How Law Schools are usually Rated

Law schools can be ranked according to objective criteria. You'll see rankings based on the number of books in each law school's library, the qualifications and accomplishments of faculty members (as measured by how many books and articles they have produced), the quality of school facilities, and similar countable variables.

However, few of these have any direct bearing on the quality of education that a student is likely to receive. The world-famous research libraries possessed by Illinois and Yale (among others) are primarily of value to graduate students or scholars; although law students are required to do extensive research, they can manage quite well with the minimal library holdings that the American Bar Association requires all accredited law schools to possess. Because of these accreditation requirements, all law schools build their curriculums around the same basic courses. All teach most freshman and sophomore courses by the Socratic Method in large lecture sessions. All now have legal writing and clinical training programs.


Although the highest-rated schools have more well-known faculty members and are centers of legal scholarship, they don't necessarily provide better teaching. For example, the nightmarish, high-pressure freshman contracts course portrayed in the movie The Paper Chase was offered at Harvard. Professor Kingsfield, the remote and downright scary teacher, was represented as a lawyer of high professional reputation, the consultant of appellate judges. Lawyers who attended law schools of more modest reputation, on the other hand, can usually recall some concerned and hardworking teachers who had the ability to make difficult material understandable.

If this is so, are there any career advantages to attending a better law school? The answer is yes. The better a law school is, the more likely it is to offer consistent strength: to have all its courses taught by competent, if perhaps not inspired, teachers who have the time and resources to be effective. The better law schools offer extensive arrays of specialized programs; although they may not cover every specialty in the fast-changing legal world, they are most likely to provide well-qualified faculty members in the specialties that they do offer.

Because they possess these resources, the better law schools sometimes offer unique opportunities. Although all schools have clinical programs and all law students have some opportunity to work on real cases under supervision, only at Harvard can students-a very few students-work on the cases of noted appellate advocate Alan Dershowitz. All law schools publish student-edited law reviews, but only at the top schools can students work on reviews that are regularly read and quoted by appellate judges. It is mainly at the top schools that specialized reviews in newly emerging cutting-edge legal specialties, such as women's law, Hispanic-oriented law, and law and ecology, are begun.

These are advantages of top law schools that can be counted or measured; they're tangible. Mostly, however, as the Supreme Court observed in Sweatt v. Painter, * the qualities "which make for greatness in a law school" are "incapable of measurement." Though intangible, such things as "the reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the community, traditions and prestige" strongly affect the fate of a school's students.

If nothing else, because some law schools are thought to be better, they attract better students. Good students are at least as important as good teachers. Arguably, they are more important; they will arouse your curiosity, stimulate you to work hard, and even answer most of your questions. They will become lifelong friends and colleagues. Because top schools can choose their freshman classes from a pool of applicants-sometimes thirty or more for each vacancy, all of whom are extremely well qualified-they can gain the benefits of diversity as well as of individual talent.

Top law firms tend to recruit from top law schools, because they know that this is where high-quality students can consistently be found. For the same reason, many appellate judges fill their prestigious clerkships only from among the top graduates of the same schools. Certain kinds of legal jobs, such as teaching at a top law school or working for a blue-chip New York law firm, are almost impossible to attain unless you have attended a top law school. And the prestige of being a graduate of a top school will make it easier for you to secure legal employment nationwide.

You've probably noticed that this argument is circular: because these law schools have the reputation of being better, people treat them as though they are better. They then attract the better students, whose performance and eventual successes make the school look better. This case was decided in 1950, under old (and since overruled) precedents which held that states could operate segregated public schools as long as those schools were "separate but equal." The Supreme Court had to decide whether Texas's public law school for black students was truly equal to the University of Texas Law School, which was then restricted to white students. To answer this question, the Court had to determine how to evaluate the quality of a law school. Chief Justice Vinson's thoughtful opinion appears in vol. 339 of the United States Reports, beginning on p. 629, which perpetuates the school's reputation, which generates more success, which attracts more of the better students . . .

In other words, there's a house of mirrors here. Perhaps there's nothing underlying a law school's reputation for quality except a history of having such a reputation. Status may be based on nothing but perceptions, but it exists nevertheless. Top law schools do draw better students and faculty members; they do increase the career options available to their graduates.

If you have the grades and LSAT score to qualify for one of the nation's top law schools, you should consider attending it even if it has an unattractive location or other drawbacks. You'll get a similar, though proportionally smaller, reputational advantage if you attend a school of the second rank, and even of the third rank.