tier question

[bessann]

Hello,
This may sounds like a dumb question, but I am from Canada and am not completely familiar with the American law school system. How do you know what tier a school is in? I can guess that the top 14 or so are in the first tier, but how about the others?
Thanks!!!:-)

[Iggy]

My understanding, at least from having bought US News this year, is that tiers 1 and 2 are put together to form the "top 100," the first 50 being tier 1 and the second 50 being tier 2.

US News then says that the rest of the schools are fall into two groups that are largely similar, so it would be silly to try and rank them one by one. So the next 37 are tier 3 and the rest, about 40, are tier 4.

Of course it's all very hotly contested, whether one can "rank" at all, and depending on who you ask different schools might end up in different spots, but that's the general idea.

[Ivy_Hopeful]

Iggy's right, tier 1 is the top 50 tier 2 is 51-100 tier 3 and four aren't given any rank but just alphabetical order.  The top schools are known as the top 10 (Usually Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, U of Michigain, Berkley (Boalyon Hall), Boston, UCLA, Cornell, and Georgetown grace these spots).

But according to many scholars, Ranking Law Schools in general is exceedingle subjective and should only serve as a general starting point in comparing law schools.