Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law was named to the 2014 Best Value Law Schools list by preLaw Magazine, a National Jurist publication.
This was the eighth time that The National Jurist has published the list. The National Jurist looks at a number of academic and financial variables, including the law school’s price of tuition, student debt accumulation, employment success, bar passage rate and cost of living. Employment is given the greatest weight, 35 percent, because of the recent woes in hiring.
This year’s list shows that it is still possible for students to graduate with less than $100,000 in debt and land a job.
ONU was the only private law school in Ohio to make the list and was one of only six private law schools in the nation to make the cut.
Richard Bales, dean of the Pettit College of Law, said, “Being recognized as a ‘Best Value’ law school illustrates our continued commitment to providing students an affordable legal education, while giving them the necessary tools to secure a job after graduation.”
In April, the class of 2013 graduates from Ohio Northern University’s Pettit College of Law placed first in the state of Ohio for full-time juris doctor-required job placement according to employment data released by the American Bar Association Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar. ONU surpassed the national average for jobs requiring a law degree by nearly 10 percent. For the graduating class of 2013, 66.67 percent of ONU law graduates were employed in jobs requiring juris doctors in the United States.
Also in April, ONU ranked first with an overall passage rate of 80 percent among applicants from all Ohio law schools who took the Ohio Bar examination in February 2014. ONU’s passage rate of 80 percent was well above the overall state average of 64.3 percent.
Overall, 53 schools were recognized as a Best Value Law School this year, up from 46 in 2013 and 47 in 2014. An additional 15 law schools were recognized for being tops among private schools.
