Law school ranking
Law School Rankings are a precise subset of College and university rankings deal particularly with law schools. Like college and university rankings, law school quality can be assessed in a number of ways, on some combination of empirical statistics, or on surveys of educators, scholars, students, prospective students, or others.
There is a hierarchy of law schools based on reputation, job placement success, power of faculty, and the prestige of the parent institution (if there is one). In fact, a study done at one university proposes that undergraduate students perceive schools not only in terms of a hierarchy but also in terms of hierarchical clusters. In other words, certain schools are grouped together in terms of equivalent quality and prestige. Also, there are books or magazine articles that assign law schools purported numerical quality rankings.
Such rankings are often consulted by possible students as they choose which schools they will apply to or which school they will attend.
However, according to the ABA
No rating of law schools beyond the simple declaration of their accreditation status is attempted or advocated by the official organizations in legal education. Qualities that make one kind of school good for one student may not be as significant to another. The American Bar Association and its Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar have emitted disclaimers of any law school rating system. Prospective law students should consider a diversity of factors in making their option among schools.
The Law School Admission Council has similarly shown opposition to rankings. The Association of American Law Schools has also voiced complaints; their executive director Carl Monk went so far as to say "these rankings are a misleading and deceptive, profit-generating commercial enterprise that compromises U.S. News and World Report's journalistic integrity.”
Since there is no official ranking authority, you should be prudent in using such rankings. The factors that make up a law school’s reputation (strength of curriculum, faculty, career services, skill of students, quality of library services, and the like) don’t lend themselves to quantification. Even if the rankings were more or less precise, the school’s reputation is only one factor among many for you to consider.
As an answer to the prevalence of law school rankings and serve as an option to the US News Rankings and law school rankings in general, the ABA and the LSAC publish an annual law school guide, called The Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools is provided free online and also in print for a small cost. This guide, which does not seek to rank or sort law schools by any criteria, instead seeks to furnish the reader with a set of standard, significant data on which to judge law schools. It contains information on all 190 ABA-Approved Law Schools. A similar guide for Canadian Law Schools is also published by the Law School Admission Council and is called Official Guide to Canadian Law Schools.
The Parent University
There may be some profits to attending a law school that is part of a university. Such law schools may have more options for joint-degree programs or for taking a non-law school course or two. They also may have more academic and social activities, campus theater groups, sports teams, and everything else that comes with university life. Maybe most significant, the university can act as a support system for the law school by providing a riches of facilities, including student housing and support for career services. Around 90 percent of ABA-approved law schools are part of a larger university.
National, Regional, and Local Schools
A national school will usually have an aspirant population and a student body that draws almost indistinguishably from the nation as a whole and will have many international students as well. A regional school is probable to have a population that is principally from the geographic region of its location, though many regional schools have students from all over the country; a number of regional schools draw heavily from a particular geographical area, yet graduates may find jobs all over the country. Many local law schools have excellent reputations and contend with the national schools in faculty competence, in research-supporting activities, and in resources usually.
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Law schools