October 26, 2007

9th Annual Judging the Law Schools is Released

View 2007 Rankings >

Harvard Law School remains atop the ranking of the nation's law schools for the fifth consecutive year, according to the ninth edition of the nationally known publication Judging the Law Schools. 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's Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, the organization that does the accrediting.

According to the ABA’s Council, 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 the ABA’s basic information, and it is now available online 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, the number of applicants, LSAT scores, and minority enrollment. The online version can be found at http://www.cooley.edu/rankings.

Georgetown University, the University of Texas, and the University of Virginia repeated as the second through fourth-ranked schools. The next four spots were occupied by the same four schools as last year, although their rank order changed, with Northwestern moving up to fifth from seventh, New York University moving down to sixth from fifth last year, Columbia University placing seventh after being eighth last year, and Yale Law School dropping from sixth to eighth this year. Two schools tied for ninth to round out the Top 10, with the University of Michigan moving up from twelfth place last year and the University of Minnesota moving up from tenth place.

George Washington University slipped out of the Top 10 by ranking 11th. The remaining schools in the Top 20 were the University of Pennsylvania in 12th place (14th last year), the University of California-Los Angeles in 13th place (18th last year), American University in 14th place (11th last year), Fordham University in 15th place (13th last year), Thomas M. Cooley in 16th place again this year, the University of California-Berkeley in 17th place (15th last year), the University of California-Hastings in 18th place (19th last year), Stanford University in 19th place (moving up from 22nd), and Brooklyn Law School in 20th place (moving up from 23rd). Two schools fell out of the Top 20, with Temple University finishing 25th (17th last year) and the University of Miami ranking 27th (20th last year).

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

1. Harvard University (1)
2. Georgetown University (2)
3. University of Texas (3)
4. University of Virginia (4)
5. Northwestern University (7)
6. New York University (5)
7. Columbia University (8)
8. Yale Law School (6)
9. University of Michigan (12)
9. University of Minnesota (10)
11. George Washington University (9)
12. University of Pennsylvania (14)
13. University of California-Los Angeles (18)
14. American University (11)
15. Fordham University (13)
16. Thomas M. Cooley Law School (16)
17. University of California-Berkeley (15)
18. University of California-Hastings (19)
19. Stanford University (22)
20. Brooklyn Law School (23)

Rounding out the Top 50 were:

21. University of Wisconsin (21)
22. Boston University (36)
23. Loyola Law School (25)
24. Duke University (24)
25. Temple University (17)
26. University of Houston (29)
27. University of Miami (20)
28. Chicago-Kent College of Law (27)
29. University of Maryland (26)
30. Washington University (35)
31. Boston College (30)
32. University of Iowa (28)
33. Ohio State University (31)
34. Cornell Law School (32)
35. Seton Hall University (37)
36. University of Connecticut (33)
37. Indiana University-Bloomington (42)
38. University of Chicago (34)
39. Suffolk University (38)
40. SMU Dedman School of Law (40)
41. University of Illinois (46)
42. Tulane University (44)
43. Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (45)
44. Emory University (59)
45. Rutgers University – Newark (41)
46. St. John’s University (58)
47. University of Buffalo (43)
48. University of North Carolina (39)
49. University of San Diego (51)
50. New York Law School (52)

Four schools joined the Top 50—Emory University, St. John’s University, University of San Diego, and New York Law School, and four schools fell from the Top 50—the University of Florida, the University of Southern California, Pennsylvania State University, and William Mitchell College of Law.

Judging the Law Schools originated in 1999 by then-Thomas M. Cooley Law School President Thomas E. Brennan and is now prepared annually by Brennan, a former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, and current Cooley President and Dean Don LeDuc.

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 capital city in Lansing, in suburban Oakland County, and in downtown Grand Rapids. Additional information about Cooley can be found at www.cooley.edu.