Legal News

North Dakota Law Tops Harvard in U.S. News Ranking!

By Ashby Jones

Grabby headline, eh? Yup. Well, that’s just the headline. Now, let’s give you the all too important fine print: The ranking examined not law-school quality — that ranking comes out in the spring — but the percentage of schools’ students who graduated in 2007 who are now working as federal judicial clerks. Click here for the survey, which was unveiled Thursday; here for a writeup by Bob Morse, the director of data research for U.S News & World Report.

Check out that list! What an interesting one, eh? Yale, followed by North Dakota, followed by Harvard, then Stanford, then the University of Wyoming and the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

We don’t have much to say about the ranking off the top of our head, but one U.S. News reader couldn’t resist dropping a big you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me comment beneath the list. “MDT of Ill.” wrote:

Are you sure?

Is the North Dakota data correct? I find it hard to believe that 25% of graduates clerk for an Article III federal judge. It might be that the school doesn’t know what an Article III federal judge is.

LBers, any thoughts?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 04, 2009 (boomark / email).