Faculty Quality

In 2003, Professor Brian Leiter surveyed 150 leading legal scholars from around the United States to evaluate law schools on the overall quality of their respective faculties. Those surveyed were asked to evaluate schools on a scale of 1 (weak) to 5 (excellent). The top six schools and their mean evaluation scores are listed below.

Supreme Court Judicial Clerkships

Law schools encourage their J.D. students to seek clerkships with judges following graduation. Clerkships last for one or two years. They provide graduates with writing experience and insights into the judicial decision making process. A faculty committee at Chicago assists students in the application process. In recent years approximately 20% of the students in each graduating class have obtained judicial clerkships. Graduates who particularly enjoy the clerkship experience often apply to justices on the United States Supreme Court for a second clerkship following the one they took after graduation. A law school's success in placing its graduates with Supreme Court justices is in part a function of its reputation with the judiciary. During the ten years covering the 1998-1999 through 2007-2008 U.S. Supreme Court terms, five law schools each had 20 or more of their graduates serve as clerks to justices on the Court. Based upon the size of the typical entering class, the per capita representation for each school during that period is presented below.