Blog Wars, Blogging, Law Schools, Rankings

Ranking Law School Websites: Cooley Ranks Near the Top!

The people over a Thomas M. Cooley Law School have a long and illustrious history of inventing ridiculous law school rankings that magically show Cooley Law at or near the top. It's pretty pathetic to make up your own ranking and rank yourself. But now a third party has put together a ranking where Cooley has risen to the top. A Georgetown professor has ranked all the websites from ABA-accredited law schools. The top of the list isn't only about law schools that are trying dazzle students into making a ruinous financial decision. The rankings mainly seem to reflect whether or not law schools care about their website at all....

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The people over a Thomas M. Cooley Law School have a long and illustrious history of inventing ridiculous law school rankings that magically show Cooley Law at or near the top. It’s pretty pathetic to make up your own ranking and rank yourself.

But now a third party has put together a ranking where Cooley has risen to the top. A Georgetown professor has ranked all the websites from ABA-accredited law schools, and Cooley’s website ranks eighth. Hey, they know how to sell themselves.

The top of the list isn’t only about law schools that are trying dazzle students into making a ruinous financial decision. The rankings mainly seem to reflect whether or not law schools care about their website at all….

Georgetown Adjunct Law Professor and Law Librarian Roger Skalbeck has produced this review of law school websites. His methodology is a little bit inside baseball in terms of website design elements. But you’ll see that Skalbeck is trying to find objective standards for website grading:

You can look at Skalbeck’s full report here.

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Legal Skills Prof Blog pulls out the top ten law school websites:

1. University of Washington School of Law
2. Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University
3. Florida Coastal School of Law
4. (tie) University of New Mexico School of Law
4. (tie) Wake Forest University School of Law
4. (tie) University of Texas at Austin School of Law
7. S.J.Quinney College of Law, The University of Utah
8. (tie) Thomas M. Cooley Law School
8. (tie) University of Nebraska College of Law
10. George Mason University School of Law

The methodology rewards sites that put up a lot of “stuff.” So if you spend some professional time on your website, you should do well in these rankings.

If you don’t give a crap, you’ll end up at the bottom of the list with these accredited law schools:

200. University of Puerto Rico
199. Southern University
198. District of Columbia
197. Pontifical Catholic Univ. of P.R.
196. The Judge Advocate General’s School of Law
195. John Marshall Law School – Atlanta
194. Ave Maria University School of Law
192. (tie) University of Dayton
192. (tie) Temple University
191. Golden Gate University
190. St. John’s University School of Law

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It’s an interesting ranking. But here’s a quick Public Service Announcement: If you choose a law school based on its website, you are a freaking idiot.

Ranking law school home pages [Legal Skills Prof Blog]
Top 10 Law School Home Pages of 2011 [Georgetown Law]

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