On the Record

By: Caryn Tamber

The folks who bring you Super Lawyers came out this week with a ranking of the top law schools in the country. And it’s dopey.

There. I said it.

The list ranks schools by the number of graduates included on lists of Super Lawyers. Let’s put aside for a second Above the Law’s astute comment that “It’s a little like US Weekly handing out Oscar nominations based on how many times a star has appeared on its cover.”

Many bloggers have pointed out that this gives bigger law schools an advantage because they have more graduates. That’s a major, major flaw in the rankings. (Super Lawyers acknowledges this but downplays its impact.)

Here’s a “for instance”: The University of Maryland is ranked 43 on U.S. News’ list. It’s got 897 law students, according to TaxProf Blog. It ranks 50 in the Super Lawyers list. UC Hastings ranks 39 on U.S. News. It has 1,251 law students. It’s 11 on the Super Lawyers list. I’m not saying size made all the difference in this list, but it had to have had some impact.

Another big problem: Maryland has only two law schools. I’m willing to bet that a huge majority of the lawyers in the state come from one of those two schools and that a somewhat smaller majority of graduates from the two law schools stay in Maryland. When Super Lawyers compiles its list of top Maryland lawyers, a very, very large share of them will be grads of UM or UB–because, well, that’s who’s here. This will not be the case for states with many law schools or states where lots of the lawyers are coming from law schools elsewhere (like New York). Those states will spread the wealth a little more. Perhaps, then, UM is getting an unfair boost in the rankings because it’s one of only two games in town.

All in all, I’ll say it again. The rankings are kind of dopey and not all that useful.

But hey, as the Business Insider Law Review puts it, “lists are fun.”