The EQR is "being praised as a more reasonable alternative [to U.S. News] by a number of law school deans."

--from a front-page story on the EQR in The National Law Journal, June 2, 1997.

"What you have done is extremely impressive. Your rankings are the most sophisticated and methodologically sound system I have seen. I intend to make it clear to my future readers that only the naive will lend highest credence to U.S. News & World Report. Those with savvy will turn to Leiter's rankings."

     --"Atticus Falcon," author of Planet Law School, September 6, 2000.

Unlike most other law-school rankings, the bi-annual Educational Quality Ranking (hereafter "EQR") focuses exclusively on the three factors central to a good legal education: the quality of the faculty, the quality of the student body, and the quality of teaching.

The 2000-2002 "Ranking of U.S. Law Schools by Educational Quality" employs the same core methodology as last year, and as set out in "Measuring the Academic Distinction of Law Faculties," 29 Journal of Legal Studies 451 (2000).  Due to the logistical burden of ranking fifty schools, however, this year we studied 55 schools in order to come up with a rank of the nation's top 40.  In addition, because of the time-consuming nature of such studies, the eEQR will switch to bi-annual publication.  Notable changes in faculty quality are more likely to occur over a two-year period, and I am also hoping to substitute a systematic and extensive reputational survey, one that employs standard safeguards, for the reputational results curently generated by U.S. News.

This year's ranking has been prepared especially for an invited presentation at the meeting of the National Association of Pre-Law Advisors in San Diego in November 2000.

Keep in mind that all rankings reflect contestable judgments about criteria and their relative importance. Thus, all rankings should be used with caution and with attention to what exactly they purport to measure.  This ranking focusses exclusively on traditional academic criteria.  Such criteria count for less than half of the well-known U.S. News rankings, by contrast.  Academically serious and ambitious students, who embark upon the study of law with a sense of intellectual excitement, are likely to find the EQR of most value.

Still available 1999-2000 EQR