Regional Presence Vs Rank Forum

[jag13]

At what value do you all place regional presence versus a national US rank? for example an upper T2 school which has huge regional presence in a good market versus a T1 school with just a better ranking?

[guynourmin]

Outside of the t14 Regional presence trumps rank 100% of the time.

[existentialcrisis]

USNWR Rankings are essentially worthless. If you aren't going to a T14, then go to school where you want to work. I.e. if you want to work in Florida, it is entirely meaningless that ASU or Minnesota are ranked higher than UF or FSU.

[donewithannarbor]

Agree with the prior posts, and moreover, if there are say 3 or 4 law schools servicing a city, region, the one with the most regional clout (or total clout for that matter) is in many cases not going to be the one with the highest USNWR ranking. This is particularly true given the minute statistical differences USNWR ranks can be made-or-broken with (to say nothing of the largely questionable input be weighed heavily in these ranks); if you have a #45 v #75, or #60 v. #90 in your selected region, you need to examine both and you may well find that the "lower" one is the better one for your area of practice. Or just better period. Really the only value in USNWR is how it clarifies what the really shit schools are, i.e. beyond #125, but even here I have to pause and say that some shit gets included in the top 100, while in a few cases a schools you might consider under the right circumstance (i.e. low cost, strong feeder into your desired job) might slip down near that cut off.