When it comes to popularity, a master's degree in legal professions sits in the middle of the road, ranking #18 out of 37 majors in the country. As such, the degree program isn't offered at every college in the United States, but there are schools that do have a program in the field that are top-notch when it comes to quality.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 3 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Legal Professions Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 2,225 master's degrees in legal professions to qualified students.
Choosing a Great Legal Professions School for Your Master's Degree
The legal professions master's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality legal professions program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:
Quality Overall Is Important
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 school'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.
Average Earnings
To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their master's degree from the school. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their master's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
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 master'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 master'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 complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for legal professions 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 Professions Master's Degree Schools in the Far Western US Region list, to help you choose the best school for you.
Best Schools for Master’s Students to Study Legal Professions in the Far Western US Region
Explore the top ranked colleges and universities for legal professions students seeking a a master's degree.
Top Far Western US Region Schools for a Master's in Legal Professions
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).