University of Alabama School of Law

This is the fourth in a series of posts looking at how law schools in specific markets stack up based on the results of our ATL Insider Survey. As we’ve often noted, very few law schools are truly national institutions. Typically, the majority of graduates don’t stray too far from their alma maters, so the strongest network will be local, for local jobs. It’s to your advantage to go to school where you want to practice, sometimes even more so than going to a higher-ranked school.

In recent weeks, we’ve looked at our survey results pertaining to Chicago, Boston, and New York-area law schools. We examined how current law students rate their schools in terms of academics, career counseling, financial aid advising, practical/clinical training, and social life.

Today, we turn to our broadest geographic region yet: the South (the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana). Read on to see how schools in the region compare….

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Welcome back to our series of open threads on the latest batch of U.S. News law school rankings. Last time, readers weighed in on the law schools that ascended to the tippy-top of the rankings — the top 14 law schools. With the Harvard/Stanford tie, UC Berkeley’s dip, and the Georgetown v. Cornell switch-up, there was certainly a lot to talk about.

This time around, we’ll be taking a look at some additional top-tier law schools that sit just below the coveted “T14.” And much like the rousing game of musical chairs we saw play out among our nation’s most elite law schools, there were some pretty significant moves worth noting in this segment of the rankings as well….

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Yesterday, we devoted some coverage to the devastation down in Alabama due to the terrible storms there earlier this week. In the National Law Journal, Karen Sloan has an excellent report about how the tornadoes are affecting operations at the University of Alabama, including its law school.

It appears that the storms affected the college more than the law school. But we are hearing students at Alabama law complaining that Dean Kenneth Randall is pushing too hard to maintain a normal schedule.

We understand that finals at the college have been postponed indefinitely. But at the law school, tests are supposed to resume Monday.

Whether or not that is the correct decision, Dean Randall’s method for communicating his directives has rubbed some students the wrong way…

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Let’s finish off the top 50 law schools as ranked by U.S. News. As many people know, U.S. News jump from its top 100 straight to the “third tier.” The jump allows many clearly “second tier” schools to claim that they are “first tier schools” even though everybody knows they are not. I’m not even sure that all the top 50 schools should be able to call themselves first tier: but I don’t make the rules, I just watch as prospective law students are fooled by them.

To refresh your memory, here are the next batch of schools:

34. Fordham.
34. Ohio State (Moritz)
34. University of Washington
34. Washington & Lee
38. Arizona State
38. Alabama
38. University of Colorado – Boulder
38. Wake Forest
42. BYU
42. George Mason
42. University of Arizona (Rodgers)
42. UC Hastings
42. Utah
47. Florida (Levin)
48. American University
48. SMU
48. Tulane
48. Maryland

These places charge like first tier law schools. But are they?

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University of Alabama School of Law Above the Law blog.jpgSweet home Alabama. It’s the home of law schools that have given us great stories in the past.
A fairly recent story, involving a student at the University of Alabama School of Law who got into a silverware spat with his roommate, was on the lighter side. But our latest tale from UA is more serious — especially in the wake of yesterday’s tragic shootings at Northern Illinois University.
Read more, after the jump.

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