Legal Commentary

Over at TaxProf Blog this week, Paul Caron is doing a great series of posts unpacking the data from the new The Princeton Review's Best 174 Law Schools. Today's post is on the "academic experience" rating, which Princeton Review describes this way:

Academic Experience Rating: The quality of the learning environment, on a scale of 60 to 99. The rating incorporates the Admissions Selectivity Rating and the average responses of law students at the school to several questions on our law student survey. In addition to the Admissions Selectivity Rating, factors considered include how students rate the quality of teaching and the accessibility of their professors, the school's research resources, the range of available courses, the balance of legal theory and practical lawyering skills stressed in the curriculum, the tolerance for diverse opinions in the classroom, and how intellectually challenging the course work is.

Because it incorporates admissions selectivity, the elite schools should all do quite well here, and indeed 17 out of 20 score above 90. The three that fell below 90: Southern Cal (88); Yale (87); Cornell (63). Judging from the narrative sections in the book, USC's relatively low score (95 for UCLA) may be due in part to too much theory/not enough practical from some professors. Yale: indifference to teaching among some faculty seems to be the culprit. Yikes on Cornell. Sure, discount it a bit for weather/location and not being first-choice school of many, but still, that's awfully low. Students seem to complain about range of courses offered, small size of faculty. May also be they're working harder (5.5 hrs a day outside class) than peers at other places.

I've said before why I think these Princeton Review ratings ought to be a factor for U.S. News voters -- student satisfaction is a very good indicator, compared to available alternatives, in assessing the academic quality of J.D. programs, and commonly used in other rankings schemes like Business Week's for business schools, for example. And we look to consumer satisfaction as a proxy for quality with all kinds of services -- not clear why legal education is so different.

If we only knew the response rates (or at least a minimum for each school), I'd say U.S. News voters ought to use these as the major factor, and all prospective students ought to go out, buy the book, and use it instead of U.S. News in deciding among JD programs. But Princeton Review doesn't release that information. So I'd use it as a "bump up" if unusually high, "bump down" if unusually low.