Note: While these sites may contain information of value to you, the Education and Social Science Library and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign do not endorse the sites or the information they contain. For more information and current research on rankings, we encourage you to read some of the articles listed in our College Rankings Bibliography and to see our Caution and Controversy page. For questions or comments, please contact Nancy O'Brien.
[http://consusrankings.com/category/law-schools/consus-group/]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its rankings on a page entitled Rankings Methodology.
The Consus Group (TCG) ranks the top 100 law school programs in the U.S. The scores are based on several factors: other published rankings, selectivity, salary, placement and yield. TCG also offer two other law school program rankings based solely on Published Rankings and Selectivity Rankings.
[http://www.ilrg.com/rankings.html]
Methodology: Each of the sites below lists its data source on its opening page. The rankings are based on a single factor and the methodology is implicit in the ranking.
The Internet Legal Resource Guide, a compendium of law-related online sites, offers the following "single factor" rankings of law schools. Each list uses raw data released by the schools for the current year. (Note: while viewing these charts, you can re-sort the list by any of the available columns simply by clicking that column's header.)
[http://www.cooley.edu/rankings/]
Methodology:An explanation of the rankings is provided in the How we ranked the ABA data page.
These rankings, published by the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, are designed to analyze the educational effectiveness of American law schools. Schools are ranked based on 32 factors taken from data in the American Bar Association's Official Guide to Approved Law Schools. In contrast to the U.S. News and World Report's ranking methodology, each factor is given equal weight. While the authors recognize the inherent subjectivity of any ranking endeavor, their goal is to create a more empirically-based ranking system.
[http://www.llm-guide.com/law-school-rankings]
Methodology: This site uses popularity rankings based on the number of hits/views to a law school program's website from the LLM Guide website.
LLM Guide offers a ranking on law school programs called "Most Popular Programs on LLM Guide." This site also contains a directory of other websites containing national and international law school programs rankings.
[http://www.leiterrankings.com/]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its rankings in the body of its text.
Designed as an alternative to the U.S. News & World Report ranking of law schools, this site seeks to provide a knowledgeable guide to the best law schools based on faculty quality (including teaching quality), student quality and job placements. Rigorous discussion of the criteria used, detailed listing of schools in various categories, and the inclusion of comparative data from other ranking services combine to make this an extremely informative site. The site's author, Brian Leiter, is a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and also authors The Study of Philosophy in Law Schools site found below and the Philosophical Gourmet Report, a ranking of graduate programs in philosophy.
[http://www.princetonreview.com/law/research/rankings/rankings.asp]
Methodology: An explanation for their methodology can be found on User's Guide to the Law School Ratings with more information found on About the Rankings.
This site does not offer one overall "best" law school, but rather offers 11 different ranking lists from Toughest To Get Into to Most Welcoming of Older Students. The site reports that "None of these lists purports to rank the schools in terms of overall quality," but are meant to identify important attributes for prospective students. Note: Registration is required to access these rankings, but it is free.
[http://monoborg.law.indiana.edu/LawRank/]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its methodology on a page titled The Game's Method.
Created by a professor at the Indiana University School of Law, this site serves as both a ranking service and an educational tool. The actual "Ranking Game" component of the page is a Java applet which allows users to create their own law school rankings based on various criteria. Overall, the site emphasizes instruction on the use and abuse of rankings. This is accomplished through aspects of the ranking applet and links to a variety of cautionary pages, including the interesting " How to protect yourself from rankingmania / Rankings are Dangerous!".
[http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/lawsch.asp]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its rankings in the body of its text.
Intended for students interested in the philosophical study of law, this site offers rankings of law schools in topics of interest to students of philosophy. The top schools are given a brief but informative description of strengths. Also linked are lists of specialty rankings for law schools including legal philosophy, tax law, health law, and many others. This site is a part of the Philosophical Gourmet Report which ranks graduate programs in philosophy. The author of this site, Brian Leiter, is a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin and is also the author of the above site Leiter's Law School Rankings.
[http://www.top-law-schools.com/rankings.html]
Methodology: This site consolidates the most recent rankings from five law school rankings.
Top Law Schools consolidates five law school rankings: U.S. News & World Report, Gourman Report, Educational Quality Rankings, Insider's Guide to Law Schools and Justice Brennan. It is a useful site to compare the variety of ranking outcomes for that particular program, but it does not provide the methodology for the separate rankings.
[http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/law/lawindex_brief.php]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its methodology on a page titled Law Methodology.
This site contains the most recent rankings of law schools and several disciplines within law such as trial advocacy and intellectual property, as well as the methodology used to evaluate each. This site also contains links to information about admission to law school and the LSAT and related articles.
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Last modified by: Camilla Fulton on 3/2/12