Pre- U.S. News and World Report Forum

[shemori]

How did People Rank Law Schools? and also Why does Bar passage count for only two percent of overall rank.Isnt that the main objective of law school?

[mapes]

like this!

yale, harvard, michigan

everyone else

[Aberzombie1892]

Before US News, a lot of the Tier 1 schools placed a whole lot better (I'm talking about long standing Tier 1 schools, and not recent ones).

True, HYS were the go to schools even then, but the rest of the T14 were not as strong outside of their geographic regions as they were in 2007.

How did People Rank Law Schools? and also Why does Bar passage count for only two percent of overall rank.Isnt that the main objective of law school?

1. People looked at where they wanted to work and picked from the strongest schools in that region.
2. Because it's really not significant - law schools are ranked for things they can, at least slightly, control - bar passage rates are generally beyond what a law school can control.
3. No. For law schools, the main objective is offering a "strong" legal education. For students, the main objective is getting a legal job.

[rayiner]

They were pretty much the same.

Reputations die hard and are long in being born-especially among attorneys. In 1970, the top five law schools were Harvard, Yale, and Michigan, with Columbia, Stanford, and Chicago fighting it out for the remaining two spots. Penn was just on the cusp of the "top five," Virginia was clearly top ten, and then some mix of Duke, Northwestern, Texas, and Berkeley fought it out for the remaining top ten spots. Cornell was surely top 15, NYU might have been top 15, Vanderbilt was surely top 20, and Georgetown might have been top 20. UCLA was a brand new law school, just a half-dozen years old.

[AreJay711]

Edited: Yea just see above.

It was probably also more localized. Before researching schools and looking at rankings, my feasible choices (So HY - ehhhh not really) probably looked like this: GULC, Penn, GW, UMD, George Mason, and UBalt (I didn't even know UVA was good). Without rankings there is really no way to compare schools from outside your geographic area. I mean Gtown looks better than Chicago if you're only familiar DC in the absence of rankings. Thats why my family looks at me like I'm goofy when I say my two favorite schools are in the Midwest.

[ajmanyjah]

like this!

yale, harvard, michigan

everyone else

Always thought it was Yale, Harvard, Columbia

[nealric]

How did People Rank Law Schools? and also Why does Bar passage count for only two percent of overall rank.Isnt that the main objective of law school?

In a word, no. Except for the very worst law schools, bar passage isn't an issue. Just about every school ranked T2 or better has virtually all its graduates pass the bar on their first or second try.

Schools with higher bar passage rates are often ones that teach to the test. Some schools are little more than a 3-year bar review course. If all I knew from law school was what I showed when I took the bar exam, I would have gotten a very poor education indeed.

[albusdumbledore]

like this!

yale, harvard, michigan

everyone else

Always thought it was Yale, Harvard, Columbia

Nope, definitely Michigan. No joke, my grandpa told me that it was top two or three when he was looking to go to law school.

[Renzo]

like this!

yale, harvard, michigan

everyone else

Always thought it was Yale, Harvard, Columbia

Nope, definitely Michigan. No joke, my grandpa told me that it was top two or three when he was looking to go to law school.

Yeah. The (relative) fall of UMich and the (relative) rise of NYU are really the only things that have changed in the past 30 years.

[ajmanyjah]

like this!

yale, harvard, michigan

everyone else

Always thought it was Yale, Harvard, Columbia

Nope, definitely Michigan. No joke, my grandpa told me that it was top two or three when he was looking to go to law school.

I suppose my East Coast bias showed there

[Sentry]

like this!

yale, harvard, michigan

everyone else

Always thought it was Yale, Harvard, Columbia

Nope, definitely Michigan. No joke, my grandpa told me that it was top two or three when he was looking to go to law school.

I suppose my East Coast bias showed there

[Unemployed]

Circa 1960, for example, it would have been common to think of Yale, Harvard, and Columbia as clearly the top three law schools, with Penn, Michigan, and perhaps Chicago just a notch below. Stanford rose to prominence during the 1950s and 1960s, and Chicago's competitive position improved significantly with the rise of law-and-economics in the 1970s, where it was the primary innovator. NYU and Georgetown both became far more prominent schools starting in the 1970s as well. (You can get some sense of the small reputational shifts since the 1970s from this data.) Columbia slipped out of the "top 3" during the 1960s, Penn slipped out of "the top five" by the 1970s, and Michigan did the same in the 1990s.

http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2009 ... hing.shtml

From the 1973 Blau-Marguiles survey of law schools Deans, the top five law schools:

1. Harvard University

2. Yale University

3. Columbia University

3. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

5. University of Chicago

From the 1974-75 Blau-Marguiles survey of law school Deans, the top nine schools:

1. Harvard University

2. Yale University

3. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

4. Columbia University

5. University of Chicago

6. Stanford University

7. University of California, Berkeley

8. New York University

9. University of Pennsylvania

From the 1977 Cartter Report survey of faculty quality:

1. Harvard University

2. Yale University

3. Stanford University

4. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

5. University of Chicago

6. Columbia University

7. University of California, Berkeley

8. University of Pennsylvania

9. University of Virginia

10. University of Texas, Austin

11. University of California, Los Angeles

12. Cornell University

13. New York University

14. Northwestern University

15. Duke University

From the 1987 U.S. News reputational survey of Deans, which was the basis of its first ranking of law schools:

1. Harvard University

1. Yale University

3. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

4. Columbia University

4. Stanford University

6. University of Chicago

7. University of California, Berkeley

8. University of Virginia

9. New York University

10. University of Pennsylvania

11. University of Texas, Austin

12. Duke University

13. Georgetown University

14. University of California, Los Angeles

15. Cornell University

16. Northwestern University

And, finally, the fall 2007 academic reputation survey by U.S. News:

1. Harvard University

1. Yale University

3. Columbia University

3. Stanford University

5. University of Chicago

6. New York University

6. University of California, Berkeley

6. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

9. University of Virginia

10. University of Pennsylvania

11. Cornell University

11. Duke University

11. Georgetown University

14. Northwestern University

14. University of Texas, Austin

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leit ... hings.html

[ScaredWorkedBored]

Harvard, Yale (if you ever saw someone from there), Columbia, Michigan. Other Ivys if you were in the Northeast. Then the state/local schools. There never used to be anywhere near as much national reach either for students going to law school or where firms recruited from.

On top of the recruiting reach, New York also didn't have nearly the pay advantage over secondary markets it developed later and really wasn't seen as a very desirable place to live. The finance industry that drives the New York legal market didn't really exist in anything approaching its current form until the 1980's boom. Someone in, say, North Carolina, would never have picked a law school based on recruiting from New York firms in the 1960's or 1970's.