Recent trends in law school lateral hiring, 2019-2024
I recently pulled data from Professor Brian Leiter’s extraordinarily helpful list of law school hires. I looked at the last six years, 2019-2024, to see if there were any interesting trends. His reports capture the vast majority of law school lateral hiring, but perhaps misses a few. I tried to clean the data as best I could. This included de-duping, removing hires who changed their minds, and identifying the right year for a hire.
There are 706 laterals in the data set. There has been a sharp uptick in lateral hires, from 68 in 2019, to 99 in 2020, up to 153 in 2022 and 155 in 2023, tapering off a bit last year.
It’s also worth noting a significant amount of laterals do not end up in a U.S. law school, or did not come from a U.S. law school. Many land as university presidents or provosts, or into other departments, or into foreign schools. I report 617 coming from U.S. law schools and 657 going to U.S. law schools.
Of course, some of those laterals are law deans coming and going, which are different in kind, but I didn’t differentiate among those types.
Schools with the biggest migration out:
| Brooklyn | 11 |
| Florida | 11 |
| Irvine | 11 |
| Duke | 10 |
| UCLA | 10 |
| Alabama | 9 |
| American | 9 |
| Arkansas | 9 |
| Colorado | 9 |
| Georgia | 9 |
| Houston | 8 |
| Ohio State | 8 |
| Penn State University Park | 8 |
| USC | 8 |
And schools with the biggest migration in:
| Boston Univ. | 17 |
| Virginia | 17 |
| Florida | 16 |
| Irvine | 16 |
| Emory | 15 |
| Georgetown | 14 |
| Michigan | 14 |
| UCLA | 14 |
| Berkeley | 12 |
| Texas A&M | 11 |
| USC | 11 |
| Brooklyn | 10 |
| Columbia | 10 |
| Wayne State | 10 |
A few schools appear on both lists. A few others stand out (Boston University, Virginia, and Michigan) for some rather significant numbers of hires in recent years.
There are assuredly subtleties to these figures—for instance, as a percentage of overall faculty, it may be a large or small percentage.
Among top 100-ish schools that saw zero laterals out in six years, there were four: Harvard, NYU, Baylor, and Catholic. (Baylor is also distinctive in having zero laterals out and zero laterals in.)
Below is the aggregate data for the top 100-ish schools. Any data entry mistakes are my own!
| Out | In | |
| Stanford | 3 | 6 |
| Chicago | 7 | 8 |
| Yale | 1 | 6 |
| Virginia | 5 | 17 |
| Penn | 6 | 9 |
| Harvard | 0 | 9 |
| Michigan | 3 | 14 |
| Duke | 10 | 9 |
| Northwestern | 4 | 9 |
| Columbia | 3 | 10 |
| NYU | 0 | 5 |
| UCLA | 10 | 14 |
| Berkeley | 6 | 12 |
| Vanderbilt | 3 | 3 |
| Washington Univ. | 6 | 8 |
| Georgetown | 5 | 14 |
| Texas | 5 | 9 |
| North Carolina | 3 | 6 |
| Cornell | 6 | 5 |
| Notre Dame | 5 | 4 |
| Minnesota | 7 | 7 |
| Boston Univ. | 7 | 17 |
| Wake Forest | 5 | 5 |
| Georgia | 9 | 3 |
| USC | 8 | 11 |
| Texas A&M | 5 | 11 |
| Boston College | 3 | 6 |
| Florida | 11 | 16 |
| William & Mary | 5 | 5 |
| Alabama | 9 | 5 |
| Ohio State | 8 | 9 |
| George Mason | 4 | 3 |
| BYU | 2 | 0 |
| Washington & Lee | 6 | 5 |
| Utah | 6 | 4 |
| Irvine | 11 | 16 |
| Florida State | 6 | 5 |
| Iowa | 7 | 9 |
| George Washington | 6 | 9 |
| Emory | 6 | 15 |
| Baylor | 0 | 0 |
| Fordham | 4 | 9 |
| SMU | 4 | 1 |
| Arizona State | 6 | 5 |
| Wisconsin | 4 | 6 |
| Illinois | 2 | 2 |
| Colorado | 9 | 9 |
| Indiana | 7 | 6 |
| Villanova | 3 | 3 |
| Davis | 5 | 4 |
| Connecticut | 6 | 3 |
| Pepperdine | 2 | 0 |
| Kansas | 3 | 2 |
| Washington | 5 | 2 |
| Temple | 3 | 8 |
| Tennessee | 1 | 2 |
| San Diego | 3 | 2 |
| Missouri | 4 | 4 |
| Penn State University Park | 8 | 4 |
| Arizona | 4 | 3 |
| Penn State Dickinson | 3 | 5 |
| Oklahoma | 6 | 8 |
| Maryland | 3 | 7 |
| Wayne State | 3 | 10 |
| Kentucky | 3 | 1 |
| Loyola Los Angeles | 4 | 4 |
| Pittsburgh | 5 | 5 |
| Houston | 8 | 2 |
| Cardozo | 6 | 8 |
| South Carolina | 4 | 2 |
| UNLV | 2 | 1 |
| Cincinnati | 4 | 4 |
| St. John's | 7 | 8 |
| Tulane | 3 | 4 |
| Seton Hall | 4 | 4 |
| Nebraska | 5 | 1 |
| Catholic | 0 | 2 |
| Northeastern | 5 | 7 |
| Florida International | 5 | 1 |
| Richmond | 2 | 2 |
| LSU | 3 | 2 |
| Drexel | 2 | 1 |
| Georgia State | 2 | 1 |
| Maine | 4 | 0 |
| Loyola Chicago | 3 | 6 |
| Belmont | 1 | 0 |
| Marquette | 2 | 1 |
| Texas Tech | 2 | 2 |
| Miami | 6 | 6 |
| Denver | 5 | 3 |
| UC Law SF | 5 | 3 |
| Drake | 1 | 1 |
| Duquesne | 3 | 0 |
| Stetson | 1 | 0 |
| Lewis & Clark | 1 | 3 |
| Oregon | 1 | 1 |
| Saint Louis | 4 | 7 |
| Chapman | 1 | 0 |
| American | 9 | 6 |
| Buffalo | 5 | 3 |
| Dayton | 2 | 0 |
| Rutgers | 4 | 9 |
Some figures are lightly revised as schools share new information with me.