The law school application process begins and ends with critical decisions about where to attend law school. First, you need to identify a handful of schools to which you will apply. Later, after admissions decisions are made, you must determine which school to attend. Because each school offers a unique complement of services and features, you should spend time gathering reliable information so that you can successfully identify the schools best suited to your individual goals.

 

You have your work cut out for you: As of June 2006 there were 194 law schools approved by the American Bar Association as well as many unaccredited law schools around the United States.

 

Educational quality is an important consideration in choosing a law school. To assess the quality of a school, many students consult several annual law school rankings that attempt to measure the quality of education. For instance, US News & World Report's Law School Rankings, published every April, compares law schools using such categories as: average student LSAT scores; average student undergraduate GPA; student/faculty ratios; application acceptance rates; graduate placement success rates; faculty resources; bar passage rates; and academic reputation among lawyers, judges, and law professors.

 

US News' rankings have received their fair share of criticism over the years. For example, in 1998, the American Association of Law Schools commissioned a study entitled "The Validity of the US News and World Report Ranking of ABA Law Schools" that strongly criticized the methodology US News employs when generating its rankings. More recently, a letter endorsed by most of the country's law school deans, including deans from schools that consistently receive very favorable reviews, attacked the US News rankings for failing to examine variables that students traditionally list as most important when deciding the law school to attend.

 

But US News and World Report admits that its rankings are not perfect. In an online report, the magazine conceded, "Our defense of our rankings is the same as the deans' defense of theirs: students should be able to compare schools with each other using the most comprehensive measures available. Our rankings are not perfect, but neither are theirs."

A popular alternative to the US News ranking is the Educational Quality Ranking (EQR), published by Brian Leiter, a University of Texas law professor. Unlike US News, EQR focuses exclusively on three factors when determining its rankings: quality of the faculty, quality of the student body, and quality of the teaching. A few law school deans have praised EQR as a favorable alternative to the US News rankings.

 

Most rankings systems neglect other significant factors, including the racial and gender diversity of a school's student body; the location of the school; the cost of tuition and availability of loan repayment assistance programs; average class size; variety of course offerings; availability of clinical and externship programs; availability of part-time and evening programs; commitment to technology; access to faculty; alumni support; and more. Be sure to consider these factors when choosing which law school is right for you.