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The Legal Aggregate blog at Stanford Lawyer magazine is home to Stanford Law School faculty opinion, op-eds and Q&As on timely topics in law and legal scholarship.

Question of the Week

Did you take note of the US News rankings when deciding on a law school?

This week, U.S. News & World Report's annual law school rankings were released. As always, this year's results were eagerly anticipated.

They're also continually criticized. Law.com notes the critique by sociologists Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder in Engines of Anxiety that rankings penalize lower-tier schools and nontraditional students. On PrawfsBlawg, Texas Tech law professor Eric Chiappinelli finds ratings a "proxy for law school prestige," but makes a case for prestige as a factor in school choice.

The Kaplan test preparation company's law school blog notes separate surveys of prelaw students and law schools. While most students found rankings important in their decision, a majority of admissions officers agreed that it would be in everyone's interests to have no rankings at all.

This week, we'd like to ask you: Did you take note of the U.S. News rankings when deciding on a law school? If so, were you glad you did, or glad you didn't bother?

Answer in the comments.

Read the answers to last week's question: Do you use a tablet computer in your law practice?

Posted by Eric T.: "I used a mini iPad for a while but found it didn't achieve what I needed so I bought the 2-pound MacBook 12-inch with the most RAM and largest hard drive and am very happy. The battery lasts seven hours, and it can do everything I need and more. Two pounds is about all I need to carry all I need around and then some."

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