The Super Lawyers Blog : Super Lawyers Blog : Information and Opinion on Legal Marketing and Lawyer Ratings

The University of Florida Levin College of Law had the most graduates on the 2009 Florida Super Lawyers listwith 762 of its graduates or 26 percent of the Super Lawyers roster for Florida.    The University of Miami ranked second with 447 Super Lawyers graduates or 15 percent of the state’s total.  The University of Florida is also the top Florida school in the U.S. News & World Report rankings coming in at number 51 in the nation. The University of Miami was ranked number 71 in the nation by US News.

The big surprise in theSuper Lawyers graduate count is Stetson University which ranked third with 244 Super Lawyers graduates or 8 percent of the list, beating out Florida State which came in fourth with 211 Super Lawyers graduates or 7 percent of the Florida roster.   According to U.S. News, Florida State is ranked number 52 in the nation while Stetson is a third tier school and is not given a ranking (U.S. News ranks the Top 100 in the nation, and places the rest of the schools in tiers 3 and 4). I won't quibble with the U.S. News rankings except to suggest that in terms of producing quality lawyers, Florida now has four top tier schools.

Click here to see a complete list of schools with the most graduates on the 2009 Florida Super list 

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One of the best indicators of the quality of a law school is the quality of lawyers it produces. Beginning next week, we’ll list on superlawyers.com the law schools that produce the most lawyers on each of our state lists, beginning with Florida. This state-by-state approach sets us apart from the U.S. News & World Report rankings which are compiled using a national survey. They “rank” the top 100 schools in the nation. But the rest of the schools are simply placed into two tiers and are not ranked within those tiers.

This is great for comparing a Harvard to a Yale, but what about all those state and regional law schools --  how do they stack up against each other? For many -- if not most -- law school applicants, the choice is not which law school in America to attend, but which law school in a particular state to attend. For these applicants, our state rankings will be particularly useful.  Our rankings will also shed more light on all those excellent state and regional schools that don’t receive much attention in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

So stay tuned as we roll out our lists of top law schools by state.

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When people ask where I went to law school, I like to say I went to the Harvard of St. Paul, Minnesota. That would be William Mitchell College of Law.

Never heard of it? This tells me you're not from Minnesota. You see, Billy Mitchell (as we affectionately call it) is very well respected in this state. It's produced  a Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court (Warren Burger), scores of State Supreme Court justices and many of the top lawyers in Minnesota. While Billy Mitchell ain't Harvard, it's a darn good law school. 

But you'd never know that if you relied on the US News & World Report rankings of law schools from 2008. We Mitchell grads took a collective shot in the, um, midsection when our school was listed dead last in the survey. (Okay, it wasn't quite that bad -- the magazine didn't bother to "rank" the loser schools listed in the 4th tier, so they just listed them alphabetically).

Two other law schools from the Twin Cities, Hamline and the University of St. Thomas, were listed in the third tier, while the University of Minnesota was ranked 22nd nationally.

I swear this is not sour grapes on my part here, but US News completely missed the mark on Mitchell. Consider the 2008 Minnesota Super Lawyers list. Thirty-four percent of the lawyers on the list graduated from the University of Minnesota; 26 percent from William Mitchell; 9 percent from Hamline and zero from St. Thomas (which is not surprising, since the school opened in 1999). How can it be that a lowly 4th tier school produces more than a quarter of the state's top lawyers?

Perhaps Mitchell suffers because it doesn't have a football team. It's an independent law school, not affiliated with a major university or college. Who knows? But one thing seems clear: US News uses a national ranking process. As such, they seem to do a good job ranking "national" law schools, but when it comes to local and regional schools, the process might not work so well.

The majority of students entering law school will not attend a nationally ranked school. For these students there needs to be a more reliable indicator of how local and regional schools rank compared to one another. That's where Super Lawyers comes in.

A reliable indicator of the quality of a law school is the quality of the attorneys it produces. In coming issues, Super Lawyers will publish graduation statistics on the lawyers named to our statewide lists. We believe this will give students a more accurate picture of how local law schools compare to one another, and will give a fairer shake to the Harvards of places like St. Paul, Minnesota.

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