Ranked #2 in popularity, legal professions is one of the most sought-after doctor's degree programs in the nation. This means there are lots of options to choose from when you decide to get your degree.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 2 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Legal Professions Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 2,840 doctor's degrees in legal professions during the 2022-2023 academic year.
DEBUG: Checking offer "Legal Studies (I Have a Bachelors)" with relevance 1
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Legal Studies (I Have a Bachelors)" ACCEPTED (relevance 1)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Criminal Justice & Law Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Criminal Justice & Law Bachelors Programs (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Legal Services & Studies (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.7
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Legal Services & Studies (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.7)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Legal Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.6
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Legal Services (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.6)
DEBUG: Checking offer "Paralegal (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" with relevance 0.5
DEBUG: ✓ Offer "Paralegal (I Have a HS Diploma or Associate Degree)" ACCEPTED (relevance 0.5)
DEBUG: relevant_offers count = 5
DEBUG: relevant_offers > 0, checking for ESYOH offers
DEBUG: ESYOH filtering - found 5 ESYOH offers with relevance >= 0.5
DEBUG: esyoh_offers count = 5
DEBUG: ESYOH offers found, rendering ESYOH widget
DEBUG: most_relevant_only = true, filtering for most relevant
DEBUG: Found 1 offers with relevance >= 1.0
Early-Career Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of doctorate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their doctor's degree is to enable themselves to find better-paying positions.
Other Factors We Consider
In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to legal professions students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of legal professions students who choose to seek a doctor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
Student Debt - How easy is it for legal professions to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor's degree.
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 schools for legal professions students working on their doctor's degree.
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Legal Professions Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.
DEBUG: Raw major_slug = "legal-studies-and-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).
by our College Data Analytics Team
