Which law schools are the most overrated by US News and World Report?: A ranking of schools by mismatch between US News rank and placement success.

Imagine two recent law grads, A and B, both equally indebted to the tune of 100,000 interest-accruing and nondischargeable dollars. They are standing beside each other at a jobs fair. Or maybe they are fellow employees of Radio Shack or Starbucks, chatting during a smoking break. Or maybe they are sitting side-by-side on a document-sorting temp project. Or maybe they are coworkers in a government or public interest law office, working for free in the desperate hope that they might impress or network their way into a paying law job. And A and B hold the following conversation: 

A: (proudly): I graduated from the 26^th best law school in the country. 

B: (sad and embarrassed): You must be really smart, much smarter than me. I graduated from a lowly 3rd tier school.

If prospective law students feel that they might enjoy being similarly situated to "A" in status and prestige, then they ought to carefully study US News and World Report's law school ranking and use it to guide their choice of law schools. If not, I offer the following caution: While consumers of the annual "Best Law Schools" edition of US News may assume that there is a very close correlation between a law school’s US News rank and its placement outcomes, that is not the case. Placement success comprises only 18% of a school’s US News rank, and US News even gets that wrong by giving schools full-credit for phony-baloney "JD Advantage" jobs in calculating placement rates. Similarly, US News gives full credit for law school funded jobs-- which typically involve a law school throwing a few bucks at unemployed recent grads and telling them to volunteer full-time in some public interest law office, an arrangement the schools refer to as "public service fellowships" or "Bridge to Practice" programs.  

In the table below, I have ranked schools by mismatch between their most recent US News rank and their Class of 2012 placement success rank. As to placement success, the rank is based on each law school’s percentage of graduates who obtained bar-required, full-time (FT), long-term (LT) (which includes one year long judicial clerkships), nonsolo non-school-funded jobs within nine months of graduation. I obtained the employment rank by going to this excellent calculator and by clicking "choose your own formula," and then by clicking "bar passage required," "long-term," "full-time" and "exclude from numerator: school funded and solo practitioner." This generates a calculation of each school’s employment rate, within the formula chosen, in rank order.

The table includes every school with a US News rank at least 25 places higher than its placement rank. Georgetown doesn’t quite make the cut, but it deserves special mention-- its placement rank of 32^nd was (by far) the worst among the "T-14," i.e. the 14 schools that have been recognized, more or less accurately, as genuinely elite. And Georgetown's Class of 2012 stats were  no fluke--its placement rank for the Class of 2011 was 50th, also (by far) the worst among the T-14. In light of Georgetown’s numbers, perhaps it would be better to refer to the "T-13."

First tier schools are in italics. These are schools that, by virtue of their US News rank alone, may (in the words of Paul Campos), "attract[ ] the kind of highly-qualified, reasonably prudent 0Ls who would never consider attending the vast majority of law schools at anything like sticker price, and yet still end[ ] up generating a very high risk of financial and personal disaster for its students." Thus, even more than lower-tiered schools, they may function as life-ruining "traps" for some really bright and promising kids who deserve better from society. In addition to those listed, I also want to mention three other overrated first-tier schools that just miss the 25 place cut-off: Notre Dame, Washington U. of St. Louis, and the University of Utah.

One final point: the presence on this list of several Virginia and D.C. schools, plus Georgetown's worst-of-the-T14 placement rate, is a pretty good indication that D.C. is no oasis in the desert for newbie lawyers; rather, a mirage.

School	% FT, LT  law jobs nine months out	placement rank	US News rank	Mismatch
American	38.4%	171	56	115
Catholic	36.2%	177	80	97
Washington & Lee	49.2%	119	26	93
UC- Hastings	46.3%	138	48	90
Michigan State	38.8%	170	80	90
George Mason	49.1%	122	41	81
Pepperdine	45.5%	141	61	80
Univ. of Oregon	37.9%	173	94	79
Case-Western	43.6%	144	68	76
Univ. of Colorado	49.7%	117	44	73
Univ. of Denver	47.3%	133	64	69
Northeastern	41.9%	154	86	68
Indiana-Bloomington	53.4%	92	25	67
Univ. of San Diego	47.1%	135	68	67
Santa Clara U.	40.9%	160	96	64
Chapman	33.7%	187	126	61
Univ. of Maryland	52.4%	99	41	58
DePaul	39.9%	166	109	57
William & Mary	55.9%	84	33	51
U. of San Francisco	21.3%	195	144	51
Seattle U.	43.0%	149	102	47
Temple U.	52.0%	102	56	46
Syracuse U.	45.4%	142	96	46
Brooklyn	48.5%	125	80	45
George Washington	60.2%	62	21	41
Univ. of Maine	36.8%	175	134	41
Univ. of Florida	55.6%	86	46	40
Univ. of Connecticut	52.8%	96	58	38
McGeorge	40.5%	162	124	38
Yeshiva	53.2%	93	58	35
Indiana-Indianapolis	47.5%	131	98	33
Hamline	41.1%	159	126	33
Ohio State	58.6%	68	36	32
Arizona State	60.4%	60	29	31
Univ. of Wisconsin	59.9%	64	33	31
Cleveland State	43.2%	148	119	29
St. Thomas	42.2%	153	124	29
Univ. of Richmond	56.1%	81	53	28
Univ. of Minnesota	63.5%	46	19	27
Univ. of Illinois	58.2%	73	47	26
UC- Davis	59.9%	63	38	25
SUNY-Buffalo	51.2%	111	86	25