Canadian Law School Rankings

Written by Matthew G. Scott

In 2007, for the first time, Macleans issued rankings of Canadian Law Schools. An article was published on TLS to that effect, along with the attached ranking system. A year later, Macleans refined the process with the goal of improving the accuracy of their rankings. A new category, Faculty Hiring, was added as an attempt to also give some weight to how many graduates of the various law schools end up as Professors.

In refining the process, Macleans relied on Professor Brian Leiter, who worked for the University of Texas at Austin Law School, where for many years he has criticized the U.S. News and World Report rankings methodology as using data that is open to manipulation and in some cases, even if the data is accurate, irrelevant.

Using his advice, the ranking system currently evaluates both common and civil law schools on five considerations split between two main categories, namely graduate quality (50%) and faculty quality (50%). The graduate quality section can be further subdivided into four main areas of interest, Elite Firm Hiring (20%), National Reach (10%), Supreme Court Clerkships (10%) and Faculty Hiring (10%); while the latter is solely based on Faculty Journal Citations. All of the data used to compute these categories is publically available, and more on these categories can be found below.

Explanation of Categories:

Graduate Quality - Elite Firm Hiring:
Measure is worth 20% of a schools ranking, relied on the Lexpert list of the leading Canadian law firms and Vault’s list of the leading New York firms. On each firm’s website, the number of associates from each school was counted, divided by the size of each school’s first-year class, as outlined on the Law School Admission Council website.

Graduate Quality - National Reach:
Worth 10% of the ranking, this value was derived from the elite firm hiring, except, in this case it was calculated using how many of each school’s graduates were hired from leading firms other than the top three firms to hire graduates from school. In effect, the point of this measure was to attempt to measure the extent to which leading firms outside of a school’s region hire its graduates, since students prefer a degree that is marketable across the country.

Graduate Quality - Supreme Court Clerkships:
The final measure, worth 10% of the ranking, is derived from the number of Supreme Court clerks hired over the past six years, and the number from each school. As there are only twenty-seven of these positions each year and they are generally drawn from the nation’s top students, it is one of the competitive positions open to graduates.

Graduate Quality – Faculty Hiring:
This new indicator, worth 10% of the ranking, is an assessment of how many of the law schools alumni go on to become professors at law schools around the country. More emphasis is placed on individuals who teach at schools other than their alma-mater.

Faculty Quality - Faculty Journal Citations:
Weighted at 50% of the rankings, the number of tenure and tenure-track faculty was counted at each school, excluding adjunct faculty, emeritus professors and etc. Each professor’s citation count in Quicklaw’s database of 33 Canadian legal journals was then tallied, and added to the school’s total citation count. This value was then divided by the number of professors at each school. Additionally, unlike in 2007, the ranking now considers international citations as well.

Why Other Things Were Not Considered:
Macleans decided not to consider factors such as clinics, courses, styles and approaches because in the opinion of Professor Leiter, these considerations do not “really compensate for the scholarly excellence of faculty and professional opportunities.”

Editors Note:

Before proceeding to the rankings, it is important to note that unlike in the United States, where Law School rankings are fairly common; this has never taken hold to the same extent in Canadian society. Although it is true that there are rankings done for the vast majority of university programs in Canada, these rankings do not always mesh with either public perception or actual hiring prospects. Consequently, the importance of going to a school ranked “1st” v. “5th” might be largely irrelevant.

When determining where to go to school in Canada, some considerations that are very important are the region you wish to work, the programs offered by the school and the quality of life that you will have wherever you attend. You would be ill-advised to choose to attend a school in Ontario simply because it is ranked 1 spot higher than school in British Columbia if you have no intention of working in Ontario, for example. Thus, while the rankings do serve as a useful tool, they should not be the sole basis for any decisions.

Additionally, the Common Law Rankings - Overall and the Civil Law Rankings - Overall have been updated as of September 15th, 2011. Please note that the rest of the information herein is drawn from the Macleans rankings article published on September 11th, 2008.