If you pursue a doctor's degree in legal professions, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #2 most popular program in the country. So, there are lots of possibilities to explore when you're trying to determine where you want to get your degree.
In 2024, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Legal Professions Doctor's Degree Schools in Tennessee ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 597 doctor's degrees in legal professions during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Choosing a Great Legal Professions School for Your Doctor's Degree
Your choice of legal professions for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality legal professions program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To account for this we include a school's overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking which itself looks at a host of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their doctor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. That is, everyone wants their doctor'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 much a school focuses on legal professions students vs. other majors.
Major Demand - How many other legal professions students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
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 much debt legal professions students go into to obtain their doctor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized legal professions related body.
Our full ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best colleges for legal professions students working on their doctor'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 Professions Doctor's Degree Schools in Tennessee list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study Legal Professions in Tennessee
Explore the top ranked colleges and universities for legal professions students seeking a a doctor's degree.
Top Tennessee Schools for a Doctorate in Legal Professions
Vanderbilt University is one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a doctor's degree in legal professions. Located in the large city of Nashville, Vanderbilt is a private not-for-profit university with a large student population.More information about a doctorate in legal professions from Vanderbilt University
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.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).