The University of Iowa College of Law has been named a “Best Value” law school for the 9th year in a row by the National Jurist’s PreLaw Magazine.
The Best Value rankings highlight affordable law schools whose graduates perform well on the bar exam and have success finding law jobs without taking on a ton of debt. PreLaw Magazine ranked the top 25 schools and assigned a letter grade to 34 other honorees. This year, Iowa Law is ranked the 7th Best Value law school in the country.
The Best Value rankings consider average indebtedness of graduates as part of its methodology. According to PreLaw Magazine, no school in the top 20 Best Value law school rankings has fewer graduates with debt than Iowa Law, where more than one-third of students graduate without any financial dues.
What’s Iowa Law’s secret to success? The college’s affordable tuition combined with its high academic standards is what attracts exceptionally intelligent students. Known as the “Writing Law School,” Iowa Law’s investment in world-class writing resources prepares its graduates to outperform students from other law schools on the bar exam, and therefore, makes them more employable.
Value represents a combination of cost and quality. Here at the Writing Law School, our quality is high because our commitment to writing and our skill set in that key area makes us unique among law schools. The result is that our grads tend to achieve some of the best employment rates in the nation, including a high number of judicial clerkships each year.
Indeed, 88% of the Class of 2022 graduated with a job already lined up. Our overall costs for students remain low because we are a small law school with a large endowment for scholarships, and nearly half of our law school budget is generously funded by the State of Iowa. As a result, our students tend to graduate with a very low law school debt load, a wonderful education, great jobs, and a very bright future in the law,” said Dean Kevin Washburn.
Graduate employment rate holds the most weight in the Best Value rankings. Nearly 25% of Iowa Law graduates in the Class of 2021 earned a state or federal clerkship across the country. And for overall employment, almost 99% of Iowa Law graduates find high-quality jobs in which they use their law degree within 10 months of graduation.
Recognized one of the “Best Law Schools” in the country, Iowa Law’s Best Value ranking justifies the quality of its programs and shows that affordable, top-notch legal education can be found.