The February 2013 issue of The National Jurist contains a law school ranking alternative to U.S. News & World Report using the following methodology:
Post-Graduate Success: 50%
Employment Rate: 22.5%
Super Lawyers: 12.5%
Partners in NLJ 200: 10%
Bar Passage: 5%Student Satisfaction: 35%
RateMyProfessors.com: 20%
Princeton Review: 15%Affordability and Diversity: 15%
Debt: 10%
Diversity: 5%
Here are the Top 50 law schools under this methodology:
- Stanford
- Virginia
- UC-Berkeley
- Vanderbilt
- Alabama
- Harvard
- Columbia
- Pennsylvania
- Texas Tech
- North Carolina
- LSU
- Duke
- Yale
- George Washington
- Oklahoma
- Wisconsin
- Michigan
- Baylor
- Boston University
- BYU
- Cornell
- Arizona
- Richmond
- Emory
- Northwestern
- Georgia
- UC-Davis
- U. Washington
- Utah
- Louisville
- Washington U.
- Illinois
- NYU
- Florida State
- Indiana-Bloomington
- Arizona State
- Texas
- Ohio State
- UMKC
- Colorado
- SMU
- Samford
- William & Mary
- Georgetown
- Houston
- St. Mary's
- Mississippi
- Boston College
- Washington & Lee
- Hawaii
Brian Leiter (Chicago), National Jurist in Competition to Displace Thomas Cooley Rankings as Biggest Joke in Legal Academia:
Years ago, when Texas had the misfortune to be #1 in the Cooley rankings,
the law school was asked by the public affairs department whether we
wanted to produce a press release; the immediate answer was, "No, don't
mention it, it's an embarrassment to be #1 in the Cooley rankings." National Jurist has now replicated the Cooley feat, with a somewhat more baroque methodology that can only make Bob Morse and the U.S. News editors smile, since it makes their approach look like rocket science. Like U.S. News, the National Jurist
has a multitude of different factors, all inexplicably weighted (5% for
bar pas rate and diversity, but 12.5% for the number of Super Lawyer alumni!), but some of which are independently interesting, but aggregated make no sense.But the coup de grace is that 20% of the overall score is based on Rate My Professors, the notorious on-line rating site used mainly by undergraduates, and hardly at all by law students. (In a remarkable display of editorial good judgment, Jack Crittenden, the editor, decided not to incorporate the "hotness" score, however.) …
I hope Mr. Crittenden will have the good sense to issue a retraction
and apology for putting this misinformation into circulation. It's the second time in recent months that they have put out misleading rankings. Maybe this signals desperation, I don't know.If readers catch any law schools publicizing their National Jurist ranking, please let me know.
