Ranking the Rankings

There are lots of law-related rankings out there. And many of them are law school-related rankings. But, with all apologies to Juvenal, quis iudices ipsos iudicabit? Why not me?

So, here’s the first-ever ranking of law school rankings. The methodology is simple: it’s wholly idiosyncratic based upon what I value, which is, of course, what I expect others to value. I can’t include all rankings, but I try to include some of the most significant ones out there.

1. Intentionally left blank. That’s right. The top slot goes to no ranking. Because I don’t think any of them deserve the top slot. Edgy.
2. Sisk-Leiter Scholarly Impact Study: Formally Sisk et al. at the University of St. Thomas, but operating under the Leiter methodology, the study tidily measures scholarly impact of tenured faculty in the last five years. As peer assessment is one of the most significant categories in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, it objectively quantifies much of the academy’s impressions. And absent Green Bag’s promised Deadwood Report, it’s the next best thing. As they say, “Do your job or get fired.” Drawbacks: narrow focus; rewards “old” scholarship that gets a number of recent hits; limited utility for prospective students (except that it provides a good indicator of the strength of the institution).
3. NLJ 250 Go-To Law Schools: It’s about as specific and clean a ranking as you can obtain: the percentage of graduates of each school who landed position at a NLJ 250 firm last year. It also finds alumni promoted to partner. Drawbacks: biglaw-centric; a single associate placement can significant change the percentages and ranking; does not include judicial clerkships, which can skew placement.
4. Princeton Review Rankings: The strongest trait of PR is perhaps counterintuitive: it refuses to create a comprehensive ranking, and instead provides 11 ranking lists. As overall quality is a difficult task, I, for one, admire the concession. Additionally, it provides student feedback from the relatively near past, a more immediate evaluation of the institution. Maybe you think it’s too quirky. I guess I like the fact that it’s trying to do something different than the field. Drawbacks: black box methodology that refuses to disclose response rates; some less-relevant categories; fairly subjective student surveys.
5. SSRN Top 350 U.S. Law Schools: One of the better ways to sort this data, I think, is by “total new downloads” in the last 12 months. That gives a sense for freshness, recency, and output. Drawbacks: narrow focus; driven heavily by a few heavy hitters.
6. The Black Student’s Guide to Law Schools: While this survey may not get very much attention, and is admittedly narrow in focus, I appreciate a serious reflection on aspects of legal education that are of real concern to law students. Cost and cost of living are important. One additional thoughtful factor: “Distinguished Black Alumni,” a category that helps identify the long-standing institutional quality in a unique way. Drawbacks: “local legal job access” factor (perhaps unjustifiably) punishes schools in more rural communities; narrow audience.
7. Rogers Williams Publication Study: With a more inclusive selection of journals [UPDATE: study of schools; a friend corrected that it only includes the top 50 journals, while Sisk-Leiter includes all journals] than the Sisk-Leiter studies, the study highlights some of the publications at “non-elite” law schools. For those who want to see school rankings all the way down, this fills a gap left by Sisk-Leiter. Drawbacks: narrow focus; relies on Washington & Lee Law Journal Combined Rankings scores from 2007, without updates; band-only rankings below top-40; nearly 20-year publication period may not detect more recent movement.
8. Law School Transparency Score Reports: It’s not a formal ranking, but there are a number of categories where one can rank schools from top-to-bottom. It nicely aggregates some of the data otherwise found in disparate places. For instance, here I sorted by the percentage of graduates in federal clerkships. You can poke around for admissions data, costs, or employment outcomes. The real problem is less the format; it’s the data itself. And this isn’t LST’s fault. It’s just that the schools have not been inclined to provide more detailed data. That leaves LST a nice place for sorting single characteristics of self-reported data, but not much else.
9. Wall Street Journal Law Blog’s Best Big Law Feeder Schools: The good folks at the WSJ took the ABA figures of those who landed full-time, long-term jobs at firms with more than 250 attorneys and made a chart. It is what it is: a much narrower, less useful version of the NLJ 250 list.
10. U.S. News & World Report: I don’t need to write anything about this, right? It’s far and away the most important to most prospective law students. But, in case you haven’t heard, there are flaws with it. And I’ll just say one thing about the methodology: 9.75% of the ranking is based on how expensive you are and how much money you spend on things like electricity, plumbing, and chalkboards. Really. The more expensive you are, the better your ranking. If you’re a prospective law student, re-read that bold sentence a few times. Think it over. Read about it. And ask Robert Morse why that’s still in there. As schools are looking for ways to cut costs, and as other rankings value low-cost options, USNWR still rewards high costs and high spending
11. Business Insider 50 Best Law Schools in America: It’s driven entirely by a survey of 650 readers, and only 60% have JDs. The curve is harsh: most schools score under a 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. Not a terribly scientific survey, but at least it measures perceptions and aggregates those perceptions into a score.
12. QS World Law School Rankings: I don’t know. Comparing Yale to Melbourne to Singapore to Monash to McGill is a little too broad a series of rankings to have much value. Unless, I suppose, you care passionately that your decision to attend Victoria University of Willington over Cornell was a wise investment.
13. Seto Rankings: Professor Theodore P. Seto’s rankings have been thoroughly debunked by my colleague Rob Anderson over at WITNESSETH. I certainly can’t top his perspective (DeLorean metaphors and all).
14. National Jurist Best Value Law School Rankings: An ostensibly noble project that tries to merge affordability, employment, and bar passage into a ranking. Unfortunately, it’s basically just a list of flagship state schools, and one with a number of flawed metrics because of data reporting.
15. Top Law Schools Rankings: What a hot mess. It includes the Gourman Report, which hasn’t been updated since 1997. Then, it lists Professor Brian Leiter’s “recently updated law school rankings,” which it doesn’t link. The first clue it’s out of date is the identification of Leiter as “a professor at the University of Texas law school.” And it turns out “recent” means 2002. Otherwise, it just lists the last four years’ worth of USNWR rankings. For a rankings list that concludes, “Put time and thought in to what is one of the most important decisions of your life,” one would expect some thought put into the rankings. But, if you’re interested in rankings possibly relevant to viewers of Seinfeld, Friends, and X-Files, go for it.
16. Cooley Rankings: Res ipsa. And who can resist repeating this justification for “Library Seating Capacity” as a factor: “To study, a student needs a place to sit.” But, at least the school stopped publishing its self-promotional rankings in 2010.

So, how would you rank the rankings? (And, by the way, if anyone in the future wants to rank the rankings rankings, let it be known that I was a first mover in this space.)