So it’s another year, and we’re faced with another round of law school rankings from so-called “experts.” The 2008 law school rankings are no different than any other year: they are virtually meaningless to the average student and should be largely ignored by you.

Unfortunately, if you’re planning on applying to law school this year, or applying to law school anytime in the near future, I know you’ll have a really hard time ignoring law school rankings. In fact, if you’re like me, you’ll buy copies of every magazine, book, newsletter, or crayon drawing that purports to classify law schools in some way. And you probably pay them a lot more attention than you should.

I did. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t even consider applying to any law school below the second tier of the US News and World Report law school rankings. I guess I was lucky, because I got admitted to every law school I applied to, but in hindsight I wish I had looked at things differently and paid less attention to popular law school ranking posts.

As I discuss in another article on law school rankings, you should view published law school rankings with skepticism. These rankings are unreliable and mislead students into thinking that they should attend a top-ranking school or that they will be second-rate lawyers because of their “poor” law school education. This is simply not true.

It should tell you something that many schools have now decided not to cooperate with the publishers who compile these rankings, despite enormous pressure on them not only to participate, but to inflate their statistics to appear more attractive to potential students.

What you will eventually learn, whether you attend Harvard Law School or an evening law school in your local metropolis, is that the legal education you receive will be substantially the same, regardless of which law school you attend. Furthermore, within five years of your graduation from law school, virtually no one, including employers, colleagues, judges, and most importantly clients, will care a whit where you went to law school. right.

All of that being true, you need to consider all sorts of things besides law school rankings when deciding where to go to law school. The most important considerations include the cost, the attractiveness of the location, the climate, where you want to live after law school, the social scene, and the programs offered. So if there is a tie, you might want to consider the 2008 law school rankings.

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