You'll be studying one of the lesser sought-after majors if you pursue an Associate Degree in legal professions. It is ranked #23 out of 38 major degree programs in terms of popularity. As such, your educational options may be more limited than if you were in a more popular field.
In 2025, College Factual analyzed 28 schools in order to identify the top ones for its Best Legal Professions Associate Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 1,317 associate degrees in legal professions to qualified students.
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Choosing a Great Legal Professions School for Your Associate Degree
Your choice of legal professions for getting your associate degree school matters. 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
A school that excels in educating for a particular major and degree level must be a great school overall as well. To take this into account we include a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Earnings
One measure we use to determine the quality of a school is to look at the average salary of associate graduates during the early years of their career. This is because one of the main reasons people pursue their associate 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 - The number of legal professions students who choose to seek a associate 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 professions to pay back their student loans after receiving their associate 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 associate degree.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Legal Professions Associate Degree Schools in the Southeast Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
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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).
Your choice of legal professions for getting your associate degree school matters. 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:
