Top 25 Law Schools Whose Grads Earn the Highest Starting Salaries in the Private Sector

For its ranking of law school schools whose graduates earned the most in the early stages of their private sector career, Forbes turned to Payscale. According to Jacquelyn Smith's The Law Schools Whose Grads Earn the Biggest Paychecks:

Payscale combed through the profiles of its 35 million unique users who supply compensation information on its website to find which law school grads make the most. They looked at starting salaries of graduates from 98 popular law schools and found roughly 31,000 of them in their database who had reported salary information, including 9,100 working in the private sector with less than five years of experience.

With that methological insight in mind, Payscale's reported salary data are "current median salaries (as of the first quarter of 2013) for recent law school graduates who in almost all cases finished law school within the last five years. The median work experience for this group is two years, and their median age is 29." Smith's article lists the top ten schools ranked by starting median pay and includes mid-career medium pay in the private sector. No surprises; all are elite law schools. But if you take the time to view the entire Top 25 law schools here, you may find a couple of surprises. For example:

Forbes Ranked 21: University of San Francisco School of Law (US News 2014 Ranked 144)
Starting Median Pay (Private Sector): $81,600
Mid-Career Median Pay (Private Sector): $150,000

Forbes Ranked 23. Santa Clara University School of Law (US News 2014 Ranked 96)
Starting Median Pay (Private Sector): $80,700
Mid-Career Median Pay (Private Sector): $189,000

Hat tip to Staci Zaretsky's The Best Law Schools For Getting Rich Quick (ATL). [JH]