideal law school among the top law schools for job
placement at a top law firm anywhere in the country or around the world. I feel
this is Duke's strongest asset. There are three reasons for this. First, the
alumni are incredibly loyal because the school is so small and so friendly that
they feel that they can identify with anyone who comes out of it, as opposed to
a
large anonymous law school where people graduate having had a variety of
experiences rather than a single shared one. The alumni are the ones who come
back and recruit. Second, each graduating class is small and very few top law
schools are this size (Yale, Stanford are the two others). So firms around the
country and the globe compete for a limited pool of people. And usually, the
interviewer has to bring back at least 2 people from Duke. Yet, the class is so
spread out among which cities each person wants to interview in or move to, that
many cities are not very competitive (such as New York or London, etc) and those
are traditionally very competitive markets. So chances of not being the top
student but landing a very good job are very good at Duke compared to say, if
you
went to a school in New York and wanted to work at a top firm in NYC or went to
a
very large law school like Georgetown or Harvard. Third, the size of the school
and open door policies with the administration combined with supportive alumni
can lead to a variety of opportunities for internships. For example, I walked
into the deans office as a first year thinking that i wanted to spend the summer
working in Beijing. Not long after that, I was put in touch with several alumni
and landed an amazing opportunity in China that summer. Fourth, the school is
very much oriented towards placement at big law firms and have a formula set up
for you to follow the day you step onto campus, so almost without thinking, a
duke law student by default will end up at a large corporate law firm. WHile
public interest students may moan the lack of resources and support for public
interest or alternative career placements and the track record that admission to
Duke Law is the equivalent of getting railroaded into a job that starts newly
minted graduates around the country and around the world at well over 100K is
not
exactly something many would complain about.
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Duke University School of Law Admission & Application Surveys
