Top Law Schools

Some of the top law schools in the United States include Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and Stanford University School of Law. They are all excellent at teaching legal theory and basic law tenets. All top law schools tend to offer outstanding physical facilities, extensive library resources, gifted classmates and professors, and employment contacts with recruiters who have strong and often long-standing contacts with the school. Without question, professional employment opportunities and career paths are the broadest at the better schools. For example, you will find many Harvard Law School grads all working together at the same law firm.

Yale and Stanford are the only other schools who can compete with Harvard in terms of the best student to teacher ratios (both under 10 to 1). If you want to attend an excellent law school on the West Coast, then Stanford should be your top choice. Harvard and Yale are top picks for the East Cast. Yale, whose students traditionally have the highest average LSAT score, produces half again as many federal judges per graduate as does Harvard, which is second in the percentage who became judges. Harvard, in turn, produces one and a half times as many judges as the next ranking producer, Stanford, a school located farther down the LSAT ladder.

Stanford Law School offers a few elective \"deals\"-type courses, but the school is emphasizing a new joint J.D.-master\'s degrees in which a law student, for example, would also study bioengineering. Transaction-simulation classes are an \"inefficient way to learn content\" says Stanford Law School Dean Larry Kramer, who recommends students take no more than one or two of them. However, for a lawyer who wants to specialize in a niche type of law, these courses may prove beneficial.

Professors at the top law schools are usually the best in academia. These professors have a sacred duty to their students and to each other to affirm - and also to exemplify - core academic and intellectual values. They should convey to their students an abiding respect, even awe, for the complexity of law in society, and they should exhibit the ideological humility that this complexity implies.

Since the inception of the survey, Northwestern Universirt in Chicago has frequently been included on the top law schools list, with its annual position varying between fifth and 10th depending on annual enrollment, retention and graduation figures, faculty, student services and national reputation. This year college ranked ninth. Since most law professors are required or permitted to supervise only two or three independent study projects a semester, the student/faculty ratio has the most direct bearing on the number of independent study opportunities available. There are reports of students waiting a semester or two to study with the professor of their choice.

So why all the fuss about becoming a lawyer? Government attorneys with experience can earn from $34,000 to $55,000 with a senior-level range of $43,000 to $80,000. Some law firm partners and those in private practice earn between $100,000 and $400,000 or more annually.