Debating the Latest Law School Rankings for 2025: Insights and Reactions Forum
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Peachy10
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2024 5:57 pm
Debating the Latest Law School Rankings for 2025: Insights and Reactions
Unveiling the Top Law School Rankings for 2025: What's Your Take on the Shakeup?
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nealric
- Posts: 4352
- Joined: Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:53 am
Re: Debating the Latest Law School Rankings for 2025: Insights and Reactions
Completely meaningless in any way that matters to a prospective student. The general pecking order does not change. The U.S. News rankings at best have some slight utility as a rough guideline for those who aren't familiar with law schools at all.
A more helpful ranking would sort schools into broad bands (beyond their tier 1-4 rating). Roughly:
National Elites (HYS and maybe CCN)
Top Nationals (T14)
Semi-Nationals (T30ish)
Top Regionals (T30-75ish)
Regionals (75-150ish)
Best if closed down (all others)
There's obviously plusses and minuses and strengths and weakness within that (i.e. Penn is clearly stronger than NW unless you are exclusively targeting Chicago employment), and some that are on the bubble of a category, but that's really all a prospective student needs to know about rank. You don't really need to rank schools from year to year except to sell magazines. There's an easy solution to bubble cases if you are having trouble deciding: just look at employment stats (not from the schools themselves, but the Law School transparency numbers).
A more helpful ranking would sort schools into broad bands (beyond their tier 1-4 rating). Roughly:
National Elites (HYS and maybe CCN)
Top Nationals (T14)
Semi-Nationals (T30ish)
Top Regionals (T30-75ish)
Regionals (75-150ish)
Best if closed down (all others)
There's obviously plusses and minuses and strengths and weakness within that (i.e. Penn is clearly stronger than NW unless you are exclusively targeting Chicago employment), and some that are on the bubble of a category, but that's really all a prospective student needs to know about rank. You don't really need to rank schools from year to year except to sell magazines. There's an easy solution to bubble cases if you are having trouble deciding: just look at employment stats (not from the schools themselves, but the Law School transparency numbers).
