Part-Time Law School Rankings Methodology

part time law schools

has anyone earn any additional thoghts or comments on law schools adopting mini law or executive law degreee programs

Real-world criteria

If the rankings were based on these factors:

1) bar passage rate,

2) salary-to-debt ratio, and

3) not being up the ABA's hiney,

then the Nashville School of Law would be Tier 1, baby!!

I'm pretty sure your wrong!

I am pretty sure that NYLS is so highly rater because it is a great part time program. It's super downtown NY by almost all the federal courts. It has a strong alumni network. The concern about not finding a job that the lower 75% of NYLS students might have right out of college isn't as big a deal to people who are working and going at night. They also allow night student to participate fully in their Harlan honor's focuses, Law review, and other activities.

As someone who works in high tech, and is going because he is interested in Tech Law. I chose NYLS over Brooklyn with scholorships to both.

Good Ol' Boys...

I can't believe no consideration is given to bar passage rates to at least introduce some objectivity into this process. Without that, how are lesser known schools supposed to break out of the N/A ranks? You've created a wonderful tool here to perpetuate the good ol' boys network well into the future, while schools with much higher bar passage rates in their part-time programs than schools you have ranked in the top 25 are relegated to the N/A be elitists who can't objectively look at all schools.

Bar Pass

The bar pass rate at NYLS is currently 93.6%

Brooklyn Law School

Why is BLS not on the list? They have a rather large part-time program.

NYLS/NYU confusion

If those doing peer review--namely law faculty--are confusing New York Law School and NYU, then legal education is surely in trouble

NYLS/NYU

Joe -- I think you were responding to me rather than Tina. In any event, my hypothesis was not that every single US News voter confused the schools when NYLS is listed and NYULS is not, only that some did; enough to significantly skew the results. In looking at the data published in US News (which combines summer and winter sittings), NYLS' bar passage rate of 86.3% is pretty good but not remarkable, about 2% lower than Fordham's and 2% above 4th tier Pace.

Tina - More on Confusion

With the assessment being Peer Ranking and not all of the other factors that are included in the full-time rankings, this assessment is from law school professors is on the academic quality of education, not things like "size of library", "LSAT scores", "25-75%", etc. I would think this were an accurate assessment of the academics of the NYLS program. If all the law school professors thought they were talking about NYU, the rankings would reflect NYU's full-time numbers.

Since NYUs full-time program ranks above any school with a part-time program, Tina's analysis would mean that all the professors out there would have ranked NYLS as NYU, thereby ranking it #1, not #11. I suggest Tina spend a little time on NYLS's website, and compare faculty, writing, and courses offered in the NYLS evening program, and see that NYLS is probably getting a little short changed with the #11 compared to a few above it in the rankings.

A better question is why is NYLS, a school with the #5 bar pass rate in NY State always ranked so low in the full-time program. Its accademics, faculty, alumni, etc. are competitive with top schools in NY, and get a top pass rate with students that are not "prefect LSAT/GPAs". Over the last two summers have the same combined average as Fordham (90/94 v. 89/95). That kind of show the academics must be very good there. Maybe it is the full-time analysis that needs to be adjusted because that is unfairly lowering their day-time ranking.

More on NYULS/NYLS Confusion

Certainly there could be confusion going both ways, but one is generally considered a top 5 school in the country and the other is generally considered in the bottom half. The rankings show a huge disconnect between NYLS's peer rankings for its full time program and how the peers seem to view their part time program. I suspect if NYULS were on the part-time list as well, we would have seen NYLS' part time program ranked in a manner commensurate with its peer rankings for the full-time program. This is the most logical explanation for this disconnect.