Like all rankings, this best known one reflects reputation as defined at a particular point in time by the magazine's research staff, the law school administrators, and the legal practitioners, all of whom participate in defining, providing, and analyzing the data. Certainly, the rating of quality in a faculty or student body or in an individual's legal education would be extraordinarily helpful to prospective students considering law school and employers evaluating associate hires, not to mention deans and faculty concerned about the form and value of legal education. Unfortunately, the manifestations of quality are not easily assessed by a numerical ranking system because quality is always intangible, frequently indefinable, and often unmeasurable. Quality also reflects an extraordinarily subjective judgment based on personal experience and perceptions. Rankings are helpful in placing a value on reputed quality but not in deciding what law school to attend, which schools to include on a recruiting schedule, or which applicants to hire.
Rankings can only provide the looking glass that magnifies the perceived reality.
What must be added is an individual's focus a close and penetrating one on both the subjective and objective qualities that comprise legal education and preparation to practice law. Law School Rankings Endnotes 1. Numerous other less visible law school rankings have been attempted. These ranking sources tend to be less comprehensive in the data they gather and are less focused on arriving at a ranking order than on examining a particular aspect of law schools. Although Cooper places the schools in a hierarchical order, she notes that she does not intend the listing to be construed as a true ranking.