Law Schools Whose Graduates are "Most Hired" by Major Firms

Here is The National Law Journal list of the ten schools whose graduates were hired "most" based on a survey of the 250 largest firms in the country (the ranking does not appear to be on-line, but I picked it up from this press release):

1.  Harvard University

2.  Georgetown University

3.  Columbia University

4.  New York University

5.  University of Virginia

6.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

7.  University of Pennsylvania

8.  University of Texas, Austin

9.  Northwestern University

10. University of California, Berkeley

The study did not adjust for size of school (an advantage for big schools like Harvard, Georgetown [the biggest], Columbia, NYU, Virginia, and Texas), but it also was not a geographically balanced survey (surveys of "large" firms invariably favor the two coasts) (an advantage for those schools that place heavily in the Northeast corridor like Harvard, Georgetown, Columbia, NYU, Virginia, and Penn).

While the top ten contains the usual suspects for the top law schools, there are two striking absences:  Yale and Chicago!  My guess is Yale fares poorly here because it is very small and because so many of its graduates go in to law teaching, rather than big firm practice.  Chicago is harder to explain--it is small, but so is Northwestern.  And Chicago has a bigger presence in New York and D.C. than Northwestern, yet Northwestern made the list and Chicago did not.  Perhaps pursuit of academic careers again explains the absence of Chicago from this list, but Chicago grads go in to law teaching at a much lower rate than Yale grads.  In any case, it's an odd omission, and I'm not sure what explains it.

UPDATE:  A student at a top law school writes:

I wanted to comment on a possible reason as to why Chicago did not make the list you posted today, but Northwestern did (a comparison you yourself pursued). I think that the combined effect that Northwestern admits about 50 more students a year, and that Chicago students are not only more likely to go into teaching, but also non-profit jobs (remember, NU prides itself on admitting students who have work experience, usually code for experience in the corporate world) may explain the difference.

Sounds plausible.  Certainly it would be a mistake to choose Northwestern over Chicago based on this particular "top ten" list.