Choose Your Own Adventure Law School Ranking System
Tired of watching US News and Brian Leiter have all the fun ranking law schools every year? Try The Ranking Game, created by Jeffrey Stake at Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington.
Oh sure, it’s supposed to be used to help you decide which schools are right for you, based on the combination of factors you want in a law school, but that’s not all it’s good for. It’s also a useful tool for two of the main activities of 0Ls: making ourselves feel better after a rejection (or preparing ourselves for the rejection that is inevitably coming) and justifying our eventual choice of the highest-ranked school that will let us in.
Been rejected from your top-choice school? Find a combination of weights that puts them near the bottom of the rankings. See? You didn’t want to go there anyways. (Hint: Use “library titles” to show Stanford who’s boss; “(adjuncts+faculty)/students” for Harvard; and Chicago’s weak spot is their library’s hours)
Want to show your friends and family you made a mature, informed choice, when the truth is you only considered the US News rankings and the number of bars within walking distance? Adjust weights until your school is ranked number one. Use your newfound knowledge to explain the soundness of your decision, based on the factors that “truly” matter to you, like the ratio of library size to number of students.
I will accept brownies as tokens of your appreciation.