Best Law School Ranking List???? I know it isn't U.S. News!

[Rondo]

here are the US News law school rankings adjusted for some fishy emplyment stats the schools employ...not much movement in the top 25 but some big jumps lower down:

http://www.jdoasis.com/law-school-usnews-rankings-flawedheres-why

[Thane Messinger]

I know U.S. News is head shoulders above the rest when it comes to the list that matters the most in the perception of the world BUT it is certainly NOT the best list in my opinion. So what is the best list based on methodology, career prospects, admission data, reputation, etc? I mean, the whole purpose of these lists is to determine which schools will give you, the prospective law student, the best chance of success. I know that no list is perfect, but there has to be some kind of hierarchy. U.S. News cannot possibly be the best list out there...even if it is the most used and watched list.

As a contrarian view, it is foolish to seek a ranking system better than U.S. News.  It's not a question of perfection.  It's a question of filters.  Aside from the fact that U.S. News is the ranking system because it is believed to be that system (a statement that could be said of the legal system as well), it factors in just about every reasonably factor-able factor to be factored.  If one disagrees with a specific variable, fine; refigure that according to your preferences.  But it won't make a measureable difference on employers.

Far more important than the ranking is what you do with it.  Depending upon your stats, you should view the layers of schools as nearly independent sets of potential schools.  There isn't "a" ranking; there are several. 

What no one should do is choose Law School A at rank #25 over Law School B at rank #28.  The rankings are not linear.

[NonTradInSATX]

U.S. News is the best ranking out there right now and it does factor in the most important aspects.  However, my objection to their rankings is the reliance on personal opinion of reputation from unqualified persons.  I call these persons unqualified because a judge in New York or Hawaii is unlikely to have any experience with a graduate of a Texas law school, yet they are asked to rank the school. 

Because of this, anything below the top 50 is going to be a regional school and anyone outside the region is less likely to be able to accurately assess the quality of the graduates.  Therefore, the further down the list you go, the less the actual ranking matters.

(On an aside, I suspect this favors schools in more densely populated regions like the Northeast, etc. potentially giving them an artificial boost up the rankings.)

[Thane Messinger]

U.S. News is the best ranking out there right now and it does factor in the most important aspects.  However, my objection to their rankings is the reliance on personal opinion of reputation from unqualified persons.  I call these persons unqualified because a judge in New York or Hawaii is unlikely to have any experience with a graduate of a Texas law school, yet they are asked to rank the school. 

Because of this, anything below the top 50 is going to be a regional school and anyone outside the region is less likely to be able to accurately assess the quality of the graduates.  Therefore, the further down the list you go, the less the actual ranking matters.

(On an aside, I suspect this favors schools in more densely populated regions like the Northeast, etc. potentially giving them an artificial boost up the rankings.)

Quite right as to all points.  This is why we should look at rankings in groupings and location and one's own specific circumstances, rather than as a linear (supposed) truth.  It is pointless to compare Harvard with [choose your Tier 1, 2, 3, 4 favorite here].  It doesn't matter who's doing the judging, or how "subjective" is their judgment, collective or individual.  Likewise, it is misleading to compare law schools within a half-dozen places of each other--or even within a few dozen places of each other, depending upon one's specific, singular factors. 

To take Texas as an example, even with UT-Austin as the lead school in the state, there are still numerous other factors.  For a major employer in, say, Houston, a UT grad will compete with one from Harvard . . . and the Longhorn might well be at the disadvantage, depending upon individual factors.  (i.e., here's where individual performance and connections count.)  But for a smaller firm, the assumption is that the Harvard grad is slumming, and perhaps somehow couldn't land a job at a "real" firm to which Harvard grads are presumed to be headed.  Even that is simplistic: a "major" firm can be a branch office of a national firm, or a top regional firm.  Believe it or not, the top regional firm will, in general, be better regarded within that market than the national firm's branch.  Why?  Because the regional firm is a full-service firm, handling all matters of top clients from that area; the branch is likely there to serve a national or global client, but might have a relative handful of attorneys.  Not that the national firm's attorneys will not be taken seriously--they just won't be as significant a force in that market.  In each market, something similar is operating.  San Antonio, as you know, is very much its own culture, quite distinct from Dallas, Houston, Austin, and, well, every other of the 26 (?) cities in Texas.  Comparing San Antonio to Lubbock is not just misleading, it's downright silly--and yet both cities have lawyers, judges, firms, and new openings.  In short, there's a lot more to rank, prestige, etc., than a grossly simplistic, single "ranking" system.

[bigs5068]

Yea the rankings are a real shaky system. I don't even really think it is U.S. News Rankings fault it is just people dying to have someone else make decisions for them. Choosing a law school is hard and most 0L's have no idea what to do. If some magazine out there says so and so school is 50th best then it is nice and easy to choose the 50th best school over the 68th or 72nd best ranked school, even though the system is based on nothing.

I don't know if it is only America, but it seems like our culture is completely rank obsessed. Nobody questoins the people making these rankers, I love hearing how America's public education is 43rd in the world now or whatever it is. I taught in a high school in China and can tell you it was not top notch education out there and I have no idea how you would compare American education to Chinese education and rank it? Surprising as it may be America and China have very different attitudes about a lot of different things and to rank them makes little sense to me.

MaxPreps for high school basketball has just surfaced over the past few years and ranked every single high school look yours up from 1-20,000 in every sport. Again what is this ranking based on? Some people based in the (530) area code, which is Tahoe/Chico area. Small freaking towns making nationally rankings that scouts look at and are often disappointed. I remember being ranked a top prospect as a freshman on this site without having played a varsity game. It really didn't make sense, but that is what happens when you can just make numbers up. There is no way to really question it and I gladly accepted the completely false ranking.

Law schools have the same deal. Really is Gonzaga better than Florida International University? I have absolutley no clue and I imagine nobody really knows the answer. U.S. News saw a market and people are gullible enough to buy into it and I myself was guilty of that as a 0L. Any ABA school will teach you the law and permit you to practice in any jurisdiction. Harvard is probably going to give you an edge of New England law. The admission standards are just so high, the name so impressive, that I think almost anyone would choose Harvard.  Still even there I imagine many of the things taught are the same at each school. You wold read Pennoyer v. Neff, International Shoe, understand the UCC, the list goes on and I can't imagine those differing from school to school. The same textbooks and the same cases are read. I feel like the law is one of the most uniform professions in the world. There are 9 guys writing most of the laws in textbooks i.e. the Supreme Court what they say applies equally to a Harvard Grad or a GGU grad and it is all open to interpretation.

Bottom line of the whole rant is use common sense when picking your law school. I think it is pretty obvious that you should choose UCLA over Southwestern or Stanford over GGU. When it comes down to choosing between Southwestern over Chapman or Suffolk over New England, because some magazine said one was ranked 78th and the other 92nd be real careful.

[fortook]

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/nfl_analogy.html

http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/overall2010.html

Someone really should congradulate Cooley; they went from #12 in their own rankings up to #2 beat only by Harvard.

Take that Princton, Yale,etc,etc.......

I've heard about the Cooley list, but honestly thought it was a joke. Wow what were they thinking?  If you read the article they shift from percentages to actual numbers to make Cooley look better to someone not paying attention or a little slow.  They are the Fox News of law school rankings.  Marvelously absurd.  Cheers Cooley.

[Morten Lund]

... it is foolish to seek a ranking system better than U.S. News.  It's not a question of perfection.  It's a question of filters.  Aside from the fact that U.S. News is the ranking system because it is believed to be that system (a statement that could be said of the legal system as well), it factors in just about every reasonably factor-able factor to be factored.  If one disagrees with a specific variable, fine; refigure that according to your preferences.  But it won't make a measureable difference on employers.

This.

Based on the definition of "better" provided by the OP, it is hard to be "better" than U.S. News.  In fact, no other ranking system even matters at all, because that is the list read by all the employers.  When a hiring attorney inquires about the ranking of a candidate's law school, it is the U.S. News rank that is inquired about, and the only rank that is of interest to that hiring attorney.

Now, if you want to consult a different ranking system for some particular purpose, that's fine - but the market has spoken, and there is 100% truthiness to the statement that "the U.S. News law school ranking is the best one."  From a strict marketability perspective, therefore, it would be foolish to consider any other ranking system.

[MikePing]

The thing to remember about USN rankings is that they are a ranking of each school's reputation.

Reputation should factor into a person's choice of school, but it usually shouldn't be outcome determinative. 

IMO each potential law student should consider many different factors, reputation being on of them, and make their own T25 list.