October 23, 2006

8th Annual Judging the Law Schools is Released

Cover for the Judging the Law Schools 8th Edition

Make it four years in a row for Harvard Law School atop the ranking of the nation’s law schools, according to the eighth edition of the nationally-known publication Judging the Law Schools. Created in 1999 by then-Thomas M. Cooley Law School President Thomas E. Brennan and now prepared annually by Brennan, a former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and current Cooley President and Dean Don LeDuc, Judging the Law Schools compares all accredited law schools based on a wide variety of objective criteria identified as significant to consumers by the American Bar Association (ABA), the organization that does the accrediting.

According to the ABA, the Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools “is designed to provide prospective law school applicants with basic information in a simple format that will facilitate comparisons among schools.” The ranking in Judging the Law Schools is based solely upon that basic information, and it is now available on-line and can be used interactively. Viewers can search the current version according to school or state, or by any of the 32 factors used in the rankings, such as enrollment numbers, tuition, library data, number of applicants, LSAT scores, and minority enrollment. The on-line version can be found at http://www.cooley.edu/rankings.

The top nine schools remained the same, with the University of Minnesota moving up to tenth place. The top nine schools changed order somewhat, but all remained in this group for the third straight year.

The second ten included eight schools repeating from last year and two different schools. Fordham University dropped from 10th to 13th, while Temple University jumped from 25th to 17th and Miami University edged up from 22nd to 20th. Chicago-Kent fell out of the top 20 after joining it for the first time last year.

This year’s Top 20 (with last year’s ranking in parentheses) were:

1. Harvard University (1)
2. Georgetown University (4)
3. University of Texas (5)
4. University of Virginia (3)
5. New York University (2)
6. Yale University (6)
7. Northwestern University (8)
8. Columbia University (6)
9. George Washington University (9)
10. University of Minnesota (11)
11. American University (15)
12. University of Michigan (12)
13. Fordham University (10)
14. University of Pennsylvania (14)
15. University of California-Berkeley (13)
16. Thomas M. Cooley Law School (18)
17. Temple University (26)
18. University of California-Los Angeles (17)
19. University of California-Hastings (20)
20. University of Miami (22)

Rounding out the Top 50 were:

21. University of Wisconsin (16)
22. Stanford University (27)
23. Brooklyn Law School (21)
24. Duke University (25)
25. Loyola Law School (23)
26. University of Maryland (33)
27. Chicago-Kent College of Law (19)
28. University of Iowa (24)
29. University of Houston (40)
30. Boston College (32)
31. Ohio State University (28)
32. Cornell Law School (53)
33. University of Connecticut (31)
34. University of Chicago (39)
35. Washington University (37)
36. Boston University (29)
37. Seton Hall University (35)
38. Suffolk University (38)
39. University of North Carolina (33)
40. SMU Dedman School of Law (36)
41. Rutgers University – Newark (56)
42. Indiana University-Bloomington (49)
43. University of Buffalo (44)
44. Tulane University (42)
45. Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (46)
46. University of Illinois (43)
47. University of Florida (54)
48. University of Southern California (45)
49. Penn State University (65)
50. William Mitchell College of Law (58)

Five schools joined the top 50—Cornell Law School, Rutgers University-Newark, the University of Florida, Penn State University, and William Mitchell College of Law. Three of the five schools slipping out of the top 50 did not slip very far, as the University of San Diego finished 51st, the University of Denver finished 52nd, and New York Law School finished 53rd.

Justice Brennan said "I began this publication because, like just about everyone else in legal education, I was sick and tired of the U.S. News and World Report’s annual opinion poll on American law schools and the inordinate impact it was having on the choices young people were making about where to go to law school." President LeDuc noted that the law schools’ deans are increasingly dismayed with the influence of the commercial exploitation and flaws in the U.S. News ranking and that some have begun to call for competitive ranking systems, including those that, like Judging the Law Schools, rely exclusively upon the ABA information.

“U.S. News uses a system that lacks objectivity because it is commercial. Their rankings reflect elitist values, like exclusivity in admissions and the inherent prejudice that comes from heavy reliance on reputation, which is introduced without consideration of knowledge about the law schools among those assessing their reputations," LeDuc added. He stated that the system used in Judging the Law Schools has its own subjectivity, such as ranking large schools higher than small schools and inexpensive schools higher than expensive schools, but he pointed out that all of the data is objective and made public by the American Bar Association, that no factor is given more than 3% of the weight in the rankings, and that no consideration is given to opinion about a school’s reputation. "We’ll defend the Top 20 schools identified by the system we used in Judging the Law Schools against any rankings by others, including that done by U.S. News," President LeDuc asserted.

Founded in 1972, Cooley Law School is the largest law school in the country and includes the largest African-American and second-largest minority student enrollment. It operates J.D. programs in Michigan’s Capitol at Lansing, on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester Hills, and in downtown Grand Rapids, in conjunction with Western Michigan University. Information about Cooley can be found at www.cooley.edu.