Rankings Poll

Current Rankings put Baylor at 51, but the the new rankings will be out on March 30th, so this poll is open until then.



The rank is based off a combination of peer assessment, assessment score by lawyers and judges, undergrad GPA of entering class, LSAT scores, acceptance rates, student / faculty ratio, grads employed at graduation, grads employed after nine months, and the bar passage rate.

In other words, my NCAA brackets have failed me to the point I feel the need to guess about something else.

I'm predicting (51) Baylor moves up to 49. The reason is the continued high bar passage rate, what I'm thinking is a better student / faculty ratio, high caliber of fall starters and the blogs . . . obviously the blogs.

Conversely, (43) SMU will be sliding back to 48 or 49. I attributed their big jump last year to the Harriet Myers press, which later backfired on them. On top of that, I didn't like SMU when I visited. The school building itself was ugly. Also, as a student at Baylor, disliking SMU law is kind of what we're supposed to do.

Ranking the other schools I successfully applied to:

(26) Emory: Can't say anything bad about it so I'll guess 25.

(43) Hastings: Took a big slide last year and it's still under a lot of construction for earthquake protection. On top of that it's a very scary campus on about the worst road in San Francisco. I can't see it moving up in the rankings. I'll guess 44.

(51) Case Western: Incredibly nice admin. but they give tons of money to those with low GPA's and moderate test scores. Plus sitting in on its classes where nobody cared enough to read or talk, makes me think they won't be moving up. I'll guess 52.

(60) Villanova: Moving to 67. They are building a new school and their current place is a mess for the next two or three years, meaning it will be hard to get good students.

(60) Pitt: Staying the same.

(65) Loyola Law School: Took a big hit last year and I'm not sure it's done sliding. They started out not offering me any money but after realizing their apps were way down, they called offering me big bucks to hang out with them. I'll guess 68.

(87) Pepperdine: The school's ranking has been all over the place the last couple of years. It's an expensive school that doesn't give much money for grades but will give money for Church of Christ affiliation. I took a bunch of classes over there, dated one of the Dean's daughters, took the Dispute Resolution program, and witnessed for some of their trials; the only things that impressed me were the dispute resolution program's professors, the view and Dean Ken Starr. He is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, and works a lot with the students. Overall, I think the school's beauty will keep it attractive to good students but the bar passage rate will keep it from cracking 80. So I'll guess 81.