Law Schools
Harvard, Yale Rise to Top in Battle of the Law School Rankings
Posted Nov 2, 2007, 11:15 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
What is the best law school? The answer depends on the person or the entity doing the ranking. And there has been a whole lot of ranking going on.
Harvard came out on top in rankings by Judging the Law Schools and in a Google search conducted on Oct. 30. Judging compares all accredited law schools based on criteria identified as significant by the ABA's Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar.
And Yale is No. 1 according to University of Texas law professor Brian Leiter and U.S. News & World Report. Leiter bases his ranking on the number of scholarly citations to legal academics' work while U.S. News considers reputation and other factors such as LSAT scores. Leiter puts Harvard fourth in his rankings, while it gets the second spot in U.S. News.
But Harvard doesn’t even make it into the top five in a ranking devised by the TaxProf Blog using data from the Princeton Review. It puts the University of Chicago in the No. 1 spot, using categories focusing on academic excellence, admissions selectivity, career preparation and professors who are accessible and interesting.
Nearly all of the rankings are the subject of controversy and criticism. The Wall Street Journal reported in a recent article on the bad job market for some law grads that rankings don’t always provide the full picture for prospective students.
Tulane law school, for example, told U.S. News & World Report that law grads entering the job market in 2005 had a median salary of $135,000. But the figure was based on a survey completed by only 24 percent of the graduates, who “likely represent the cream of the class.”
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