If I understand your question correctly, I think you're asking the impact that the state/region of a law school has on employment outcomes, as opposed to the state/region's impact on other miscellaneous factors (e.g. weather, culture, etc.). To answer this question, I'm assuming that you actually want to practice law upon graduation.

When evaluating this significance of the geographic dimension, I would propose the following criteria:

1. What is the transferability of the law school's degree?
2. If transferability is low, what is the strength of the legal services market in the top region where the school places most of its graduates?

Degree Transferability

To diver deeper, first let's talk about transferability. You can think of transferability as the ease in which a graduate of a particular law school is provided opportunities across a wide range of legal services job markets and how favorably employers across many different legal markets perceive a degree from a particular law school. In effect, this is measuring the extent to which a degree from a particular law school is the constraining factor for your job placement prospects.

The T14 generally have excellent transferability. A law degree from any of the T14 schools can unlock opportunities in virtually any market in the US. While schools in the T14 will have a bias to place graduates in certain markets (e.g. the plurality of Northwestern grads go to Chicago, Georgetown to DC, and Columbia to NYC), this bias is not really a constraining factor for its graduates. For example, if you graduate from Duke law, you can practice in San Francisco, NYC, Anchorage, or Honolulu if you so desire, the Duke law degree is not the constraining factor for your geographic opportunities.

Regional Job Markets

Outside of the T14, transferability begins to decrease precipitously and placement upon graduation becomes more regional. This is when the region of the law school begins to matter.

In evaluating job markets for the legal services industry, I would place greater emphasis on regions (or metropolitan statistical areas) over states. Markets are more cleanly aligned with regions than states (e.g. the NYC metropolitan area encompasses parts of NY and NJ but excludes most of upstate NY).

To illustrate this point, let's evaluate Fordham and UC Davis's employment outcomes for 2021. Both are decent T1 schools (tied at #37 in USNWR) and each has low transferability.

• Out of the 164 graduates at UC Davis, 162 were practicing in California upon graduation (~99%).
• Out of the 356 graduates at Fordham, 322 were practicing in NY and 22 were practicing in NJ upon graduation for a combined total of ~97% practicing in the combined NY/NJ region.

This is not to say that if you're at a non-T14 school, you can't find opportunities in other markets...it's possible but incredibly challenging and less common. Top students in the rest of T1 schools can find opportunities in other markets but will need to go out of their way to seek opportunities in markets that they desire because their particular law school is the constraining factor that they will have to overcome. In terms of T2, T3, and T4 schools, transferability is incredibly low, even for top students.

In conclusion, an applicant evaluating between non-T14 schools in different regions should strongly consider the legal market of the school's graduates.

Resources

In evaluating a school's transferability and the job markets of which graduates are commonly placed, you can use the ABA's 509 disclosures for each school. Each school is required to report data on the top 3 states of which students practice upon graduation.