Top Law Schools

what do people think of this ranking? http://www.lawschool100.com
how is it ranked?

"qualitative rather than quantitative"

timertimer61 wrote:what do people think of this ranking? http://www.lawschool100.com
how is it ranked?

lol. do you really have to ask? It was obviously made by a HLS troll. Not to mention the hideous layout of the webpage with tons of ads.

not credible whatsoever.

Blatant anti-duke trolling.

I can get those rankings on my iPhone? Oh snap.

How useful can a ranking system be that has that many 5 and 6 way ties in it?

I love how it says it's qualitative not quantitative, but then just lists the schools by numbered ranking without any criteria for what qualitative factors were used to determine the ranking. Irony alert!

Any thoughts on AD's Selectivity Ranking? ( http://www.admissionsdean.com/researching_law_schools ).

No particular thoughts on that, but the poll of polls is interesting. The t2 that is probably going to be my future school goes up 20 spots there! Also it knocks Cornell out of the t14.

shadowfrost000 wrote:Blatant anti-duke trolling.

I was thinking subtle Georgetown trolling and blatant Harvard trolling.

you all are going to hate me but i think it does a pretty good job of breaking down the schools into groups based roughly on their peer assessment scores and general reputations. with the exception of HYS.

School rankings matter little. Class rankings matter a lot.

http://www.law.com/jsp/law/careercenter ... 8256428026

tallboone wrote:you all are going to hate me but i think it does a pretty good job of breaking down the schools into groups based roughly on their peer assessment scores and general reputations. with the exception of HYS.

I would trust a lot of TLS users to be smart enough to not group Duke and USC or Cornell/GULC and MPVB or Texas and BC. Does anybody else find it odd that the author of the website described UNC as "Carolina Law"?

kurguzy wrote:School rankings matter little. Class rankings matter a lot.

http://www.law.com/jsp/law/careercenter ... 8256428026

Actually what matters a lot is both, ITE.

I have been around TLS for quite some time now reading the threads and posts. One thing occurrs to me when it comes to rankings: people really seem to give a lot of credibility to the USNWR that it doesn't deserve, and that colors their perceptions of alternative rankings. What makes Bob Morse (of USN) the arbiter of what factors should be most important in assessing the merits of a law school? He and his USN cohorts are neither law partners, law deans, law professors, nor students.

How does he come up with the weights applied to the metrics? Did he ever survey the "experts" I mentioned to find out what they thought of them before he began circulating the rankings in the first place? I doubt it. That alone makes it an arbitrary process. And Leiter's rankings are not much better. The mass groupings of the LS100 seem to make more sense than anything else I have seen. But it would be nice to know exactly how LS100 arrived at its rankings.

kurguzy wrote:School rankings matter little. Class rankings matter a lot.

http://www.law.com/jsp/law/careercenter ... 8256428026

I agree with the conclusion from the article. I'm not sure you read the bolded part though.

For the vast majority of students who are not admitted to top-tier national law schools, these figures lead to a simple conclusion: Slavishly following the U.S. News rankings will not significantly increase one's large-firm job prospects. And the excess debt that students incur is likely to undermine their career options.

PDaddy wrote:I have been around TLS for quite some time now reading the threads and posts. One thing occurrs to me when it comes to rankings: people really seem to give a lot of credibility to the USNWR that it doesn't deserve, and that colors their perceptions of alternative rankings.

Actually what people here seem to do is give credit to the rankings of the national and super-regional schools, and then say that it doesn't matter where any school below those is ranked, you'd better 1) do really well there (top 25% of your class at least if not better) and 2) plan on working in that school's region when you graduate.

And this is generally accurate.

PDaddy wrote:I have been around TLS for quite some time now reading the threads and posts. One thing occurrs to me when it comes to rankings: people really seem to give a lot of credibility to the USNWR that it doesn't deserve, and that colors their perceptions of alternative rankings. What makes Bob Morse (of USN) the arbiter of what factors should be most important in assessing the merits of a law school? He and his USN cohorts are neither law partners, law deans, law professors, nor students.

How does he come up with the weights applied to the metrics? Did he ever survey the "experts" I mentioned to find out what they thought of them before he began circulating the rankings in the first place? I doubt it. That alone makes it an arbitrary process. And Leiter's rankings are not much better. The mass groupings of the LS100 seem to make more sense than anything else I have seen. But it would be nice to know exactly how LS100 arrived at its rankings.

But law schools buy into it. That gives Bob his power.

Helmholtz wrote:

tallboone wrote:you all are going to hate me but i think it does a pretty good job of breaking down the schools into groups based roughly on their peer assessment scores and general reputations. with the exception of HYS.

I would trust a lot of TLS users to be smart enough to not group Duke and USC or Cornell/GULC and MPVB or Texas and BC. Does anybody else find it odd that the author of the website described UNC as "Carolina Law"?

+1 on the lunacy of saying Duke and USC are peer schools.

bees wrote:

PDaddy wrote:I have been around TLS for quite some time now reading the threads and posts. One thing occurrs to me when it comes to rankings: people really seem to give a lot of credibility to the USNWR that it doesn't deserve, and that colors their perceptions of alternative rankings. What makes Bob Morse (of USN) the arbiter of what factors should be most important in assessing the merits of a law school? He and his USN cohorts are neither law partners, law deans, law professors, nor students.

How does he come up with the weights applied to the metrics? Did he ever survey the "experts" I mentioned to find out what they thought of them before he began circulating the rankings in the first place? I doubt it. That alone makes it an arbitrary process. And Leiter's rankings are not much better. The mass groupings of the LS100 seem to make more sense than anything else I have seen. But it would be nice to know exactly how LS100 arrived at its rankings.

But law schools buy into it. That gives Bob his power.

No they don't, USNWR just makes sure their rankings roughly match hiring trends.

EDIT: I'm retarded and read that as law firms, instead of law schools.

Desert Fox wrote:

bees wrote:

PDaddy wrote:I have been around TLS for quite some time now reading the threads and posts. One thing occurrs to me when it comes to rankings: people really seem to give a lot of credibility to the USNWR that it doesn't deserve, and that colors their perceptions of alternative rankings. What makes Bob Morse (of USN) the arbiter of what factors should be most important in assessing the merits of a law school? He and his USN cohorts are neither law partners, law deans, law professors, nor students.

How does he come up with the weights applied to the metrics? Did he ever survey the "experts" I mentioned to find out what they thought of them before he began circulating the rankings in the first place? I doubt it. That alone makes it an arbitrary process. And Leiter's rankings are not much better. The mass groupings of the LS100 seem to make more sense than anything else I have seen. But it would be nice to know exactly how LS100 arrived at its rankings.

But law schools buy into it. That gives Bob his power.

No they don't, USNWR just makes sure their rankings roughly match hiring trends.

http://uva.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats

Do you think not having a 170 or a 3.85 would still be the kiss of death without these rankings (a decent amount of which are determined by GPA/LSAT)?

YHS

CCN

MVPMND

C

Gulc/UCLA/Vandy/UT

BC/BU/Fordham/GW/Minn/WUSTL/ND/UIUC (though maybe not ITE)/USC/EMory

Davis/Hastings/Wisconsin/UWashington/OSU/Iowa/Indiana/Bama/UNC/Georgia/W&M/W&L

Rest of T1

Killself

bees wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:

bees wrote:

PDaddy wrote:I have been around TLS for quite some time now reading the threads and posts. One thing occurrs to me when it comes to rankings: people really seem to give a lot of credibility to the USNWR that it doesn't deserve, and that colors their perceptions of alternative rankings. What makes Bob Morse (of USN) the arbiter of what factors should be most important in assessing the merits of a law school? He and his USN cohorts are neither law partners, law deans, law professors, nor students.

How does he come up with the weights applied to the metrics? Did he ever survey the "experts" I mentioned to find out what they thought of them before he began circulating the rankings in the first place? I doubt it. That alone makes it an arbitrary process. And Leiter's rankings are not much better. The mass groupings of the LS100 seem to make more sense than anything else I have seen. But it would be nice to know exactly how LS100 arrived at its rankings.

But law schools buy into it. That gives Bob his power.

No they don't, USNWR just makes sure their rankings roughly match hiring trends.

http://uva.lawschoolnumbers.com/stats

Do you think not having a 170 or a 3.85 would still be the kiss of death without these rankings (a decent amount of which are determined by GPA/LSAT)?

Shit never mind, I read that as law firms. Of course law schools do. Hell I literally got into a good law school because of that magazine.

Sorry for being confused.

Desert Fox wrote:Shit never mind, I read that as law firms. Of course law schools do. Hell I literally got into a good law school because of that magazine.

Sorry for being confused.

No worries. You provided me with a chance to link to that ridiculous graph.

bees wrote:

Desert Fox wrote:Shit never mind, I read that as law firms. Of course law schools do. Hell I literally got into a good law school because of that magazine.

Sorry for being confused.

No worries. You provided me with a chance to link to that ridiculous graph.

What is even more ridiculous was that they were handing out conditional acceptances. If you had a 3.87, you had to keep your GPA above 3.85 or you acceptance was no longer valid.