<p>Hi, I heard that U of C's law school was nationally known for its quality law program. But I was wondering which law school was better: Harvard's, Oxford's, Cambridge's, or Chicago's?
(Please point out the pros and cons of the best choice)</p>
<p>Oxford and Cambridge don’t HAVE law schools. In Britain, the function of law schools is handled by the Inns of Court in London, although I believe one can read law (or jurisprudence, or legal history, etc.) as an academic matter at Oxbridge. But that does not qualify you for bar admission.</p>
<p>As between Harvard and Chicago law schools, it’s really a matter of taste, and to some extent reputation. Harvard is the largest and best-known law school in the US. To a meaningful extent, it’s the only truly national law school we have: there are Harvard lawyers practically everywhere, no matter how isolated or out of the way. The Harvard brand is fabulous. Traditionally, the experience of being a law student at Harvard has been less than wonderful, especially during one’s first year. All the classes are large lectures (with random Socratic questioning in many cases); things are very tense and competitive.</p>
<p>Chicago’s law school is much smaller and friendlier. (There are two competing models for American law schools – Harvard and Yale. Chicago and Stanford are the elite schools that are most like Yale. Michigan, Columbia, Georgetown, Virginia are more like Harvard.) It is highly ranked, but much less known, and with a much less extensive alumni network. For many years, it was probably the most important institution for conservative, law-and-economics re-examination of legal scholarship, but its greatest leaders in that regard have other jobs, and the rest of the world has caught up with it. So it is more like other law schools now than it was, say, 20 years ago, if slightly less liberal than Harvard overall. Still, like the rest of the university it has a solid reputation for rigorous analysis, vigorous (but always polite) debate, and thinking outside conventional political categories.</p>
<p>Harvard Law School is more activist and less academic than Chicago. Many professors at Harvard maintain virtual law firms of junior faculty and student assistants, and conduct active (and interesting) legal practices. There are lots of opportunities for students, especially good ones, to get involved in that. It happens far less at Chicago, where most of the faculty’s output is traditional scholarship.</p>
<p>Don’t know much about law schools, but did run into this a while ago:</p>
<p>The Top Schools From Which the Most “Prestigious” Law Firms Hire New Lawyers, 2008</p>
<h1>of Graduates at Elite Firms/Avg. Graduating Class Size</h1>
<p>1 Columbia University<br>
2 University of Chicago
3 Harvard University
4 New York University
5 Stanford University
6 Yale University
7 Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania
9 Northwestern University
10 Duke University, University of Michigan
12 …</p>
<p>[Top</a> 15 Law Schools From Which Elite U.S. Law Firms Hire New Lawyers](<a href=“http://www.leiterrankings.com/jobs/2008job_biglaw.shtml]Top”>Top 15 Law Schools From Which Elite U.S. Law Firms Hire New Lawyers)</p>
<p>That’s nice, but the study in question is way weighted to New York, and a little to Chicago. If you look at the data, too, Harvard had the largest absolute number of graduates in the elite firms identified (the definition of “elite” being large, famous, and having a search engine on its website that permitted the author to search by law school), but it also had the largest divisor. The study didn’t take into account things like the Justice Department, law school faculties, and judicial clerkships, where Harvard and Yale basically eat everyone’s lunch. The study also implicitly assumes that what everyone most wants to do is to do corporate work at a megafirm for megabucks – something that is probably a lot more true at Columbia than anyplace else, but which really isn’t very true anywhere.</p>