The Seven Most Underrated Law Schools
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Christopher Ryan of Vanderbilt University and Bryan Frye of the University of Kentucky conducted the analysis that will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Alabama Law Review.
Their premise is simple: Judge the quality of law schools based on where the most qualified students go. These candidates have the most at stake and gather a huge amount of information, so you can gauge school quality based on their choices.
Compared to their position in the U.S. News rankings, seven law schools made significant gains and placed in the Top 50 of the country’s 204 law schools.
| The Most Undervalued Law Schools | |||
| Law School | LSAT/UGPA Rank | US News Rank | Spots Gained |
| BYU | 20 | 46 | 26 |
| Pepperdine | 47 | 72 | 25 |
| Nebraska | 37 | 57 | 20 |
| William & Mary | 24 | 41 | 17 |
| Northeastern | 48 | 65 | 17 |
| SMU | 35 | 46 | 11 |
| George Mason | 32 | 41 | 9 |
Rob Anderson asks whether a law school’s LSAT and UGPA meadians are a leading indicator of its future U.S. News ranking:
[I]t may be that law students’ choices are a “leading” indicator and the peer rankings are a “lagging” indicator of law school overall rankings. Still, the peer rankings appear to lead the lawyer/judge rankings, or at least not lag them. Although there are other potential interpretations of these relationships, identification of leading and lagging predictors could be significant. If this is true, then the revealed preference approach to law school rankings may predict the future US News overall rankings. Whether this suggests that increasing LSATs will cause increases in the peer and lawyers/judges rankings (with lags) is another question, but one whose answer could pay off for rankings-focused law schools.
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