lawyer

Duke Law School may be best known as the law school that produced Richard Nixon (who famously inspired the ethics requirements for law students) and Tucker Max. Founded in 1930, it is among the handful of the smallest top-14 schools, with a total enrollment of about 630 in -. Although it is one of the few elite schools in the Deep South. the top three destinations for its graduates in were New York; Washington, D.C.; and California.

For the class of , Duke posted an employment score of 85.3%. about the same as Cornell and Berkeley. The total non-discounted cost of attendance is about a quarter-million dollars, according to Law School Transparency. Duke is ranked sixth in the new Above the Law rankings, which focus more on career outcomes and cost than on admissions inputs. In the U.S. News and World Reports 2015 list of the best law schools Duke is ranked 10th. [1]

Duke's employment score of 85.3% indicates the percentage of the class of who obtained long-term, full-time jobs requiring bar passage as of nine months after graduation. Of the traditional top 14 law schools, Duke's underemployment rate of 11.6% is among the highest .

About 51% of grads got jobs in large firms (more than 100 attorneys). In , Duke ranked seventh in the National Law Journal's list of law schools that feed into the 250 largest law firms in the nation (the NLJ 250). About 48% of the class of went straight into an NLJ 250 firm. A further 12.9% landed prestigious federal clerkships, which often lead to jobs at large firms or sought-after government agencies and public interest outfits.

Around 9% of the class of went into government or public interest on a full-time, long-term basis. Duke Law encourages students to get involved in public service and provides guaranteed summer funding for 2Ls working in qualifying public interest internships. Summer funding for 1L positions is competitive.

Duke provides surprisingly little information about its graduates' starting salaries, according to Law School Transparency. TLS urges prospective students to call the admissions office at 919-613-7020 and ask the school to release its most recent NALP reports to the public. The only salary information available is the class of 's numbers for judicial clerks and those entering private practice. The median salary for a judicial clerk was $57,408, and $160,000 for a new lawyer joining a private firm. It is worth noting that overall, starting salaries for lawyers tend to be bimodal. with most grads making either between $40,000 and $60,000 (government, public interest, small firms) or $160,000 (market pay for large firms).

In , Duke grads most commonly took the bar exam in New York, California, North Carolina, and Texas, and they tended to exceed the state pass average by a wide margin.