a master's degree in legal research is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #37 out of 343 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.
In 2024, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Legal Research Master's Degree Schools in District of Columbia ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 478 master's degrees in legal research to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Legal Research School for Your Master's Degree
Your choice of legal research for getting your master's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality legal research program can vary widely even among the top schools. To make it into this list, a school must excel in the following areas.
A Great Overall School
The overall quality of a master's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To account for this we consider a college's overall Best Colleges for a Master's Degree ranking which itself looks at a combination of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of master's graduates during the early years of their career. That is, everyone wants their master's degree to be worth something, and salaries are one measure of determining that.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to legal research students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of legal research students who choose to seek a master's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How easy is it for legal research to pay back their student loans after receiving their master's degree.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized legal research related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for legal research students working on their master's degree.
Since the program you select can have a significant impact on your future, we've developed a number of rankings, including this Best Legal Research Master's Degree Schools in District of Columbia list, to help you choose the best school for you.
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Featured Legal Research Programs
Learn about start dates, transferring credits, availability of financial aid, and more by contacting the universities below.
It's difficult to beat Georgetown University if you wish to pursue a master's degree in legal research. Georgetown is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the city of Washington.
Those legal research students who get their master's degree from Georgetown University earn $26,824 more than the typical legal research grad.
Every student pursuing a degree in a master's degree in legal research needs to look into George Washington University. Located in the city of Washington, GWU is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population.
Master's recipients from the legal research degree program at George Washington University get $6,657 above the standard college graduate in this field shortly after graduation.
American University is a great decision for individuals interested in a master's degree in legal research. Located in the large city of Washington, The American University is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.
Master's graduates who receive their degree from the legal research program make about $48,710 in the first couple years of working.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.