Hot of the freaking press!!! Super Lawyers, that publication that tells us just who the Super Lawyers really are, now tells us just who the Super Law Schools really are. It's here. The top 15, in order:
Harvard, Michigan, Texas, Virginia, Georgetown, NYU, Columbia, Florida, Berkeley, Yale, Hastings, GW, BU, UCLA, Penn.
Don't worry. The ranking methods aren't entirely random:
Schools are ranked according to the total number of graduates named to the state and regional Super Lawyers lists in 2009. In the event of a tie between schools, the cumulative peer evaluation and research scores of graduates are used as tie-breakers. We recognize that schools with smaller graduating classes may be at a disadvantage in our ranking. We considered taking into account class size, but decided not to this year for several reasons: First, we found that class size was not as big a factor as you might think. There were very large schools that ranked low and small schools that ranked high on our list. The quality of graduates, not the size of the school, is what ultimately determines where schools land on our list. Second, this first year we wanted to keep our methodology simple so that people could easily understand what we are doing. We reward schools that produce the greatest number of outstanding attorneys, period. Our approach is similar to the way baseball crowns a homerun king based on total homeruns without employing a weighted average based on plate appearances. And finally, there is the practical problem of factoring in class size. The lawyers on our list graduated 10, 20 or 30 years ago. How do you accurately determine the graduation class sizes of nearly 200 schools through the years?
More complete data is available from Paul Caron here.
Considering every Super Lawyer magazine I've ever looked at (years of PA issues) is a collection of almost exclusively older white men, is the ranking of law schools based on which schools graduate the most white men?
Posted by: David S. Cohen | November 18, 2009 at 10:58 AM
Considering every Super Lawyer magazine I've ever looked at is written almost exclusively in English, is the ranking of law schools based on which schools offer instruction in English?
Posted by: jncc | November 18, 2009 at 01:22 PM
This ranking is completely bogus because it operates on numbers/size, not on ratios/percentages.
Posted by: China Lawyer | November 19, 2009 at 12:54 AM
What is 'Super Lawyer'? It sounds like a glossier version of New York Lawyer, but with less relevant content.
On another note, who determines who is a 'Super Lawyer'? It's like one big clique. Of course, Law School is just like middle school. I guess the law profession is high-school? (ATLA/AAJ is the 'jock' clique, I guess . . . )
Posted by: John Nelson | November 19, 2009 at 07:03 AM