Welcome
Faculty, students, and parents are, quite reasonably, interested in comparative information on the quality of different law schools. This site compiles such information about many (but, unfortunately, not all) U.S. law schools, along dimensions like faculty quality and job placement. Five or six new studies are posted each year, and are listed under “Newest Rankings.” Prior studies, some going back a decade, are listed under each of the subject-area categories. Each study begins with an explicit statement of the measure being utilized, often with caveats that should affect the interpretation of the results. No attempt is made to aggregate different measures, since no weighting of different elements could be justified in a principle way. Students are invited to consider measures important to them and to utilize those in selecting schools to which to apply and, ultimately, in deciding which among the schools to which you are accepted warrant closer, personalized investigation. Faculty will hopefully find the measures here useful benchmarks of institutional performance. The measurement criteria emphasized here pertain solely to academic excellence and professional outcomes, and rely on data in the public domain. Suggestions for new studies and improvements in the existing measures are welcome.
For up-to-date news about the legal academy, visit Brian Leiter's Law School Reports.