The 2018 Revealed-Preferences Ranking of Law Schools

In 2017, we published A Revealed-Preferences Ranking of Law Schools, which presented the first (intentionally) subjective ranking of law schools based on the revealed preferences of matriculating students. We created a subjective ranking system as an alternative to other law school rankings, which are objective, because their purpose is to tell prospective law students where to matriculate. Our “revealed-preferences” ranking is subjective, because its purpose is to ask where prospective law students choose to matriculate. In other words, objective rankings tell students what they should want, but our subjective ranking asks what students actually want. In this article, we altered our methodology to present a law school ranking based exclusively on the combined scores of the students in a school’s 2017 incoming class. We also compare this ranking to our previous ranking, as well as other objective ranking systems, and provide regional rankings of law schools.