JDs in the Boardroom (2014 Edition)

This is the second annual report on JDs in senior business positions in U.S. publicly traded companies. In the inaugural version published last year, I compiled a ranking of the top-25 law schools by the number of JDs serving in director and executive officer positions in publicly traded companies.

I decided to look to the world of business as a fresh source of law school rankings because business hiring decisions are often thought to be more meritocratic and results-based as opposed to the somewhat aristocratic and pedigree-based hiring decisions often associated with large law firms.  I chose the most visible and arguably prestigious slice of lawyers in business--lawyers who serve as directors and senior executive officers of publicly traded companies--to see where those lawyers attended law school.

To accomplish this, I collected data from proxy statements and annual reports filed by publicly traded companies to determine what law schools executive officers and directors of those companies attended. The rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission require companies to provide the "business experience" of directors and executive officers (D&Os) in either their annual reports or proxy statements. Those descriptions often include information about colleges, law schools, and other graduate schools attended. I used a computer script to automatically extract most (but not all) law schools listed in the proxy statements or annual reports of publicly traded companies for the year ending September 30, 2014.

The process retrieved 2,307 individual mentions of law schools attended by D&Os (J.D. only--not including LLMs or other law degrees) from 1,641 distinct companies. I collected the counts for each law school and normalized the counts for law school class size (blended over time). To do this, I used the same figures I previously used to rank law schools by the number of big firm partners they produced. The analysis produced the following ranking of the top 25 law schools represented in public company boardrooms and C-suites.

 

D&O Rank #	Law School Name	Number of D&Os per Student	Number of D&Os	Enrollment Average Over Time	US News Rank (2012)
1	Harvard University	0.405	232	573.3333	3
2	Stanford University	0.393	70	178.3333	2
3	Yale University	0.301	60	199.6667	1
4	Columbia University	0.298	102	342	4
5	Northwestern University	0.234	48	204.8333	12
6	University of Chicago	0.222	40	180	5
7	New York University	0.220	88	400.5	6
8	Cornell University	0.178	32	179.3333	14
9	Univ. of California Berkeley	0.160	45	281.5	7
10	University of Pennsylvania	0.144	34	236.4167	7
11	University of Virginia	0.135	51	378.1667	7
12	Duke University	0.134	26	193.8333	11
13	University of Michigan	0.132	48	363.3333	10
14	Georgetown University	0.126	80	632.75	13
15	Boston University	0.121	47	388.5	26
16	University of Texas	0.115	58	502.5	16
17	Vanderbilt University	0.112	20	178.6667	16
18	Fordham University	0.110	45	407.625	29
19	West Virginia University	0.107	14	131.125	101
20	Pennsylvania State University	0.105	18	170.6667	76
21	University of California Hastings	0.100	44	438.5	44
22	George Washington University	0.096	43	448.2917	20
23	University of Utah	0.096	12	125.5	47
24	Boston College	0.095	26	274.6667	29
25	University of Notre Dame	0.093	16	172	22

As was the case last year, the rankings largely track the US News rankings (far-right column), with some very significant outliers. As was the case last year, West Virginia managed to break into the top 25, largely because of its small size and critical mass of graduates in public company positions. Similarly, Penn State (Dickinson) also climbed into the top 25, despite having a US News rank significantly lower. Although both of these schools fell slightly from last year, they are by far the most significant outperforming law schools in the ranking.

The largest gainers were Northwestern, Duke, and Boston University. Northwestern increased from 25 directors and officers to 48, nearly doubling its total and moving into 5th place. Duke increased from 16 directors and officers to 26, moving into 12th place. Boston University increased from 28 directors and officers to 47, moving up to 15th place. These changes may be partly the result of a more accurate computer script used this year, but are likely the result of some real changes in the schools' D&O representation.

Overall, it is clear that the business world seems to value legal pedigree almost as much as the large law firm world, as discussed more fully in last year's report. However, this is a very dynamic ranking, in part because the median age of directors is about 60, meaning that there will be turnover in the near future. Thus, we can expect a significant shake-up in this ranking in the years to come.