What do law school rankings mean? Which ones are the most reliable?
Paradoxically, law school rankings mean everything and they mean nothing. They mean everything because, as I pointed out above, students and law firms treat them as if they mean something. But they mean nothing because, ultimately, they offer very little reliable information. The USNews rankings are perhaps the most famous, but there are others out there (you can find many of them with this search). In general, the USNews rankings are typical in that they take various data into account that look both objective and relevant (such as average entering class LSAT) and put them into a formula that yields a numerical rating. Those ratings are then compared with others to come up with the rankings. The problem comes with the methodologies used to determine the ratings. How much weight, for instance, should be given to the size of the law library? How does one measure a school’s reputation? And how can one control for schools that manipulate admissions systems to boost their ratings? These kin
