Maclean's law school rankings called into question

Maclean's magazine's recent rankings of Canadian law schools has been criticized for its methodology and for its intentions. Alice Wooley of the University of Calgary law faculty) writes on the Legal Ethics Forum (to which she is the only Canadian contributor) that these, the second such rankings compiled by Brian Leiter, a professor of law from the University of Chicago, are a useful contribution. But then goes on to question what the ultimate point of it is.

Is it to drive academics to produce more scholarship? Is it to provide students with a better indication of which law school they should attend? Is it to provide elite law firms with information as to which school to hire from? Different groups may perceive the usefulness of these rankings differently. For instance, a junior academic is likely to feel limited motivation from them; a publication this year is not likely to make a material difference to a school’s citation performance for several years, perhaps even many. A prospective applicant to law school could also legitimately question whether knowing the outcome for the top few students – those going to elite law firms, to the Supreme Court or into academia – in any given law school is all that useful. That student may be more interested in knowing the total placement rate for students upon graduation. While my school (Calgary) did relatively well in the elite law firm category (ranking 6th), applicants may be more interested in knowing that last year 99% of our graduating class found articling positions. As a Faculty we are certainly prouder of that statistic than of the elite law firm statistic used by Leiter.

Maclean's itself says it is to tell students the law schools they "will get the most out of". Its rankings say that the five top schools are Toronto, McGill, Osgoode, British Columbia, and Victoria. Wooley says, however, that Leiter (who runs a website that ranks U.S. law schools) may not have fully taken into account the differences between schools in Canada and the U.S.

For instance, Wooley (who was a clerk to Chief Justice Antonio Lamer in 1995-96) notes that measuring the number of Supreme Court clerkships ignores the fact that the court is mandated to take people from all the regions of the country, that it works in both English and French and hears both civil and common law matters.

As a consequence, clerkship hiring is based not only on academic (or law school) merit, but also on region of origin, competence in French and English, and (for one clerk per judge) competence in civil law. Not surprisingly, therefore, McGill and Ottawa – which teach in both English and French, and which teach both civil law and common law – have remarkably successful clerkship hirings. Equally unsurprisingly, the four prairie law schools – Manitoba, Alberta, Calgary and Saskatchewan – have had relatively limited success. Those schools combined have achieved less than half of the total clerkships of the University of Ottawa, even though combined having nearly twice as many students.

She also says that the outputs Leiter measures don't take account of the relatively limited stratification of Canadian law schools and their regional nature. Wooley also says the methodology doesn't acknowledge the relative importance in Canada of the public sector hiring of law school grads.

This is an issue because public sector jobs in Canada (and in the United States?) are as or more desirable than elite law firm jobs, and may be as competed for by law school graduates. In some Canadian cities entry level government jobs may pay as well or better than private law firm jobs (this was historically the case in Winnipeg, for example). Further, in some sectors high profile careers tend to start in government; a recent issue of Lexpert magazine noted that a “disproportionate number” of the corporate tax litigation bar “trace their roots to the other side of the fence as counsel with Justice Canada” (Lexpert Magazine, May 2008 p. 63).

[There are several interesting commentaries on the rankings from the University of Toronto faculty of law blog and from reader feedback at the Maclean's site.]