Law school rankings in the United States

Main article: College and university rankings

Law School Rankings are a specific subset of College and university rankings that deal specifically with law schools. Like college and university rankings, Law School Rankings can be based on subjectively perceived "quality," on some combination of empirical statistics, or on surveys of educators, scholars, students, prospective students, or others. Such rankings are often consulted by prospective students as they choose which schools they will apply to or which school they will attend.

The most popular ranking of Law Schools is the annual Top Graduate Schools version from US News & World Reports magazine. Beyond this popular and mainstream list, there are numerous other rankings of law schools, which include:

• Cooley Rankings
• Gourman Report
• Hylton Rankings
• Law School 100
• Leiter Rankings

Criticisms of Law School Rankings

The American Bar Association or ABA has consistently refused to support or participate in law school rankings.^[1][2] Likewise, the Law School Admission Council has similarly shown opposition to rankings.^[3] The American Association of Law Schools has also voiced complaints; their executive director Carl Monk went so far as to say "these rankings are a misleading and deceptive, profit-generating commercial enterprise that compromises U.S. News and World Report's journalistic integrity."^[4] Among the criticisms of law school rankings is that they are arbirtary in the characteristics they measure and the value given to each one. Another complaint is that a prospective law student should take into account the "fit" and appropriateness of each school himself, and that there is thus not a "one size fits all" ranking. Others complain that common rankings shortchange schools due to geographical or demographic reasons. One critic has gone so far as to create a website that sarcastically ranks US magazines^[5]. US News is placed alone in the "Third Tier."

As a response to the prevalence of law school rankings, the ABA and the LSAC publish an annual law school guide. This guide, which does not seek to rank or sort law schools by any criteria, instead seeks to provide the reader with a set of standard, important data on which to judge law schools. It contains information on all 190 ABA-Approved Law Schools. This reference, called The Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schoolsis provided free online and also in print for a small cost. A similar guide for Canadian Law Schools is also published by the Law School Admission Council and is called Official Guide to Canadian Law Schools. These guides seek to serve as an alternative to the US News Rankings and Law School Rankings in General.

US News has not allowed these criticisms to go unanswered, however. They regularly outline and justify their methodology alongside the rankings, and have even published defenses of their value.^[6]

Power and Importance of Law School Rankings

Despite these criticisms, Law School Rankings in general and those by US News in particular play a very dramatic role in the world of legal education. When a schools ranking drops, fewer admitted applicants accept spots at the school, and people may get fired.^[7] Likewise, when a school rises in the rankings, the school often accidentally overenrolls. This pressure has also resulted in various schools "gaming the rankings." Some law schools reject applicants whose high LSAT scores indicate that they'll probably go elsewhere anyway, in order to appear more selective.^[8] Other schools, in an attempt to increase the amount of money spent per student, increase tuition and return it to the students as financial aid.^[9]

Law School Rankings carry more importance compared to those of other professional schools in their respective fields. This is in large part due to the nature of the United States' legal market. Whereas the average salary of an MD from a mid-tier institution is typically near that of MD's counterparts from more elite institutions, the disparity between the average salary for a graduate of a highly-ranked law school and a mid-tier law school can be quite large.

The Rankings by US News and World Report

As is noted above, the most recognized rankings are those by US News and World Report. The Law School Rankings are organized into three main sections: The first is a "Top 100" that lists the top hundred schools in order from highest ranked to lowest ranked. After that, US News groups the remaining 80 accredited law schools into two roughly unranked groups called "Third Tier" and "Fourth Tier" (note that the Top 100 includes both the first and second "tier").

Methodology

Each school is assigned an overall rank, which is normalized so that it is out of 100. This rank takes into account Quality Assesment (measured by opinion surveys), Selectivity (measured by incoming student profiles and the acceptance rate), Placement Success (measured by bar passage and employment rates), Faculty Resources (measured by expenditures, library volumes, and student/faculty ratio). The magazine gives 40 percent to reputation, 25 percent to selectivity, 20 percent to placement success and 15 percent to faculty resources, thus combinging these factors into an overall score.^[10]

Specialized US News Rankings

The annual issue also includes special rankings of specific programs, including Clinical Training and Dispute Resolution. These are based more on opinion surveys.

Consistency at the top of the US News Rankings

Although the US News has published an annual version of the rankings since 1989, there has been remarkable consistency at the top of the US News Rankings. Yale has been ranked first every single year. Additionally, Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia have always appeared in the top five.

There are exactly fourteen schools that have ever earned a top ten spot. These schools, listed below, have seen their ranking within the top fourteen spots shift frequently, but have not placed outside of the top fourteen since the inception of the annual rankings.^[11] Because of their variable placement within the top ten, but remarkable consistency of these fourteen schools at the top of all 180+ schools, they are occasionally referred to collectively as the "Top Fourteen" in published books on Law School Admissions,^[12] undergraduate university pre-law advisers ,^[13] professional law school consultants,^[14] and newspaper articles on the subject.^[15] Facetiously, they are also referred to as the "Top Ten".

Schools that have ranked in the top 10

The "Top Fourteen" schools according to US News and World Report Rankings are (in alphabetical order):^[16]

• Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, CA.
• Columbia Law School, Columbia University, in New York, NY.
• Cornell Law School, Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY.
• Duke University School of Law, Duke University, in Durham, NC.
• Georgetown University Law Center, Georgetown University, in Washington, DC.
• Harvard Law School, Harvard University, in Cambridge, MA.
• New York University School of Law, New York University, in New York, NY.
• Northwestern University School of Law, Northwestern University, in Chicago, IL.
• Stanford Law School, Stanford University, in Palo Alto, CA.
• University of Chicago Law School, University of Chicago, in Chicago, IL.
• University of Michigan Law School, University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, MI.
• University of Pennsylvania Law School, University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, PA.
• University of Virginia School of Law, University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, VA.
• Yale Law School, Yale University, in New Haven, CT.

Characteristics of the top schools in the US News Rankings

Although it is possible that the schools ranking in the top ten could be a result of systemic bias, i.e. either that legal scholars and practitioners hold consistent, erroneous views of their quality, or that the other factors used to determine the US News rankings such as GPA and LSAT scores are flawed variables, there nevertheless exist common characteristics across the schools. All current members serving on the Supreme Court graduated from one of these top schools. Reputation is also a key driver of their placement, according to Anna Ivey, noted law school admissions counselor, who declared that "A degree from a top-14 school will be portable nationally" in a Washington Post interview.^[17] Some have argued the consistent placement of these schools at the top has simply reinforced their position, leading to a "feedback loop" because of the heavy reliance by US News on opinion surveys.^[18]

Alternatives to the US News Rankings

There are a number of alternative Law School Rankings that have been prepared, often in response to those by US News. The Internet Legal Research Group has compiled links and background on many of these rankings at their website.

Cooley Rankings

The Cooley rankings are sometimes called the Brennan rankings, in reference to the President of Cooley Law School who is involved in their creation. Thomas M. Cooley Law School, a school consistently placed in the fourth tier by US News due to its low reputations scores and abysmal placement rates, struck back by creating its own set of rankings. The first edition of these rankings, called "Judging the Law Schools" was published in 1996 by Thomas E. Brennan, Sr., founder and president of the Cooley Law School.^[19] This online publication, now in its seventh edition, measures things such as library square footage and number of minority students, among dozens of other measures. This controversial list places Cooley above such prestigious law schools as Cornell, Stanford, Duke and the University of Chicago. It is available on Cooley's website.

Gourman Report

Dr. Jack Gourman is credited with being the first ranker of law schools. He is a professor at California State University--Northridge. The Gourman Report, a print book published by Princeton Review, ranks undergraduate and graduates schools. The last edition to include law school rankings was published in 1997. Among the criticisms particular to the Gourman Report rankings is that it favors large, public universities and the use of an opaque methodology that prevents the reader from careful analysis.^[20]

Hylton Rankings

Another new set of rankings which has prompted attention recently is the Hylton Rankings. Using US News data "without the clutter", the survey measures only LSAT (converted median) and peer assessment (by law professors). It should be noted that the top fourteen schools, though ordered differently, remain the same peer set. ^[21]

Law School 100

The Law School 100 refers to a website listing "America's Top Law Schools" from 1-100, supplemented with the remaining ABA-Approved schools listed alphabetically in a "second tier." This list is supposedly "based on qualitative, rather than quantitative, criteria." Despite this claim, however, the ad-riddled website hasn't been updated since 2004 and gives absolutely no description of its methodology or criteria. Given these shortcomings, these rankings have not achieved any degree of renown, popularity, or respect.^[22]

Leiter Rankings

Brian Leiter, a law professor at University of Texas School of Law, has prepared a set of various rankings that he dubs Leiter's Law School Rankings. These various rankings judge schools on factors similar to those used by US News--like incoming student LSAT/GPA profiles--but also on faculty reputation and scholarly research. This, he notes, puts the focus "exclusively on the three factors central to a good legal education: the quality of the faculty, the quality of the student body, and the quality of teaching." Among the criticisms of the Leiter Rankings is that they include various lists of schools ranked by individual factors, but no attempt is made to create a combined or overall ranking.

External links

• US News Top 100 Law Schools (2007 version)
• Leiter Rankings
• Internet Legal Research Group's Index to Law School Rankings
• Ranking US News (A collection of various criticisms of the US News Law School Rankings)
• Law Review Articls (PDF) (A listing of various published articles on Law School Rankings, compiled by University of Texas-Austin Professor Brian Leiter)
• Law School Rankings Symposium (Website for national symposium on law school rankings, including copies of papers and abstracts).

References

1. ^ ABA website s.v. "Rating of Law Schools"
2. ^ "The Rankings Game
3. ^ "Deans Speak Out" against rankings on the LSAC Website
4. ^ "Deans Question Relevance of Law School Rankings in theWashington Daily
5. ^ RankingUSNews.com
6. ^ See, for example, books by Richard Montauk, Anna Ivey, Robert H. Miller, and Susan Estrich
7. ^ e.g. University of Dayton Prelaw Advising Website and an SUNY Binghamton press release
8. ^ e.g. Loretta Deloggio and Anna Ivey
9. ^ e.g. 2005 Washington Post Article
10. ^ See the complete list on the US News website.
11. ^ Search for the terms "t14", "top fourteen", or "top 14" at XOXOHTH, LawSchoolDiscussion, and 4LawSchool
12. ^ Previous rankings can be found in back issues of the US News and World Report since 1989, or can be viewed together in a spreadsheet compilation
13. ^ Biographies of Current Supreme Court Justices (PDF)
14. ^ http://www.deloggio.com/usnews/usnews.htm
15. ^ American Bar Association Website and "The Interplay between Law School Rankings, Reputations, and Resource Allocation"
16. ^ Law Professors Blog
17. ^ See the complete first edition of "Judging the Law Schools" at ILRG's Website.
18. ^ The Law School 100
19. ^ US News Website "About the rankings"
20. ^ College Confidential Description of Gourman Rankings
21. ^ US News Defense of Law School Rankings
22. ^ Washington Post Interview