T14, Tier 1 law schools, Tier 2 law schools, Tier 3, Tier 4 Forum

[Harvey Dent]

Ok, t14 is pretty clear. same with Tier 3 and Tier 4. But where do you draw the line between tier 1 law schools and tier 2 law schools? Are tier 1 law schools the top 50? 25? I wish these categories were laid out explicitly instead of the top 100 schools on USNWR being under the category "top law schools."

[nonunique]

My understanding is that your categories go top 14 law schools, with tier 1 law schools being up to the top 50, tier 2 law schools being 50-100, tier 3 law schools being 100-150, with tier 4 law schools being the remainder, or roughly from 150 to 185.

[RVP11]

I know that technically, 15-50 is what is generally known as tier 1 law schools (if we're considering T14 its own tier, which it should be), but personally my own imaginary cutoff for tier 1 law schools is more like T30, because after that number schools are become much more regional. Some on here would have you believe that anything outside of T14 is a regional school, but plenty of 15-30 have very good national placement (UCLA, Vandy, BC/BU, GWU, Notre Dame, to name a few) while very few (none that I can think of) of 30-50 have significant national placement. So I think Tier 1 law schools should be defined by still having some national placement and thus ending at the top 30 law schools.

50 just seems like an arbitrary cutoff point. Should the University of Arizona really be considered amongst Tier 1 law school while Arizona State University is not when grads from both schools are almost completely restricted to practice within AZ? There's not much of a difference in quality between rank 45 and rank 55, there's a largre gap in quality between, say, rank 25 and rank 35. I think the in-depth and exclusive law school profiles of Tier 1 law schools on the rankings page captures the differences in employment prospects at http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html

[billbob]

Some schools in the 40s have decent national placement, while some schools in the 30s have awful placement.

tier 1 law schools are any school 15-50. Tier 2 is 50-100. Tier 3 and four are kinda hazy, for instance Suffolk is tier 4, Northeastern is tier 2, and New England is tier 4. But Suffolk and Northeastern will get you much better jobs in Boston than New England.