Law school rankings are a specific subset of college and university rankings dealing specifically with law schools. Like college and university rankings, law school rankings can be based on empirical data, subjectively-perceived qualitative data (often survey research of educators, law professors, lawyers, students, or others), or some combination of these.
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 U.S. News & World Report "Top Graduate Schools" listing. Beyond this popular list, there are numerous other law school rankings:
Criticisms of rankings
The American Bar Association (ABA), has consistently refused to support or participate in law school rankings. Likewise, the Law School Admission Council has shown opposition to rankings. The Association of American 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." Among the criticisms of law school rankings is that they are arbitrary 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. 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 Schools is 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.
Additionally, the American Bar Association issued the MacCrate Report in 1992, which outlined many fundamental problems with modern legal education and called for reform in American law schools. While the report was hailed as a "template for modern legal education", its practice-oriented tenets have met resistance by law schools continually ranked in the "top 14."
US News has not allowed these criticisms to go unanswered. They regularly outline and justify their methodology alongside the rankings, and have even published defenses of their value. Additionally, law professors William Henderson and Andrew Morriss have come out with a study criticizing law schools' (and the ABA's) refusal to adopt any better objective comparison method for the continued widespread reliance on U.S. News. Henderson and Morriss allege that law schools' attempts to "game" their U.S. News ranking by manipulating postgraduation employment statistics or applicant selectivity have led U.S. News to adjust its methodology accordingly, resulting in a counter-productive cycle. They go on to suggest that the ABA should use its accreditation power to mandate greater transparency in law schools' statistical reporting.
Many law students have also criticized the rankings (in particular, the Top 14 or T14 schools) because the rankings are misleading. For example, according to National Law Journal surveys, the career placement options facing Vanderbilt, UCLA, and University of Texas graduates is only marginally worse than Georgetown's. Some law students are beginning to suggest that the top 18 law schools belong in a similar category as the bottom of "Top 14" for purposes of evaluating a potential school.
Impact of 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 school's ranking drops, fewer admitted applicants accept spots at the school, and people may get fired. Likewise, when a school rises in the rankings, the school often accidentally over-enrolls. This pressure has also resulted in various schools "gaming the rankings." In a March 2003 article in Student Lawyer, Jane Easter Bahls stated that, in order to appear more selective, some law schools reject applicants whose high LSAT scores indicate that they probably would go somewhere else. 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.
Rankings by U.S. 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".
Methodology
Each school is assigned an overall rank, which is normalized so that it is out of 100. This rank takes into account Quality Assessment (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 combining these factors into an overall score.
Specialized U.S. 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 U.S. 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 Law School has been ranked first every single year. Additionally, Harvard, Columbia and Stanford have always appeared in the top five.
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.
There exists an informal category known as the top 14, or T14. 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. 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, undergraduate university pre-law advisers , professional law school consultants, and newspaper articles on the subject. Facetiously, they are also referred to as the "Top Ten."
Schools that consistently rank in the top 14
The "Top Fourteen" schools according to US News and World Report Rankings are (in alphabetical order):
- 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 Stanford, CA.
- University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, 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 U.S. News Rankings
There exist common characteristics across these top schools. Reputation is a key driver of their placement, according to Anna Ivey, noted law school admissions counselor, who declared, "A degree from a top-14 school will be portable nationally" in a Washington Post interview.
Alternatives to the U.S. 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 its website.
Judging the Law School Rankings
Judging the Law School Rankings are sometimes called the Brennan rankin
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