Misplaced Pages

Law school rankings in the United States: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 19:30, 31 July 2009 editSmashville (talk | contribs)10,619 edits Undid revision 305322368 by Youngmann (talk) please see WP:OR← Previous edit Revision as of 19:52, 31 July 2009 edit undoYoungmann (talk | contribs)114 edits Undid revision 305322690 by Smashville (talk)Next edit →
Line 31: Line 31:
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.<ref name="boards">Search for the terms "t14", "top fourteen", or "top 14" at ], , and </ref> 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.<ref name="boards">Search for the terms "t14", "top fourteen", or "top 14" at ], , and </ref>


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.<ref name="t14">Previous rankings can be found in back issues of the US News and World Report since 1989, or can be viewed together in a </ref> 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,<ref name="books">See, for example, books by , , , and </ref> undergraduate university pre-law advisers ,<ref name="advisors">e.g. and an </ref> professional law school consultants,<ref name="consultants">e.g. , and </ref> and newspaper articles on the subject.<ref name="newspapers">e.g. </ref> Facetiously, they are also referred to as the "Top Ten". 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.<ref name="t14">Previous rankings can be found in back issues of the US News and World Report since 1989, or can be viewed together in a </ref> 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,<ref name="books">See, for example, books by , , , and </ref> undergraduate university pre-law advisers ,<ref name="advisors">e.g. and an </ref> professional law school consultants,<ref name="consultants">e.g. , and </ref> and newspaper articles on the subject.<ref name="newspapers">e.g. </ref> Facetiously, they are also referred to as the "Top Ten". Similarly, there are three schools who are almost certainly a lock for a spot in the top 3 according to the US News ranking, often called '''HYS''', or Harvard, Yale, Stanford, even though Yale has always, and probably will always be ranked number one. Yale is thought to be ranked number one over Harvard because it admits significantly fewer applicants because its first year law class is significantly smaller.


====Schools that consistently rank in the top 14==== ====Schools that consistently rank in the top 14====
Line 60: Line 60:
===Judging the Law School Rankings=== ===Judging the Law School Rankings===
'']'' are sometimes called the Brennan rankings, in reference to the President of Cooley Law School who was involved in their creation. '']'' are sometimes called the Brennan rankings, in reference to the President of Cooley Law School who was involved in their creation.
] - a school consistently placed in the fourth tier by US News - created its own set of rankings. The first edition of these rankings, called "Judging the Law Schools" was published in 1996 by ], founder and president of the Cooley Law School.<ref name="cooleyfirst">See the complete first edition of ''Judging the Law Schools'' at .</ref> This online publication, now in its tenth edition, measures only ABA data such as first time ] rates, LSAT scores, academic facilities, student and faculty diversity, as well as twenty other objective measures. It is available on . Academic, Brian Leiter, calls their system, which does not poll perceived ] and places Cooley Law School higher than schools such as Stanford and Berkeley's Boalt Hall, "Preposterous".<ref></ref> ] - a school consistently placed in the fourth tier by US News - created its own set of rankings. The first edition of these rankings, called "Judging the Law Schools" was published in 1996 by ], founder and president of the Cooley Law School.<ref name="cooleyfirst">See the complete first edition of ''Judging the Law Schools'' at .</ref> This online publication, now in its tenth edition, measures only ABA data such as first time ] rates, LSAT scores, academic facilities, student and faculty diversity, as well as twenty other objective measures. It is available on . Academic, Brian Leiter, calls their system, which does not poll perceived ] and places Cooley Law School higher than schools such as Stanford and Berkeley's Boalt Hall, "Preposterous".<ref></ref> The rankings system Cooley creates has presumably been a factor in the ] and ] world's aggressively negative attitude towards the school, and portrayal of the school as the worst in the country. Forums point to factors such as the amount of library chairs that Cooley accounts for in its ranking as an example of how absurd their system is. <ref>http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77913</ref> Cooley has attempted to rebut these criticisms with this statement on its website:
<blockquote>

"Unfortunately, some bloggers have taken to demeaning our approach, offering criticisms that make it clear that they have read none of the explanatory material we offer and making comments that reinforce their commitment to elitism."<ref>http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/intro_10th.htm</ref>
</blockquote>


===Gourman Report=== ===Gourman Report===
Line 80: Line 84:
{{External links|date=May 2009}} {{External links|date=May 2009}}
* *
*
* *
* *

Revision as of 19:52, 31 July 2009

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, Stanford, and Columbia 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". Similarly, there are three schools who are almost certainly a lock for a spot in the top 3 according to the US News ranking, often called HYS, or Harvard, Yale, Stanford, even though Yale has always, and probably will always be ranked number one. Yale is thought to be ranked number one over Harvard because it admits significantly fewer applicants because its first year law class is significantly smaller.

Schools that consistently rank in the top 14

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

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 rankings, in reference to the President of Cooley Law School who was involved in their creation. Thomas M. Cooley Law School - a school consistently placed in the fourth tier by US News - created 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. This online publication, now in its tenth edition, measures only ABA data such as first time bar passage rates, LSAT scores, academic facilities, student and faculty diversity, as well as twenty other objective measures. It is available on Cooley's website. Academic, Brian Leiter, calls their system, which does not poll perceived reputation and places Cooley Law School higher than schools such as Stanford and Berkeley's Boalt Hall, "Preposterous". The rankings system Cooley creates has presumably been a factor in the blogosphere and discussion board world's aggressively negative attitude towards the school, and portrayal of the school as the worst in the country. Forums point to factors such as the amount of library chairs that Cooley accounts for in its ranking as an example of how absurd their system is. Cooley has attempted to rebut these criticisms with this statement on its website:

"Unfortunately, some bloggers have taken to demeaning our approach, offering criticisms that make it clear that they have read none of the explanatory material we offer and making comments that reinforce their commitment to elitism."

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.

Hylton Rankings

Another new set of rankings, which has received attention recently, is the Hylton Rankings, prepared by Dr. J. Gordon Hylton of Marquette University's Law School. Hylton billed his rankings as US News data "without the clutter." The rankings consider only LSAT (converted median) and peer assessment (as measured by US News' survey of law professors). The much-discussed "top fourteen schools," though ordered differently, remain the same.

Leiter rankings

Brian Leiter, a law professor at University of Chicago 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, such as incoming student LSAT/GPA profiles, and 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 reflect certain biases of the other by including various lists of schools ranked by individual factors with no attempt to create an overall ranking that cumulatively takes into account all relevant factors.

Vault rankings

The career information and survey site Vault.com released its first set of law school rankings in 2008. Based solely on the surveys of nearly 400 hiring partners and recruiting professionals from across the United States, the rankings reflect how survey participants rated incoming associates on their research and writing skills, knowledge of legal doctrine, possession of other relevant knowledge (e.g., science for IP lawyers), and ability to manage a calendar and work with an assistant. Without turning directly to statistics or educational quality, the Vault rankings attempt to quantify which schools produce the most marketable graduates in the private sector. As of 2008, only the law schools with the top 25 cumulative scores received recognition.

References

  1. Top Graduate Schools, U.S. News & World Report
  2. ABA website s.v. "Rating of Law Schools"
  3. "The Rankings Game
  4. "Deans Speak Out" against rankings on the LSAC Website
  5. "Deans Question Relevance of Law School Rankings in theWashington Daily
  6. RankingUSNews.com
  7. The MacCrate Report
  8. Crossing the Bar - Law Schools and Their Disciples
  9. US News Defense of Law School Rankings
  10. ^ Rankling Rankings, American Lawyer, Jun. 18, 2007; see also Measuring Outcomes: Post-Graduation Measures of Success in the U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings, Morriss and Henderson, SSRN abstract.
  11. USNews Law School Rankings, DeLoggio Admissions Achievement Program website
  12. Law.com - Law Schools Play the Ranking Game
  13. ^ American Bar Association Website and "The Interplay between Law School Rankings, Reputations, and Resource Allocation"
  14. US News Website "About the rankings"
  15. Search for the terms "t14", "top fourteen", or "top 14" at Xoxohth, LawSchoolDiscussion, and 4LawSchool
  16. 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
  17. See, for example, books by Richard Montauk, Anna Ivey, Robert H. Miller, and Susan Estrich
  18. e.g. University of Dayton Prelaw Advising Website and an SUNY Binghamton press release
  19. e.g. Loretta DeLoggio, Ezra Goldschlager and Anna Ivey
  20. e.g. 2005 Washington Post Article
  21. See the complete list on the US News website.
  22. Washington Post Interview
  23. See the complete first edition of Judging the Law Schools at ILRG's Website.
  24. Brian Leiter's Law School Reports: The Cooley Law School Rankings
  25. http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=77913
  26. http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/intro_10th.htm
  27. College Confidential Description of Gourman Rankings
  28. Law Professors Blog
  29. Leiter's Law School Rankings
  30. Concurring Opinions: Rankings Bias
  31. Vault Top 25 Law Schools

External links

This article's use of external links may not follow Misplaced Pages's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Categories: