Top Law Schools

I think it's tough to rank these because US News isn't so dispositive for b-school, so I've done this based on a rough approximation based on Business Week, Financial Times, and WSJ. I gave the most weight to FT and the least to WSJ as I think FT's criteria make the most sense. I also didn't go purely based on numbers. Yale, for example, is probably higher than it should be based on raw rank alone because I think the name of the law school carries enough weight that the numbers don't tell the full story. Basically, it's my gut feeling on how they stack up loosely backed by rankings.

1. Harvard
1. Stanford
3. Columbia
4. Chicago
4. Penn
6. NYU
6. Northwestern
6. Yale
9. Michigan
10. UC Berkeley
11. UVA
12. Duke
13. Cornell
14. Georgetown

What are you trying to do here? Joint degrees are inherently hard to rank since there are two different career tracks. If you wanted to do corporate law I would say that Yale is similar to if not better than HBS/HLS. On the other hand if you wanted to go into PE/VC or ibanking then Penn or HLS/HBS are your best bets. Either way Harvard is close to if not the top of the list for both law and business, so you can't go wrong.

bdubs wrote:What are you trying to do here? Joint degrees are inherently hard to rank since there are two different career tracks. If you wanted to do corporate law I would say that Yale is similar to if not better than HBS/HLS. On the other hand if you wanted to go into PE/VC or ibanking then Penn or HLS/HBS are your best bets. Either way Harvard is close to if not the top of the list for both law and business, so you can't go wrong.

I think that for corporate law the traditional US News rankings work as a fine proxy. I am not ranking this with any single career track in mind, but you make a good point. I think it's a reasonable list for traditional jobs out of law and business schools - law, finance, and consulting. As you can see, I made a lot of ties as it can result in a lot of arbitrary hair splitting to rank everything individually at this level. Basically just a rough list for discussion.

Your first post is a bs ranking?

You have promise.

dextermorgan wrote:Your first post is a bs ranking?

You have promise.

Yes, and I'm very impressed by your near 2000 posts. You must be a really busy person. Obviously it's not scientific, I just wanted to generate discussion as I think a lot of people are looking for a good way to assess how programs compare.

Stanford and Harvard JD/MBA programs are the top choices. Any other combination will cause you to lose on one end. However, Northwestern and Penn would likely be the next two JD/MBA programs.

If you want to do this you should break it out by program length.

Personal opinions below

Best 3 year JD/MBA for law:
Yale
Columbia
Penn
Northwestern
Duke (quasi 3 yr)
Cornell

Best 3 year JD/MBA for business:
Penn
Northwestern
Columbia
Duke (quasi 3 yr)
Yale
Cornell

Best 4 year program for law:
Stanford
Harvard
Chicago
NYU
Berkeley
Michigan
Georgetown


Best 4 year program for business:
Harvard
Stanford
Chicago
NYU
Berkeley
Michigan
Georgetown

bdubs wrote:If you want to do this you should break it out by program length.

Personal opinions below

Best 3 year JD/MBA for law:
Yale
Columbia
Penn
Northwestern
Duke (quasi 3 yr)
Cornell

Best 3 year JD/MBA for business:
Penn
Northwestern
Columbia
Duke (quasi 3 yr)
Yale
Cornell

Best 4 year program for law:
Stanford
Harvard
Chicago
NYU
Berkeley
Michigan
Georgetown


Best 4 year program for business:
Harvard
Stanford
Chicago
NYU
Berkeley
Michigan
Georgetown

Why do Columbia and Penn drop out of your four year ranks?

NewJersey1 wrote:Why do Columbia and Penn drop out of your four year ranks?

I assumed that if given the option, almost everyone would complete both degrees in three years.

Northwestern probably should be higher ranked because the Northwestern JD program encourages teamwork which is typical for most MBA programs.
1) Harvard
1) Stanford
3) Northwestern
3) Penn

However, bdubs ranking categories makes sense to me.

CanadianWolf wrote:Northwestern probably should be higher ranked because the Northwestern JD program encourages teamwork which is typical for most MBA programs.
1) Harvard
1) Stanford
3) Northwestern
3) Penn

However, bdubs ranking categories makes sense to me.

Teamwork means Kellogg is better than Wharton? Or NU's law school bests Penn's? Lol...

bdub's ranking looks legit though.

...

cooley bro

.