McKinney School of Law continues to supply most attorneys to Indiana

Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law continues to be a key source of the state’s attorneys, with a higher percentage of its graduates staying in state than other law schools.

At McKinney, more than 80% of students stay in Indiana after graduating. That’s in part because of the unique opportunities students have in the state’s capital city, school leaders say.

Data over the past decade shows that some schools are more likely than others to produce Indiana-based attorneys. Recent law graduates who have started their careers here point to the connections they were able to make and the vast opportunities within Indiana as reasons for staying.

Aaron Vance graduated in 2020 from Indiana University Maurer School of Law — where about one-third of grads stay in state — and is now an associate for Faegre Drinker. A Kentucky native, Vance said the local relations he developed while at Maurer helped him jumpstart his career early.

“The folks here are super invested in making sure you grow and develop into the lawyer you want to be,” he said.

What the data shows

According to the American Bar Association’s annual employment summary report, over the last decade, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis has consistently produced the most graduates who stay in Indiana to work.

In 2024, about 82% of McKinney’s graduates stayed in the state, compared with 33% from Maurer in Bloomington and 9% from the University of Notre Dame Law School in South Bend.

Those numbers closely represent each school’s average over the past 10 years.

Several factors could be at play, including an individual student’s personal preference. But a primary factor, school officials say, is where they come to the law school from.

Admissions data from 2021, the year many 2024 J.D. graduates enrolled in law school, shows that 48% of students enrolled at Maurer came from Indiana, compared with about 85% at McKinney.

A spokesperson for Notre Dame did not provide The Indiana Lawyer with admissions statistics.

“A lot of students who are from Indiana want to stay in Indiana,” said Anne McFadden, associate dean of student services at Maurer. “They want to stay in the community that they are from.”

But McFadden noted that even though Maurer has about 40% Hoosier enrollees and 40% of graduates who stay in-state, those students staying in-state are not just Indiana natives.

“Everybody’s motivated by different things,” McFadden said.

Some of those other motivations could be the cost of living, relationships or the type of career path they seek.

Karley Clayton, the assistant dean of professional development at McKinney, said some students struggle to leave the state after spending years developing legal connections.

“Over these three years, you are building so many relationships. Not that you can’t go to another state, but once you’re integrated with the bar association and you have mentors here, you have to be very intentional if you want to go out of state, I would say, like with your networking strategy and with where you’re applying to summer associate roles and internships,” Clayton said.

Local relationships

For Tate Coulter, an associate at Barnes & Thornburg LLP and a 2024 McKinney graduate, Indianapolis was his top destination.

Coulter, a Hoosier native who grew up on a hog farm in Albany, said that for him McKinney offered a significant benefit that Indiana’s other law schools didn’t: its location.

“Unless you’re a law school that’s close downtown to big law firms, or law firms in general, you don’t always get those opportunities unless they’re willing to just do a hybrid model,” Coulter said. “I think you really miss out on a lot of the benefits of being in person.”

Similarly, Kaleigh Shaw, a third-year student at McKinney, emphasized the abundance Indianapolis has to offer.

“There’s just so many opportunities here that people bounce around from law firms all the time, just kind of chasing opportunities. At least that’s what I’ve kind of observed,” Shaw said. “So there’s always something for somebody to get into, depending on what you’re interested in.”

Shaw hails from rural Kentucky and is set to graduate from McKinney this spring. She has a judicial clerkship lined up at the Indiana Court of Appeals this fall.

Before attending law school, Shaw graduated from the University of Kentucky with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and moved to Indianapolis for a job with an insurance company.

Through that work, Shaw was exposed to the legal world and developed a desire to be part of it.

So, she said she “pulled the trigger” and enrolled at McKinney, where she has been able to experience many opportunities to jump into the legal community with both feet. Over the past few years, Shaw has interned for the Indiana Farm Bureau, handling policy work, and Janzen Shroeder Agricultural Law LLC. Now, she is interning with the U.S. District Court.

“There’s tons of opportunities here,” Shaw said.

Programs like these come through the school’s strong relationship with the local bar associations.

“There is an investment from the bar associations in McKinney, which is incredible,” said Clayton, the assistant dean at McKinney.

Clayton said McKinney hosts the Indianapolis Bar Association once a month to allow students the ability to meet lawyers and develop relationships. The school also pays for its students’ membership to the Indiana State Bar Association, so that they can engage in various professional development events.

“We are trying to set up a framework for them to be able to build that network,” Clayton said. “Especially in the legal field, networking and relationships are incredibly important.”

Vance echoed similar experiences he had while studying at Maurer.

“There’s a significant devotion of resources to getting folks into the market in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne and in southern Indiana and Evansville, all of that, in terms of networking and alumni events, firms coming to town to host happy hours and lunch talks,” he said.

McFadden, the associate dean at Maurer, said that though Maurer doesn’t directly have programs intended to encourage students to stay in Indiana, the school does have programs aimed at encouraging students to contribute to the state’s legal community while they’re here.

“Even if they’re not from Indiana and they’re not going to stay in Indiana, necessarily, we do a lot of things to integrate them into the Indiana legal community and to help them have a contribution here, even if they don’t stay,” McFadden said.

In addition to paying for students’ state bar membership, the school puts students into pro bono work, McFadden said.

“Even if they are people who might be headed out of Indiana after their three years here, while they’re here, they contribute a tremendous amount to people in Indiana who need legal assistance,” she said.

Indy: A legal hub

Maurer in Bloomington is about an hour’s drive to downtown Indianapolis. Shaw says she imagines that commute is “not fun” for those students trying to build work expe rience during the school year.

“With all those courts [in Indianapolis], they just give students a playground of opportunities to be able to take advantage of without having to commute,” she said.

But McFadden said Indiana doesn’t offer everything a young attorney might want.

“We don’t have a robust trial court clerkship system here, and … every year, we have a cohort of students who are interested in getting to Washington, D.C. And there are going to be jobs there that just don’t exist here,” McFadden said, “whether that’s working on Capitol Hill or for certain agencies that don’t have a presence in the Midwest.”

Even still, McFadden emphasized that for students wanting to pursue a career in private practice, public interest, public defense and prosecution, Indiana has many possibilities.•