Utilizing Law School Rankings

The ranking of law schools is a very uncertain science. Organizations and individuals undertaking these rankings are confronted by daunting methodological problems. From an immense amount of information, a few factors must necessarily be singled out and calculated—all in order to provide "scores" that allow readers to differentiate among schools that have performed almost identically.

For example, how important is it to have a library of 1,000,000 volumes rather than 600,000 volumes, and how does that compare with having a student body LSAT average of 168 rather than 171? Is the school with 1,000,000 volumes and a LSAT average of 168 better than the school with 600,000 and 171, respectively? Or is it equal to it, or worse? It is not obvious how the two schools should be compared, even when two relatively simple quantitative measures are employed. The problem is made infinitely more complicated when numerous other factors are considered, especially because many of these are inherently subjective rather than easily and objectively quantifiable.


Several bypasses are available to the ranking organizations. They can examine the opinions of those doing the hiring at major firms, taking the likely employers of JDs as the ultimate arbiters of worth. (To an extent this is correct, of course, insofar as JDs tend to view the value of their degree in large measure as a matter of what employment doors it opens.) Another possible shortcut is to examine the earnings of the graduates of each school, relying again on the market as the arbiter of the value of the JDs from the various schools. Unfortunately, these shortcuts also suffer from limitations. Some are due to the fact that an overall ranking for a school does not distinguish between how its private-practice graduates do and how its public-interest graduates fare. Nor does it take account of the fact that its graduates may do very well locally but not in another region (or country). Thus, if a school is rated highly because its graduates make a lot of money in private practice, but you intend to work as a public defender, this school may not boost your salary—or employment options—more than another school would.

Some Warnings

Rankings are useful as a very rough guide to the reputation and quality of different programs. Most people take them far too seriously, however, when considering where to apply. It is inappropriate to take the latest U.S. News ranking and limit yourself to the top five schools in the list. The schools differ enough in their goals, programs, and atmospheres that a person who will be well served by one may be poorly served by another. To take an obvious example, a person who is determined to study Intellectual Property should be looking at Stanford rather than Chicago. Both are superb, but their missions and offerings are quite different. Stanford, in addition to being located in the hi-tech hotbed of Silicon Valley, offers more than a dozen relevant courses—where Chicago has less than a handful.

These concerns give rise to some guidelines for using rankings:

1. Look at as many rankings as possible and consider the consensus rather than any one ranking.
   
   
2. Consider even this consensus view as only an approximation of the appropriate tier for a school. Thus, a school ranked about tenth to fifteenth in various rankings should be regarded as a very fine school, to be taken very seriously, but whether it should be ranked in the top 5 or merely the top 20 is not determinable.
   
   
3. Because you should be looking for the best program to meet your specific subject and other needs, with an atmosphere in which you will thrive, the rankings have only a modest part to play in helping you to find this program. They have little to say about which school will provide the courses that will be most useful, the connections that will matter most for the job and region in which you wish to be employed, the academic and social environments at each school, and other key factors.

Limitations of the Rankings' Methodologies

Rankings of schools can be based on different factors. Simple rankings may measure nothing more than the vaguely phrased "student selectivity"; others place most importance on the opinions of academics and legal professionals. These rankings do not provide precise measures of the quality of programs. They do, however, influence both the number and quality of applicants to specific programs, and, as a result, the number and quality of recruiters hiring graduates of the school.

In general it is clear that there are a number of problems any rater of schools must address. What does "best" mean? Is it the school that has the smallest class sizes, is most concerned with clinical training, best prepares students to be litigators, nets graduates the highest salaries, best prepares someone in a particular field, or is the least painful to get through? A rater who chooses any one definition to the exclusion of all others is still faced with potentially insurmountable problems. This is why you owe it to yourself to scrutinize the methodology behind each ranking before assuming its merit.

It is impossible for a ranking to assess (accurately or otherwise) the large number of concerns, requirements, and questions that every conscientious law school applicant has. As an approximate gauge of a school's reputation, however, the rankings—taken together—can be useful indicators. Their rough and ready nature, however, suggests that they should be indicating the broad class to which a school belongs rather than the precise ranking it should enjoy.

Ultimately, whether the rankings determine reputation or measure it ceases to be the issue. The school considered "best"—by whatever standards—will generally attract the "best" students and "best" employers. Because you are bound to benefit as much from your peers as your professors, and are undoubtedly concerned primarily about your job opportunities, reputation is an extremely important factor to consider.